Tag Archives: Riding Lights

Into Culture: Pilgrim’s Progress

At the beginning of August I returned to Riding Lights’ Summer Theatre School. This residential week of theatre and faith was the place and community which brought me back to God. It was also the place and community that introduced me to my first wife, Sarah; it was where I proposed to her and where, for several years, we went to celebrate these two fundamental parts of our identity: God and theatre. The summer school and the wider Riding Lights’ community have been my home base in terms of reflecting on who I am, as a Christian and as a theatre practitioner.

Before last year I had taken a break from Riding Lights’ Summer Theatre School due to bereavement. Sarah died in 2018 and I struggled with the idea of returning without her. In 2022 I received a text message from the Artistic Director, Paul Burbridge, asking if I would consider being a tutor in that year’s summer school. I was to direct, with him, a series of Chekov short plays. I jumped at the chance, not only of returning, but also working, for the first time, with him. It was a delight but it was tinged with sadness as memories came unbidden.

I was preparing to return to summer school this year and had had some brief but non-committal conversations with Paul before he sadly died in April. The shock of Paul’s death put everything, understandably, on hold. When Riding Lights asked me if I would still come and tutor again I agreed and asked what script I would be working with. I was to produce an abridged version of ‘Walkout!’, itself a stage adaptation of John Bunyan’s, ‘A Pilgrim’s Progress’.

Each year Riding Lights has a theme that aims to unite the different courses across the summer school. This year’s theme was, “Rise Up and Find Your Voice”. I have to admit I struggled to know why the text of our show was chosen to explore this particular theme. Don’t get me wrong, I can see how it could be very apt: Bunyan encourages his reader to be confident with their faith and not to be swayed by the many tempting and demanding voices we hear in life that try to silence us as we progress towards the celestial city of God. My question was, knowing that the summer school would produce shows of protest and ‘speaking out’ on all the issues of our day, how Bunyan’s 350 year old text would be received or explored at this politically contested time.

John Bunyan is unashamed in his evangelical fervour and uncompromising demands of faithfulness to the gospel. The adaptation, despite some dated reference, keeps the tradition of the text alive in terms of challenging and questioning political, philosophical and sociological progress and suggests that these lead people away from the historical faith as passed on by the Apostles. Exploring this text as part of the theme made me ask deep questions about what it might mean to ‘find my voice’.

Here’s the rub. Can we really ever ‘find our voice’? How do we know when we’ve found it? Do we have only one voice, or are we a cocktail of voices some of which compete and contradict one another? What is the purpose of finding ‘our voice’?

Regular readers of my writing will know that I struggle with the popular notion and demand of self-knowledge that our culture obsesses over. Thankfully we have seen the end of the popularity of the reality ‘talent’ shows that regularly showed us people who “believed in themselves” and could only do “what they were made to do”, ie. sing/dance/perform, etc. Despite many being told they were not any good they were there to “prove themselves”. This has impacted our society by implying that the self is a singular, static thing that we are charged with discovering and protecting. This denies, therefore, the possibility of change. This is not good for relationships or our mental health and yet our culture increasingly demands we ‘find our voice’. Why?

When directing a piece about faithfulness to God and not being lured away by ‘self-actualising philosophies’ and ‘vain confidence’ I found again the extremes in the current socio-political debate of our time jarring. In our production we chose to rotate the main role of Christian round the cast so that most people got a chance to voice the epitomous pilgrim and, in addition, they would also play a role of temptation be that, Vain Confidence, Hypocrisy or any of the other cavalcade of distractions Christian and his fellow pilgrims (Hopeful and Faithful) face along their progress. We wanted the cast and the audience to acknowledge the different voices we can possess (or, maybe, that possess us). We wanted to explore how we slip into characters that others and wider society want us to perform and how we have a choice as to which voice we find and use.

Thomas Merton, a trappist monk of the twentieth century, wrote a lot about ‘self’ and his writing is still a prophetic challenge against the narcissitic tendencies of the modern world. He questioned the ease with which we talk of ‘self’ outside the context of God and invited us, as does ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, to find our selves only in relation to God’s desires for us. Merton saw the task of the Christian life, expressed in the monastic tradition, as “an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and our situation as willed by Him.”

It means that renunciation of all deluded images of ourselves, all exaggerated estimates of our own capacities, in order to obey God’s will as it comes to us in the difficult demands of life in its exacting truth. “Purity of heart” is then correlative to a new spiritual identity – the “self” as recognized in the context of realities willed by God

Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (London: Darton, Longmann and Todd, 2005) p.83

I regularly find the debates around identity baffling, confusing and disorientating. This is in part due to my neurodiversity but it is, I think, also about the deep dissatisfaction we all feel having pursued the social liberal project to its extreme position. Our deconstruction of social institutions that have formed our civilisation for centuries have not brought peace and balance but the opposite. We have not arrived at the utopian social construct promised to us by the revolutionary movements that have shaped our culture but rather we live in deeper confusion and division. It’s because, I suggest, despite all the conversation about power, we’re not being as honest or transparent about it as we should.

When it comes to power I am of the mind always to know what power/privilege I have and to use it for the benefit of others and, if there is a conflict, to side with the economically poor and dispossessed. Surrounded by a society that asks us to find our political voice in the current social justice culture I have to admit I am not encouraged to find my voice or, worse, the voice that I find is wrong and needs to be corrected. How do I deal with that? When I am asked to ‘rise up and find my voice’ and yet I am left feeling like I’m also being told to ‘sit down and shut up’ do I just accept that I am now dispensable in public life? This, I feel, is a deliberate strategy by certain parts of our society who have ambition not for others but for them selves.

I get it. I am a straight, white man. I know my privileges but my privileges are not, I don’t think, due to my race, gender or sexuality. My privilege is class, education and economic privilege. I want to talk about those things because they are things I can use to benefit others and they are things we can actually change. We are lost in political battles for ‘equality’ which, as Douglas Murray rightly suggests, has overreached itself so now we strive that all are to be equal but, to quote George Orwell, ‘some are more equal than others’. Murrray, a gay man himself, notes the strange situation where ‘straight’ people who come out as gay are lauded as brave but ‘gay’ people who come out as straight are treated with suspicion and doubt. The increased valuing of news items of people ‘coming out’ in different forms and the accompanying demand for others to affirm this new ‘identity’ out of fear of causing suicidal offence remains strangely unhealthy to me. