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Divine Director (part II)

I quoted Joseph Myers yesterday and asked whether we can begin to see God as an organic organiser rather than a master planner, but what’s the problem with seeing God as a master planner anyway? Nothing, directly, but it gets confusing, theologically, when you’re faced with instances in Scripture, such as Abraham at Sodom and Gomorrah, where God seems to change his mind and also when faced with the issue of prayer. If God’s will is going to happen why bother praying? Well, if God is a master planner then prayer begins to be seen as tapping a busy God on the shoulder saying “if you can find it in your heart to change the whole world order so I can have a parking space, that would be nice… but only if it’s in your plan…” What kind of relationship is being posed here? An authority figure demanding you do exactly as you’re told? Not really loving, is it? (Even if the plans are to prosper me and not to harm me!)

The other, more major, issue that arises when seeing God as a master planner comes when you’re faced with the crucified God.

‘What makes God the world Ruler, said Barth, as opposed to all false gods and idols is ‘the very fact that his rule is determined and limited: self-determined and self-limited, but determined and limited none the less’. (Karl Barth, ‘Church Dogmatics II/2’) Knowledge of this self-limitation derives from the cross, for if everything were rigorously determined what could the cross be but a piece of spectacular, though indecent, theatre? On the contrary the ‘necessity’ of the cross, frequently spoken about by New Testament authors, is God’s refusal to overrule human history. If the cross is our guide, God is no determinist.’ (T.J. Gorringe, ‘God’s Theatre’)

What is seen on the cross is God’s power working through human free will. God didn’t pretend to die on the cross. He didn’t hold onto control or power in that situation rather he became weak and died in order that we could know that

‘he refuses to manipulate or control but rather wishes to woo creation to conformity with his son, as Hosea suggests.’ (Gorringe, ‘God’s Theatre’)

Yesterday I mentioned an experience Peter Brook had while directing Love’s Labour’s Lost for the RSC. Brook told of his frustration when, early on in rehearsals, actors did not perform in the expected way. I will just write Gorringe’s reflections rather than rephrase,

‘This story is a marvellous parable of God’s activity. If we do in fact learn about God, and the mode of God’s activity from Christ then it should be clear that God rejected the prompt book option from the very beginning, and has been from the start ‘in amongst the actors’. God works without script and without plan but with, to continue the metaphor, a profound understanding of theatre and the profoundest understanding of the play…Interestingly Brook remarked early on in rehearsal that there was a particular rhythm to be found and a particular actor to find it, and this demanded ‘an almost metaphysical explanation’. (David Selbourne, ‘Making of Midsummer Night’s Dream’)All the director can do is illuminate the play and demand that the actors find their own inner resources. Often Brook simply sat in front of the stage drumming out a rhythm. Something like this is what God demands of us… Against this analogy it might be objected that it conceives God as simply one agent amongst many, just as Selbourne sometimes wondered whether Brook was one actor amongst many. This would reduce God to the status of a finite being. The giveaway here is the ‘simply’. God is indeed one agent amongst many, but he is the only unique agent, just as there is only one ‘director’. ‘God’ is the Creator and Sustainer, present in the personal reality of his graciousness to all things, and interacting with, and reacting to all things.’

People often ask me, “What makes a good director?” Well the answer, for me, is someone who is willing to guide rather than dictate. Actors are creative beings and are at their most powerful when they are using their creativity. To stifle the creative is to stop them from ‘existing’ onstage. A director’s role is to encourage actors to make right decisions and to enable them to react to impulses onstage. When I’m directing I spend more time equipping actors with tools and practical guidelines as to how to react than I do telling them how exactly to walk, stand and speak. This way of directing, at times, is frustrating for the perfectionist inside me, but in the end it’s the moments when the actors come alive onstage that makes me excited about theatre. Peter Brook, as always, says it best,

‘I think one must split the word “direct” down the middle. Half of directing is, of course, being a director, which means taking charge, making decisions, saying “yes” and saying “no,” having the final say. The other half of directing is maintaining the right direction. Here, the director becomes guide, he’s at the helm, he has to have studied the maps and he has to know whether he’s heading north or south. He searches all the time, but not haphazardly. He doesn’t search for the sake of searching, but for a purpose; a man looking for gold may ask a thousand questions, but they all lead back to gold; a doctor looking for a vaccine may make endless and varied experiments, but always toward curing one disease and not another. If this sense of direction is there, everyone can play the part as fully and creatively as he is able. The director can listen to the others, yield to their suggestions, learn from them, radically modify and transform his own ideas, he can constantly change course, he can unexpectedly veer one way or another, yet the collective energies still serve a single aim. This enables the director to say “yes” and “no” and the others willingly to assent.’ (The Shifting Point)

The same is true of Christian leaders. We may know the vision or see how things could be, but we must act in the way God would act and rather encourage collaboration rather than cooperation. We must tap out a rhythm and help the actors to find and discover the role they are playing and, most importantly, we must be ready and excited about being surprised by the new and fresh things the actor unearths.

In my placement, this year, I will have the joy and pleasure to work with creative individuals and watch them create and communicate stories and truths. I have discovered a way in which my passion and love of directing is truly godly and a spiritual exercise, for as I work ‘in amongst the actors’ I find God is there to.

Divine Director (part I)

My reading over the summer has been sporadic to say the least. I constantly jump from ‘Organic Community’, ‘The Empty Space’, ‘The Shifting Point’ (another Peter Brook book), ‘The Invisible Actor’ by Yoshi Oida and now into my more theologically heavy tomes, ‘God’s Theatre’ and ‘Transforming Fate and Destiny’. Books move from the top of the pile to the bottom frequently as my interest and whims change day by day. This reading is also interrupted by revision on theatre practitioner’s theories in preparation for ‘The Workshops’ running the first couple of weeks of term. Add to this the inevitable daily activities of a wife wanting to do those household chores put aside for the holiday season and you have all the ingredients for a mental meltdown!

