Tag Archives: placement

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

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.

Theatre Church (part III)

As things start to fall into place with my placement and the boundaries are marked up to protect myself and those who will be involved, I’m starting to ask a question of this blog.

How much do I journal the progress of this community?

The internet is a public space and, although, looking over to how many followers I have, I see not many people read this; the people who will be involved deserve privacy and confidentiality.

What then will the purpose of the blog be?

Why did I start writing? To journal my thought journey as I wrestled with what God wanted me to do. This has been really helpful to help me reflect on my ministry and on the shaping of the placement next year. The reason for making this a public journal was to try and gather other people’s views and ideas and allow those to shape me as well. This has also been really helpful. I have had chats with people about things raised in my blog which have helped me to fine tune my thoughts and ideas, that have encouraged me and discouraged me from going off on the wrong path.

Do I still need to journal my thoughts in a public space? Certainly the theological reflections on theatre in ministry still require other people’s perspectives and suggestions for further reading, etc. The placement cannot, however, remain public, due to the sensitive issue of protecting those involved. But there will be times when the activity and development or the struggles and disasters of the community next year will need reflection and I will need those chats with people to help me through.

This is raises questions about the nature of blogging. I don’t want this space to be me advertising everything that’s going on in my life but rather a space where I can communicate and mark where my reflections on theatre and ministry are up to. I need, therefore, to make sure that this space (the blog) is restricted to ambiguous and theological reflections, be that inspired from lectures or books or videos or whatever or inspired from the community next year. This is not a space where I publish all the news and personal journeys of those involved in the community.

Undergirding this questions, as well, is the thought of people involved in the community will be able to, if they look for it, to read these posts. Although nothing is hidden from them and they will be aware of my approach and purposes, is not a bit weird that they will have access to my hopes and fears and personal reflections? Is that a bad thing?

I wrote a couple of sentences for my tutor to have that will help him and I understand the aims of next year’s placement. Here it is:

To create a community in which its members can explore their story and ask questions of faith in a safe, vulnerable space through theatre and character exploration. To meet twice a week and direct them through a yearlong rehearsal process and produce public performances that do not mark the end of a process but mark the journey on its way.

If I am creating a space that is safe and vulnerable, yes I will need to keep issues private but they will need honesty, vulnerability and openness from me. This leads us nicely to what I think is at the heart of this question; is there a need for leaders to hide pain and brokenness from those they are leading? The leaders I respect most are those who communicate honesty and integrity but if they disclose too much then they, somehow, lose respect for me, they lose power in the relationship and then it’s harder for them to lead or discipline. Can you, as a leader, be honest and vulnerable around those you are leading?

I’ll leave you with that and ask that you take your right to comment and shape my thinking.

Impossipuzzle

What do you do when all your work is done and you have a week to breathe and start to relax?

Do a jigsaw called ‘Impossipuzzle’.

I love to do jigsaws… with a blanket over my knee and my denture soaking in a cup of water! I know that the analogy of a jigsaw and life with God has been done before but it has really struck me how, whilst doing this jigsaw, I have been trying to piece together what God wants me to do in preparation for next year’s placement.

When I started this jigsaw I had a vague sense of what it was of (I don’t look at the cover, it’s more exciting then!) but it was only after I had started and got pieces in place that the pattern became clear. It’s so satisfying when you find the piece that fits and even more exciting when you get lots of pieces fitting in quick succession. It’s frustrating, however, when you cannot find the piece you’re looking for. You try every piece (or at least you think you do) but none of them fit. Is the jigsaw incomplete? Have you lost the piece on the floor or under the sofa? Chances are you’ve not study the pieces close enough.

It’s the same with fitting together this placement. I have a vague sense of what it may look like but as I put things in place and start mapping out the framework I see a clearer direction and focus. It’s satisfying when things fit together, you meet just the right person at just the right time. Sometimes these things happen in quick succession and then there’s a huge gap and you can’t seem to see the next step forward. You question whether you’ve lost your way, or this is not the direction you’re meant to go in. Like the jigsaw piece, you’ve probably not study the pieces close enough.

This week as I try and make preparations for the start of next term, before students head off on holiday, I’ve faced gaps in the vision. The first was a supervisor.

What’s a supervisor for? To speak into and support the placement. This needs to be someone who will open my eyes to things going on outside of my bubble, who will critique and oversee the work. It needs to be someone who has experience of this sort of ministry and who will be there if and when I panic. My tutor has experience of this sort of work and will inevitably support and encourage me, critique my ministry and have a prophetic element to the community. He can’t, however, remind me of the world outside of college as he is part of that and has associations for me. I asked him for his advice and he happened to have had lunch with a guy in Durham that day who has also had experience in community building and Fresh Experiences and was a professional story teller. God’s timing and guidance, or what!

The second gap was a confirmation that I’m being called into Pioneer Ministry. This is a strange gap to have but whilst I happily prepare for next year’s placement, jumping from excitement to sheer anxiety, I have forgotten the practical excuse for doing this at college. The excuse is different from the reason but both are valid. The reason is because I feel called to the theatre community here in Durham and potentially in the future. The excuse, which I need in order to be given time to do it, is to test my vocation in Fresh Expressions.

What would a confirmation of Pioneer Ministry look like? I would like to suggest a clear confirmation would be to have someone come up to me and call me a ‘pioneer’. What is a pioneer?

‘We’re looking for people who combine Christian maturity with a concern for those outside the Christian community; ministers who are willing to learn as they go, try new things and have the vision and skills to develop new communities who do some things differently.’ (Steve Croft, How Do Pioneers Learn?)

This week as I have been praying for a reliance on God and renewed vision for what I’m doing here, I have had one person come up to me and affirm my vision and creative approach to ministry, I have had another person who envied my ability to be shaped by new understanding and learning, and one other person who actually called me a ‘pioneer’ (we were discussing my questions over my gifting for next year…so it doesn’t really count. Shame!) Throughout it all many people have been passionate about the possibility of next year and, although no one can walk the journey with me, i feel really supported by the community.

As I finish the week, having stepped a few more pace down the path marked out for me, I’m aware of the loneliness of this style of ministry and the risk but of equal measure the support, love and prayers of a whole cloud of witnesses; to tip the balance a pleasure and delight of God bursts my questioning bubble again and again and I take each step holding the hand of my Father.

I finished the puzzle tonight! Nothing is impossible, it seems, when you have endurance and take things one piece at a time.

Sacramental Theatre (part I)


In my lecture today on Ordination we were discussing whether ordination was an ontological change or a functional change. I want to reflect briefly on what stood out, for me, as an important point and then move onto something slightly related about ministry in a theatre setting.

We were discussing the nature of ontological change and what the church meant by it. We were given a short introduction on Platonic and Aquinas thought on ‘substance’ and ‘accident’. My lay-man’s understanding of it is this: Everything has an accident and a substance. Take, for example, bread and wine. It’s accident is bread and wine as it looks like bread and wine, it smells like bread and wine, etc. It’s substance is also bread and wine. During the Eucharistic prayer, however, the Catholic church believe that the substance changes into the body and blood of Christ. It’s accident is still bread and wine but it’s inner substance is body and blood; hence why it’s called ‘trans substantiation’ The same could be said about a person in baptism and in ordination. That we still look the same (our accident is the same) but our substance is changed.

Confused?

I was.

Then a colleague offered the following thought. In baptism, our status before God doesn’t change, we are still loved fully and accepted by Him but we have gained responsibility. In baptism and, in the same way, ordination, we enter into a covenant with God. We make vows to do certain things. Baptism and ordination then become functional but also involve a different relationship with God. It makes baptism and ordination a big deal and something that shouldn’t be entered into lightly. The language being used reminded me of marriage. We are married when we make vows and sign a contract. As a husband I don’t always fulfil those vows and sometimes I do the opposite, that doesn’t stop me from being married. I am married because I’ve made the vows not because I fulfil them.

I hope some of that makes sense. I’m not sure I completely understand it yet. This is, however, not what I wanted to write about.

During the lecture the idea of sacraments kept coming up. Having grown up a Roman Catholic sacraments become an interesting topic as to what constitutes a sacrament and why. The understanding that to be ordained is to take on responsibility for ministering sacraments put into my mind the question; How could the theatre do sacraments.

I’ll start by defining what I understand as the sacraments. As an Anglican I would say, Baptism and Eucharist are sacraments. I’m slightly flexible, at the moment, on my personal opinion and I can see why matrimony, holy orders and others could be seen as sacraments, particularly if we use Augustine of Hippo’s definition

‘a visible sign of an invisible reality.’

Let’s not get bogged down in semantics right now!

Article 19 of the Articles of Faith says this:

‘The visible church of Christ is a congregation of believers in which the pure Word of God is preached and in which the sacraments are rightly administered according to Christ’s command in all those matters that are necessary for proper administration.’

If I am to explore how theatre can do church then the theatre community are going to have to engage with administering sacraments. Baptism is not, as yet, an issue for this hypothetical community. Eucharist, however, is. How often would Holy Communion need to be done? What needs to be said? How, in a workshop or rehearsal space, could this sacrament be given due reverence and holiness? (see ‘Sacred Space‘ post.) Could Holy Communion be a meal with some prayer said at the beginning? What counts as Eucharist and what is a meal with a community? What would this sacrament look like within the theatre context? Is there already some sacramental element in the theatre?

To answer one of the many questions, I’ve been thinking about the idea of the meal. The theatre community loves meals. We love sharing good food and wine, we love to chat over meals. This is not an alien concept to understand that meals are holy moments. The Communion liturgy is also about remembering a story. The presider tells the story and frames the moment by it. This would not feel out of place in a workshop setting. It just forces me into the understanding that if I am to think of this exploration as building a Fresh Expression of church then there needs to be an intent on all those present that this is an expression of faith.

During the lecture today the word intent was used. The church gathers with the intent to ordain someone. The Bishop comes with the intent to ordain someone. You’d hope, that the candidate comes with the intent to be ordained. Is this the same with worship and the sacraments? You come, with the intent to worship God. You come with the intent to share in the death and resurrection of Christ. I think there is an essential need to have intent. The theatre community needs to know that the service has the intent to administer the sacraments.

So one question still remains for me; how often is enough?