There has been, however, some exciting and recurring themes coming through in my research and one of which is particularly helpful for me for a couple of reasons.

For those of you who have been reading for some months now will know, I have struggled with the idea of ‘God’s will’ and how one should discern it; the theological balancing of the providence of God and free will. My evangelical background has led me towards an understanding of God as having a plan for each of our lives and has a map of how our lives should be lived. This means that listening prayer becomes really important to discern which decisions one should make in order to be aligned to His will. This discernment is not a perfect solution as you can never be totally sure you’ve heard him right (if at all!) and so confusion and doubt creep in. The pray-er justifies decisions and outcomes depending on how confident they are that it was God’s will in the first place. This is an adequate theological standpoint and I’m sure there is some truth in it. It does lead to, however, some Christians proclaiming knowledge of God’s one and only will and leading many down destructive or damaging paths. I want to clarify, I don’t think everyone claiming to hear God’s voice in a situation is leading people into destructive or damaging paths but sometimes it has happened.

I struggle when new Christians come to this teaching. Having heard a gospel of grace and cleansing of bad decisions made, they are then pressured to hear God’s will in how to live their lives now and when they make one wrong decision then it’s hard not to feel like you’re not good enough to be a Christian because you’ve messed up God’s plan again!

Joseph Myers in ‘Organic Community’ suggests;

‘A theology of God as master planner implies that God has a purpose – even one purpose – for your life and it’s your lifelong job to pursue it, identify it, and live it out. The gospel becomes, “God has a plan for your life.” God has planned the job, the life partner, the house, the child, and so on. He wants nothing more than our cooperation with his plan. A theology of God as organic order, however, allows for collaboration with him. We are privileged to participate with him in the forming of our future. He invites our ideas, our energy, our creativity, our perspective. He gives up a measure of control to facilitate relationship with us and to demonstrate his love.’

In ‘God’s Theatre’ T.J. Gorringe dissects the main theological and philosophical thoughts on providence, walking his reader through Calvin, Augustine, Aquinas thought and many other historical heavy weights. He argues that you fall into the trap of saying human free will is always working contrary to God’s will and therefore we should cast it aside and be automatons or God works all things to good and so we can do what we like because God is going to fix everything anyway. There are other standpoints, as you can begin to discover, but I just want to give a flavour of the different and varied views. How do we balance God’s omnipotence and Scripture clearly proclaiming God having a plan for human kind and working in this world for the furtherance of the Kingdom and our innate free will?

Gorringe goes onto suggest an understanding of God’s work amongst human beings that has helped me to see more clearly how we can pick up Myers call for ‘organic order’ and see God as someone who wants collaboration rather than cooperation. Gorringe’s ideas come from none other than Peter Brook…

I was immediately interested!

He begins by retelling the story, originally told by Brook himself in ‘The Empty Space’, of one of Brook’s early directorial posts on Love’s Labour’s Lost for the RSC. I returned to ‘The Empty Space’ and read the account. Brook describes how he would have a scene mapped out before rehearsals; He knew where people should move and how and what every moment would look like. He would use cardboard figurines to move them about the stage at different moments and would have it all charted out. I was reminded, as I read this, of two things; firstly, how closely this describes my method of directing early on in my career and secondly, of this implement called ‘a director’s tray’ that was brought to my attention a week ago. This ‘tray’ marks out the stage into different areas and a director would move markers (signifying actors) around the tray like a general would in a war room. Brook, like many directors before and after him, discovered,

‘As the actors began to move I knew it was no good. These were not remotely like the cardboard figures, these large human beings thrusting themselves forward, some too fast with lively steps I had not foreseen…We had only done the first stage movement, letter A on my chart, but already everyone was wrongly placed and movement B could not follow… Was I to start again, drilling these actors so that they conformed to my notes? One inner voice prompted me to ddo so, but another pointed out that my pattern was much less interesting than this new pattern that was unfolding in front of me…I stopped, and walked away from my book, in amongst the actors, and I have never looked at a written plan since.’

I hope you can begin to see where Gorringe begins to see how God might work with human beings.

Join me tomorrow for part two of this post. Go and have a cup of tea or whatever your beverage preference is and I ask that you mull over how you see God working His plans in your life. Have you ever struggled with the idea of God having one plan for your life and that’s it? How do address life decisions? Have you ever struggled with discerning prayer?

See you tomorrow…

Riding Lights Theatre Church? (part II)

I’ve just returned from the Riding Lights Summer Theatre School which I go to each year. This week is very special for me as it is where I began my relationship with Jesus, where I met my wife, where I proposed to her, where I found a lot of my closest and dearest friends and where I feel most at home with the worship and approach to ministry. I want to talk a bit about the community of this summer school and  how it might be developed into a year long life enhancer.

There are countless testimonies, like mine, where people have arrived at summer school from a local church where they don’t feel they belong for one reason or another and feel a strong sense of ‘homecoming’. It’s difficult to put a finger on what causes this feeling to happen with so many people. Is it the shared passion for theatre? Is it the intensity at which relationships are formed? Is it the deep challenges of the week that ask each member to search the depths of their souls for truth to communicate on stage? It’s all these things and many more.

The summer school models an approach to Christian discipleship that is attempted week in week out across the country in small groups, cell groups, house groups, etc. Riding Lights Summer School, however, is unashamed to ask deep and important questions of the participants; why? There is an inherent pressure to produce a performance at the end of a week and so time passes quickly and every moment in rehearsal counts. Therefore, participants, if they are to fully engage with a performance must offer their whole selves in order to communicate truths on stage.

I had an interesting conversation with designer Sean Cavanagh, who has worked with Riding Lights for many years. He suggested that our culture is so interested in making everyone feel like they need to express themselves that people don’t give much thought to what they are expressing or even to who they are that they are expressing. Those involved in encouraging self expression may believe that everyone knows themselves but actually self knowledge should not be assumed. What this problem leads to is people believing they are expressing themselves when in fact they are merely copying someone else in the hope that they will become what they express.

Walking around the Summer School and watching people interacting with each other I saw a lot of people desperate to express themselves but unsure as to who they actually are. Summer School encourages these people to discover who they really are because the company and those working on the courses are not interested in superficiality, they actively seek truth and real people. Your story will not be shared unless it’s truthful and honest.

In the middle of the week, the young people hold a service for the wider community. There is always a slot for testimonies and this year there were three. Two of them were honest and real and powerful and one was not and you could tell which ones meant something by the impact they had on the congregation. I felt a real sense of the possibility for churches to be this honest and frank with each other; the need for unashamedly seeking truthful engagement rather than allowing people to wear the masks for long periods of time. Church should be a place where people are almost forced to take off their masks and superficialities and be released to be ‘themselves’. Yes, it’s painful. Yes, it’s risky but while churches allow people the time and space to feel accepted with the masks on the more painful it will be to persuade them to take them off.

All the testimonies of people feeling they belong with Riding Lights Summer School continue on to tell of the difficulty of going back to the community where they came from having experienced the naked, raw honesty of Riding Lights Summer School. They return and soon forget the freedom and liberation felt and return to the masks that they put down. the summer school becomes a yearly chance to allow the air to get to the wounds only to return to covering it up until the next year. How could Riding Lights continue this ministry into the other 51 weeks of the year?

I’m beginning to feel that Riding Lights is an important tool for modelling church (see Riding Lights Theatre Church post). The network that they have across the country and beyond is a community of people who are passionate about telling truthful, risky and powerful stories; they are a group of people who are not satisfied with expected and safe. I know that Riding Lights Theatre Company feel they must appease the members but I think  they can be honest and bold at saying “We do not compromise the truth.”

There are people out there who are not members of Riding Lights but who have this same passion. It would be great to show them the power of honest and raw storytelling and invite them to participate in the work. The summer school is a place where Riding Lights concentrates on what it does best, drawing out truthful stories from all people and shows them their true reflection. This work is important for everyone.

The company is asking “How do we involve the members more?” I say “Do what you do best… invite them to tell stories, honest and real, to share themselves with others, unmasked and painfully raw.”, “How do we do this?”, “To ask, unashamedly direct, for people to do it. To say to each member “We want your story? Who are you? How does your story fit with ours and God’s?””

My placement this year will help me to see the power of discovering where our personal stories fit into something bigger releases and liberates people and that they are encouraged to step into reality and ask big questions of themselves. This, I hope, will feed into the powerful ministry of Riding Lights.

Their work is essential for the Kingdom of God and to consider this wealth of experience and gifting and passion to fade away is unthinkable. If the company stops I will only reinvent the wheel in the future!

Theatre Church (part V)

On the eve of my birthday BBC 2 was showing a programme called ‘Things to do before your thirty’ I’m willing to put money on my list being slightly different to theirs; Getting ordained is not as popular as it used to be!!! As I edged towards my quarter of a century landmark on Sunday and prepared myself for the onslaught of many people surrounding me on the eve of this momentous occasion for the sole purpose of celebrating my passing of time, I decided to meet up with a wise, sensitive and lovely friend (who also happens to be my brother in law) and who has started his walk towards 30.

One thing I love about my brother in law (among many!) is his intellectual engagement on a plethora of subjects. He invests his thought time in any topic that takes your fancy and he does so, not in a arrogant, intellectually superior way in order to show off, but in a caring, selfless way that says “I care about what you care about.” It means you can guarantee a great conversation with him and you leave feeling like you’ve learnt something new about yourself and the world around you… or at least about obscure music that’s played on 6 Music (one of his favourite topics!)

Of the many topics we discussed one stands out as particularly significant.

Fresh Expressions: The agreed process of dividing the church?

We began to discuss my placement next year and trying to work out if it could ever be ‘church’. I told him about my current thoughts on how theatre and church inter-related and where there may be potential of creating an expression of church through the theatre company model of relationship. I also started to try and formulate some thoughts on the dispersed community model of new monasticism and its potential for creating a worshipping theatre community made up of nomadic actors, directors, designers and technicians (see Riding Lights Theatre Church post). I talked about this image I was once given of a man dressed in tribal garb standing in the middle of a wilderness, underneath him it read “I am part of a tribe”. Next to this picture was an image of a block of flats, people crammed together in pokey bedsits in rows and rows, underneath it; “I am so isolated”. We both agreed that society in this country has a culture of opting into ‘community’. Centuries ago communities were a natural part of life and they weren’t created around a hobby or approach to life but around the desire to be in community. Now we join communities that share our values or approach to life, around a common interest such as a sport or leisure activity. We go out and find other people who are like us. Communities are rarely about different people coming together to be in community for the joy of being in community.

The church, surely, should be a place where people from all walks of life come together and grow alongside each other; where we learn from each other and where differences grow us rather than destroy us. I reflected, after our conversation, on the recent Synod centring on the consecration of women bishops in the Church of England. How do we live together with such opposing approaches? The concept of community seems so simple and yet we can see how difficult it is. I feel i need to say something, I won’t linger on it more than this one statement, the two Arch Bishops, Rowan and John, acted with such Christian integrity striving for the minority group at Synod to feel loved and respected.

The church should be a place where people can come together and not share cultures, interests or approaches but who all worship Jesus Christ… but most churches today fill its Sundays with ‘Family services’, ‘Youth services’, ‘Informal Service’, ‘Formal Eucharist’, ‘BCP’ and any number of Fresh Expressions or creative approaches to worship. Is this diversifying our worship and giving people the many different options of how to meet God, catering for all tastes, actually the way forward?

My brother in law and I discussed the term ‘tribal’. Are all these different groups meeting in one churches actually creating different tribes? Is the ‘tribal’ approach to worship dangerous?

The term ‘tribal’ brings to mind gang warfare, conflict, disagreements and friction but my brother in law commented on the Biblical narrative and how God worked within the tribal system. He called Abraham to be a tribe, Israel was divided into tribes and in Revelation there is no mention of destroying tribal boundaries but it claims that all tribes and all nations will have the Good News preached to them. The Bible seems to suggest that cultural divisions are ok, God knows that we are all different and that He can work with that but division is not good.

‘Unity does not equal uniformity and diversity does not equal division’

As I think about how a Theatre community could be an expression of church or ‘tribe’ I must remember its unity to the wider church, not just around the world but through history as well. Fresh Expressions could easily be seen as more opportunity for people to make a value judgement on the worship a group of people and to create ‘the right way’ but God’s church is bigger than that and Jesus is bigger than that. Fresh Expressions are not about doing new things for the sake or doing new things, they’re not about being ‘trendy’ or pandering to the whims of some. They’re not about short changing the gospel for the sake of getting people through the door but they are about creating communities that are organic and natural… I guess, like Abraham and the Levites, tribes are called out from a larger whole to be a certain thing for the good of the whole and for the glory of God.

I pray that there may be a theatre community called out to dedicate itself to communicating the story of God to all tribes and nations and tongues so that all knees will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!

Theatre Church (part IV)

Mrs. Lunn has gone for a retreat at St James’ Hospital, a bi annual time of pampering and drugs! which leaves me home alone. After my deep disappointment as I woke looking at my wife’s empty pillow, I got up and had a quiet breakfast and headed out for a run. As I jogged around Durham and listening to music, I prayed about my placement; the big practical issue still needing prayer and discernment is the need for a regular space (see Theatre Church (part I) post) It’s important that the space is private and ‘holy’. I have spoken before about the need for preparation of space and it has been an issue to find a space which will enable and facilitate good and holy discussions without being a chapel or overly religious space.

I headed into college to pick up some things and on my way back home my route was blocked by builders and found myself heading towards the city centre. At the bottom of Palace Green the Salvation Army have recently opened up a ‘Boiler Room’ called ‘Sanctuary 21’ and I was compelled to go in and spend some more time praying about space. As I entered the ‘Prayer Room’ I discovered two people in the room chatting. They welcomed me in and we got chatting.

It turns out that the two people are Gary and Dawn Lacey who have been sent from Liverpool to set up a 24/7 prayer room in Durham. They have both been praying for two years about how to go about setting up and I was so impressed with the way the two of them have approached the whole process; spending every day in the Cathedral praying, making contacts with the churches in the area, listening to the needs of this city. They were keen not to storm into the city with ‘the latest thing’ and proclaim “we’ve got it!” Gary showed me round the facilities and I was so impressed. Having spent six years previously setting up a ‘Boiler Room’ in Liverpool, it would have been easy to come into Durham and replicate but Gary is sensitive to the particular needs of Durham. Yes, there are similarities about Sanctuary 21 and every other ‘Boiler Room’ but how best to serve this community and their needs. Gary wants to unite the different churches and their mission, so he isn’t doing ‘services’ or setting up a congregation or ‘sheep stealing’. He wants to bless all the churches and resource them with spaces to pray and worship and hold events for their church. He is also wanting to reach out to the students at night and help to support the Street Angels initiative.

Through our conversations I felt that familiar tug on the heart… was this the space? Gary showed me upstairs and told me that they were looking to hire out the space for people to use for prayer and events. I asked him whether he would be up for having a weekly workshop for students and he was positive. We discussed, briefly, how it may work and I became really excited. The space is light, airy and beginning to feel like a really holy place. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been into a place which feels ‘thin’? This place has that.

I need to pray and listen and ask God to open and close doors appropriately to lead me to where He wants us to go but this place already seems God lead; it’s central, it’s free, it’s filled with prayer and it’s private (as we would have the building to ourselves). Also, on a side note, it’s equipped for presentations and performances so it could also be a space, if we choose to create some product, to perform.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a timetable for next year yet so this all must wait. In the mean time, prayer… and now I have a place for that!

Back To Basics

As my placement in Byker finished I began to breathe a little deeper and slower and looked ahead at the wide expanse before me, otherwise known as ‘summer holiday’; two months of rest and recreation, a chance to catch up on personal fulfilments not dictated to me by college or the Church of England. What is it that a trainee vicar, who fills his work time with reading theological books, listening to different Christian leaders’ views and assessing what God is doing in the life of His church, does on holiday?

Read theological books, listens to some preaching from some Christian leader and assesses what God might be doing in the life of His church…of course!

As I have said before (see Reading and Telling Stories post) I have lots of books on the go, all of which are chosen by me with no pressure to write any essay on what I learn from them. I will, of course, be writing a personal journal and, if anything stands out, some posts here. Looking at the pile of books by my desk I can count eleven books not started and two books waiting to be finished. It’s not this that I want to talk about but rather the listening to the preaching of Rob Bell and Shane Hipps.

Rob Bell has been a very influential figure in my walk of faith. I know lots of people don’t like his style, they find him too ‘trendy’ and his style of writing and delivery can be slightly patronising at times but I find his passion contagious and his approach to his relationship with God is something that I would love to have. He is humble and honest about his ministry and I believe he has discovered a real balance between being ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world’.

I used to listen to Mars Hill Bible Church’s weekly sermons online and found that they really spoke to me. They encouraged me to appreciate the greatness of God and the love he pours out to all people. When I started college I couldn’t find the time to dedicate to listening to them on top of all the work and time with my wife so I stopped. Now that summer is here (and I’ve just got an iPhone 4 with iTunes on it) I decided to download the last six weeks talks to enjoy.

Rob Bell and the new pastor, Shane Hipps, were preaching together for three weeks. Their aim during these talks was to share their stories and try and discover what God might be saying to the Church on the whole. What spoke to me was their description of Jesus and the Church. Their understanding of God and the Church is one that can encompass ‘all people’. It’s basic. They are becoming more and more aware, it seems, that Jesus is bigger than we could ever hope to imagine. They describe Him as a lion that cannot be tamed. He is beautiful only when He is un-caged and in the vast wild. They suggest that we as Christians want to ‘cage’ Jesus in a nice little box because we are afraid. We are afraid that something will hurt ‘the lion’, we are too focussed on ‘the lamb’ image and forget that Jesus is bigger than that, fiercer than that!

And this is disconcerting for us.

‘If you are not disconcerted by how big Jesus is, then you have shrunk him down… A lion does not make a good house cat.’ (Shane Hipps)

‘For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.’ (Ephesians 1:15-23)

It reminded me, as they spoke of the greatness and power and authority of Christ, of the people of Byker. The small, faithful congregations of St Michael’s, St Martin’s, St. Silas’ and St Anthony’s knowing deep down that Christ will always be in Byker; that there will always be a Church. It reminded me also of the latest episode of ‘Rev.’ (an astute comedy of ordained ministry!) where the main character struggles with the lack of numbers but stands in opposition of ‘selling out’ to hype and bribery (smoothies!) in favour of faithful worship and service.

The talks from Mars Hill reinvigorated my passion for God’s Church, reminded me that I worship a God who has fought the battle a lot longer than I have and that I am his servant. Rob bell reminded all of us, in his talk, that we do not need to agree on everything, we are not a cult! But we must centre ourselves on Christ, worshipping and listening to Him. He suggests we can disagree with our leaders because they are ‘interpreters’ of the Word, they are not God. He uses 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 as his basis,

‘Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.’

None of us has it totally together and none of us has the only way because if we limit God we limit his power and authority. I was challenged because I had found myself saying in Byker, “This is of God… This is not.” Who did I think I was? Yes, we have been called to claim God’s work but how do I know? I don’t have an answer. I’d like to suggest that if the action or behaviour is moving people closer to a relationship with god, if it is creating a sense of wonder and desire for God, if it is making people bring glory to God then it should be blessed and named as Christ… but am I in a position to do that?

I know I have fallen into the trap of domesticating Christ and shrinking my view of God and this time at rest is allowing me to see God as the awesome, fierce and all encompassing God that He is! We as His Church should be equally big and all encompassing. What happens, therefore, when real disagreement comes up? Take the situation in the Church of England at the moment where ‘division’ is the biggest fear, how do we remain the big Church who preaches to have a big god who can encompass ‘all people’? Unfortunately, we need to walk a careful, prayerful and steady walk together. We need to centre on Christ and re-centre on Christ again and again and again and again… We need to allow disagreements to be present as a reminder that we are not God but ‘servants’, none of us has the last word, only God. Division is not an option. To get to the stage where we, Christ’s united Church, say “I cannot be in the same room as such and such” “We cannot worship God because they are not ‘proper’”, is not unity.

Yes to have a gay bishop, is an issue for many Christians, laity and clergy. Yes to have a female, ordained leader, is also an issue for many laity and clergy, but none of us is God. None of our leaders is God. If we divide and start to say “I follow Forward in Faith.” Or “I follow Rowan” or whatever it is, then we are going against the message of the Church set out in 1 Corinthians 3.

I must remember, as I go into my placement in October, to ‘interpret’ in godly and prayerful way. I must not limit God’s all encompassing love. To allow ‘all people’, from whatever background, to encounter Christ for themselves and to be placed firmly in the position of His servant to do His will and to allow Him to be the ‘un-caged lion’ that He is.

Amen?

Death and Resurrection

I decided to train at Durham, not because of the beautiful and inspiring cathedral nor the excellent theological and academic study programme but because I wanted to go into a rough, working class setting and show myself how much of a spoilt middle class boy that I am; hence why I find myself nearing the end of my time in Byker, one of the most deprived areas of the country. I chose Byker as my Mission Study Block because of the reasons above. I knew nothing of the place itself except of the famous TV programme that spawned Ant and Dec.

As my colleagues and I walk around the estate and hear stories of community breakdown and regeneration project after regeneration project I am struck by how comfortable I feel here. Admittedly we are walking around during the day in the glorious sunshine but I’ve met some members of the residents here and they all seem nice enough. I would like to visit at night and walk the streets to see how the place changes but at the moment I don’t hear horror stories of rough neighbourhoods, I hear stories of isolated, disillusioned and disposed individuals trying to escape the situation they find themselves. Byker is a place where you get dumped; either as an asylum seeker or as one of the people who are not needed by society anymore.

The history of this estate is long and complicated but here’s my basic understanding of it:

It grew in the industrial revolution as the centre of the glass industry. All the accommodation was built to house the workers of the factories and the subsequent industry that filled Tyneside. Byker became a place where families grew up living together, everyone knowing everyone else; a real working class community. As time went on and industry came and went the housing began to look and feel dated and so it was decided that a revamp was in order. People moved out of their houses and the place was knocked down and the terrace houses were replaced. It was done in stages and people were moved and removed and, by the end of the last set of building works, the community was, as you can imagine, dispersed. Some returned but many couldn’t afford the new housing or didn’t want to uproot again. The housing became home to the only people who could afford them; those on benefits. The community was subject to many concepts and consultations from council and committees. Plans were thrown at these people but funding and planning permission all slipped through. What is left now is an area where no one has any hope, probably because they’ve had them broken so many times, where no one knows if they belong here because it’s not clear what ‘here’ is.

As the six students from Cranmer walk and talk lots of things are coming through and it wouldn’t be right for me to try and voice them all at once (I wouldn’t know how to sew them all together anyhow!) But one thing for me seems clear…

This is a place that needs a new story and I think we can find it in an old one. The story speaks of death and resurrection.

Parallel to my time in Byker I have continued to read ‘Organic community’ by Josef Myers. At almost every meeting and conversation I’m reminded of Myers thoughts on how communities are built and sustained and I’m struck by how much Byker has been failed by those who believed they were creating community. The councillors came into Byker with grand plans and ideas of how Byker should exist in post-industrial age. What’s the problem with that?

Some quotes from ‘Organic Community’ may help,

‘people are not primarily looking to co operate with our plan for their lives.’

‘Organic community is not a product, not an end result. Organic community – belonging – is a process… it is not the product of community that we are looking for. It is the process of belonging that we long for.’

We love to fix things, don’t we? Why? I suggest we are all scared of failure. We idolise success, we are told, again and again, that we need to reach excellence, personal bests and achievements. If you don’t attain what you set out to do then you are weak and dependant on those who have. Our society is structured so that those who succeed give support to those who haven’t ‘made it’.

The situation in Byker is so complicated I can’t go into it all now but the impression I get is that the rebuilding and all the subsequent regeneration projects that have taken place have been master plans of fixing the ‘issues’ of Byker. Good willed people trying to bring life to this community by papering over cracks and thrusting false hope into a community hungry for some light.

‘Dying to live’

This is the phrase that’s been buzzing round my head as I reflect on the situation in Byker. What follows is only an impression and my reflections. To believe that i have the answer is foolish and naive but I have been hearing and seeing some profound things and I’d like to share them in the hope that they may be of some help.

The church of St Michael’s is a group of people who have moved from their building to a shop front and they don’t know whether they’ll ever return to the empty shell on the hill and if they do what happens to the shop front? How can they invest in a space they don’t know if they’re keeping? The church of St Anthony’s is a group of people who find themselves in a ‘fortress’, fenced in and separate from an evolving resident community not willing to let go of relatively superficial factors. What are they holding on to and why? These are communities that need to embrace death, knowing trusting in God who has conquered death!

This imagery of death and resurrection is everywhere.

The church of St Martin’s has experienced a death of their building; it has been taken down, every brick, and replaced by a community centre which doubles up as a worship space. A wonderful concept but this has come with some great heart ache. This community experienced a death of an old way of identifying themselves. They are now in a new stage. I feel like God is leading them through death into resurrection hope.

St Michael’s are in an Easter Saturday moment. All around them is uncertainty and ‘death’; death of a building, of their identity, of cohesion. The last thing they need is human beings giving them a metaphorical plaster to ‘make it better’. They need God’s power to bring about resurrection. They need to be reminded that in God we have hope and it is only in trusting in Him that His power is made perfect in weakness.

The Byker community, at large, needs to hear this story as well. That, in Christ, death is a victory, that it is only Christ who can turn failure into hope. Unfortunately, as I look around Byker, I see death and then human beings trying to imitate resurrection. John Sadler, vicar at St Michael’s, suggested that ‘regeneration’ is like ‘resurrection’ and I would agree with him. The impression I get, however, is that this ‘resurrection’ plan is more the work of man than of God. Yes, God will use it but I don’t feel the power that brought Christ back from the dead is at work in some for the regeneration work that is going on. At St Martin’s there is a tangible hope in and around the ‘St Martin’s Centre’ and I put it down to the faith of their new Centre manager and the relationship she has with the vicar. This partnership, a long with the congregation there, are actively seeking God’s power to bring resurrection to this community. At Kid’s Kabin, in Walker, Catholic nuns pray and discern God’s will seeking to follow where He leads them, knowing that it is only this way that will bring new life. I have seen in other areas well meaning people try and create new life without God. Yes they have some success but there lacks any meaningful hope. What they produce is resuscitation not resurrection… temporary not eternal.

What is it Byker needs? Real Hope. How will they find this? I believe in modelling the gospel message of resurrection. “Show us Christ risen again!” We show them through real new life like the one modelled in Kids Kabin and proclaim God’s marvellous works. We show them community centres like St Martin’s when God has brought about real powerful resurrection in community.

Byker needs to be helped to embrace death, in its many forms, and be shown hope of resurrection. The Church in Byker needs to be reminded of resurrection hope, the heart of our faith. They need to be encouraged to remember what we have to offer that no one else does, eternal life in resurrection hope.

This isn’t the most clear and concise explanation but I hope you can hear my excitement for this area. I know God has the power to breathe life into Byker. I have seen His power working but I also can feel darkness trying to get in.

I pray for the Christian community in Byker for the courage to stand up and proclaim from the rooftops and in every alley way of the estate,

“Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!”

A Brief Explanation (part IV)

On placement in Byker, Newcastle at the moment and having lots of questions buzzing around my head about ministry in Urban contexts but not yet got clear reflections on what’s happening and or need of input from others…yet!

Some topics of particular interest: Death and Resurrection of communities, how we as Christians can model death as a path to resurrection hope, the similarities of pastoral questions of ‘when do you change from praying for healing and life to guiding someone to death?’ to community leadership.

Watch this space

Wrestling With Truth (part VIII)

Sorry for the delay. As you scroll down you’ll see this is a bumper edition! I have been on holiday and have tried to resist writing too much. But what a week!

After our time in Isle of Wight, my wife and I travelled to my home town of Tunbridge Wells, nestled in the Kent countryside. This time was to catch up with friends and family because, being all the way up in Durham, we don’t get any time to visit and be present with them and for them.

On Thursday night I went to the National Theatre. I travelled up to London on my own due to the fact that the play I was going to see, ‘Love the Sinner’, was definitely not my wife’s cup of tea. It also gave me loads of time to be by myself for the first time and to catch up on some reading.

The play promised much! It was about church politics and debates. A group of church ministers gather to discuss policies of the church. With this backdrop we a faced with the life of Michael, a church volunteer, who has joined the council as a scribe and who gets sexually involved with an African boy who is a porter at the hotel. Back home, with his wife, Michael faces questions within himself of ethics and how he lives his life as a ‘Christian’. The African boy then turns up at his home and throws his world into chaos.

The play was great, well executed and full of subtlety. There’s always a certain standard you can expect from the National Theatre and if it meets it there’s nothing of note to say (if that makes sense). The set was clever and simple. An office-like blind replaced curtains at the front of stage meaning you’d get glimpses of the set changing when a breeze caught them. The lighting was nothing amazing but nor was it distracting and the music that accompanied scene changes was a shrill African voice that worked well at keeping you on edge and uncomfortable.

And that’s what I felt through the whole play… uncomfortable. The topic being discussed was well researched. The play opened with a debate by Bishops on homosexuality and there were the liberal Bishops (mainly from the States) and the conservative Bishops (mainly from Africa) and the discussions were funny in their truthfulness. During the debate, however, I felt myself growing tense inside. I suddenly realised that the debate going on onstage was the debate I have with myself on every issue.

I grew up with a liberal mum (see Wrestling with Truth (part VII) post) and I can see how this approach and mindset is helpful in discussions and how it can be embracing of many people. My desire is always to bring people into a relationship with Christ because I believe it makes a person understand themselves and the world around them. The liberal approach to major ethical issues allows as many people come to that relationship and breaks down barriers. There is, however, a strong problem I have. I don’t believe Christ made it easy for people to follow him. He always challenges and always asks for more. For me, the heart of Christianity is the cross; to die in order to live, to allow all that you want and think is best to die and free yourself from self sufficiency. This call is not easy, it’s the hardest thing you can do.

There was a scene in the play where Michael, the volunteer, returns home and gets into an argument about squirrels with his wife. She asks why he’s reading his Bible more at home, he says he wants to take his faith more seriously. She doesn’t understand. It then turns out the wife wants to try IVF treatment and Michael is unsure and says that He doesn’t think it’s right and that they should ask God if its right. The wife gets angry and says that God wants her to have a baby and asks why God would want to stop her from being happy.

This standpoint made me really upset. I know several couples who have used IVF and are now expecting children. I am overjoyed with this and am praying for them continually. Do I, therefore, believe that IVF is always right and is blessed by God? No. For the couples I know and for countless others I know IVF is an answer to prayer. God gives us what we want. So why did I get upset with the character’s understanding of God? God gives some couples babies through IVF not because it’s their right to have children but because they understand the wonderful gift they are from God. My friends didn’t demand babies from God and expect them. They didn’t say “If God doesn’t make this work then I refuse to follow Him.” They prayed that God would bless them and if it be His will then babies would be given to them. The character in the play demanded God give her what she wants; she was putting God to the test saying her belief in Him is dependent on Him giving her what she wants to make her happy.

Too often I see the world demand they get what they want. God gives good gifts. Yes. But God isn’t our slave or our genie in a bottle. “If God is good, then he’ll want me to be happy and what will make me happy is…”

I find myself quoting that well known philosopher, Mick Jagger,

‘You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.’

Too often I find people listen and can’t believe God wouldn’t want to give them what they want. I believe God gives us first and foremost what we need and we discover that actually that’s what we want. Only sometimes does he give us what we want because, we discover, it’s what we need.

Love the Sinner demanded much of me as a Christian audience member. Having seen Peter Brooks’ play ’11 and 12’ about tolerance and being challenged to see my faith differently this play asked the opposite. The Bishops at the beginning talked about the battlelines. Are we, as a faith, willing to sacrifice the things that define us to slip away in order to allow people to get on board with us? Are we sacrificing the cross in order that people don’t have to make too much of a life changing decision to become a Christian? At times I feel the liberal side of the church demands too little of people. Then again, the conservative side of the church demands too much and continually trip up over hypocritical statements. The liberals get grace but the conservatives get sacrifice.

Usually this is something that people can wrestle with for ever and never come down on one side or the other but the issue for me is I’m becoming a leader and it’ll be demanded of me. “Where do you stand?” What are my battle lines? Where are my boundaries? For many of us struggling with ethical issues in relationships we must ask what does God want? Some many people say they pray and feel God wants them to be happy. That may be what God wants but how do we know? Are we just hearing what we want to hear? Where is the prophetic voice of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah saying “This is not what God wants” It’s a tough message to hear and it sometimes sounds like a roar (see Reading And Telling Stories post) but it needs to be said. God demands alot from us and His way is not always our way. Where has the prophetic voice gone?

The play was deeply upsetting because it hit me right in the heart. It made me sit up and listen to God. Too often I jump from liberalism to conservativism and I do it so that God thinks what I want Him to think. Underlying my viewing and my thoughts was a Bonhoeffer quote;

‘We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unmasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard’

As I left the theatre i walked through the streets of London and saw poverty, anger, misery and was deeply troubled; so many people needing to hear that god has a way of life that brings peace but it’s a narrow path. In the play the African boy who lives a life of real poverty and violence and he turns up at Michael’s house demanding help. Michael was frozen in fear. “It doesn’t work like that!” I saw a guy begging under a bridge near Waterloo. I thought to myself, “There are a hundred and one reasons why I don’t invite that man to come and sit with me and have dinner. There are countless reasons why I can’t help that man but Jesus did and demanded I did.” We sit around and argue our standpoint on issues of sexuality and politics but every day we do people die and starve and miss an opportunity to know peace.

But there are a hundred and one reasons why we can’t make a difference…

This is a big topic and one which continues to divide the Church but it’s important that we all know the strengths of both sides and also question and allow God to challenge all of us in our views.

My mind is in turmoil about all of this (as you can probably gather) all I know for sure is I want to follow Christ and to have boldness not to sacrifice his powerful life changing word for cheap grace!

Reading And Telling Stories

I love reading, always have. Give me a good story or clever use of words and I’m a happy man! Ideally I’d get paid to read. I’d have a large high back armchair in a study full of books, a small table beside me with four or five texts awaiting my perusal and a constant supply of good quality tea in a china cup.

When my wife asked me what, for me, makes a good holiday, my response was easy; time to read, time to sleep and some historic or cultural excursion thrown in for good measure. Having just returned from a week in the Isle of Wight, I can say “She listened well!” Although I didn’t get the high back chair or the good quality tea, I did take some good books and managed to collect five great second hand books for just over a fiver!

I was re-reading ‘The Flood’ by David Maine and was struck by how well the translation of an ancient story has been done. The final chapter sums up my thoughts well,

‘…what’s the point of telling a story if we can’t even get it right?.. Of course people will tell something, it was the end of the world after all. A story like that won’t be forgotten. But things will get added and left out and confused, until in a little while people won’t even know what’s true and what’s been made up…When the story gets told, and told again and then again, things will change. They always do. Not on purpose, but just because people don’t ever really listen. So we should at least make sure we understand what happened to begin with.’

Looking back over my reading this week the theme of ‘story’ has come up again and again. It’s caused me, due to the story of Noah in ‘The Flood’, to consider the stories of the Bible and how they are told and, having received some comments on the last post (see Monasticism and Asceticism post), how prophets like Isaiah are seen as anti ‘loving God’. On our way to the Isle of Wight my wife and I were listening to the audio book of The Magician’s Nephew. At the end, Digory asks why Aslan can’t comfort his uncle and speak to him. Aslan explains that he can try and comfort Digory’s uncle but it would be no good, as he would only hear roars and growls. As humans we come across stories like Noah and Isaiah and we question the God in the passage, we hear roars and anger. Maybe we, like Uncle Andrew, aren’t tuned into the voice of God at times. Maybe our ancestors have heard the story changed and have changed it themselves (it’s bound to happen). We hear the story wrong or we tell it wrong.

These thoughts remind me of the feeling I had during Durham Mysteries last month (see Wrestling With Truth (part IX)). How, then, are we to know the story? If we assume the story has changed, how do we understand what happened to begin with? There’s no real way of knowing, except that we know, or at least claim to know, the God who’s in these story. Digory and Polly hear Aslan’s voice because they connect with him and so, when Digory is tempted by the White Witch, he is able to stand against lies or misconceptions of Aslan.

I’ve also been reading ‘The Passion Drama’ by Hugh Bishop. It contains six sermons on Holy Week. Like most sermons, it tries to help us, the reader/hearer, to place ourselves in the story of Christ’s Passion. It’s textbook in it’s structure and content but really made me reflect on how powerful this style of preaching is. All we, as Christians and therefore missioners, are called to do is to tell the story and to help people connect with the story. This is why the theatre needs to be at the centre of the church’s ministry because it has at its core an understanding of the art of storytelling.

This leads me onto the final book I’ve been reading; ‘Organic Community’ by Joseph Myers. Two quotes have stood out to me in this book so far. The first helps me to understand the role of artists within the church.

‘An artist is someone who enables art to emerge from a canvas’

You can’t manufacture art. Art is not painting by numbers, it’s allowing a story of emotion or something essential to emerge from within. Theatre practitioners have a way of allowing a story to emerge, to fully participate and communicate a story and bring others into the story. Yes you can all learn the technique of good storytelling but for some it’s natural, organic.

The second quote leads us to something powerful that I, like other church leaders, need to remember.

‘Story is the universal measure of life.’

How do we measure a successful ministry? By counting how many people turn up? How many bums made contact with the pews? No. Listen to the stories. How do we know if someone has ‘come to Christ’? Asking if they have been splashed with water? Or said the simple prayer? No. Listen to their story.

I must remember that next year I will have the privilege of joining with other people to tell stories. My job is to listen carefully and remember them and to see where they fit with the big, meta narrative, the greatest story ever told which is still being told and, with each breath we take, we participate and engage with it.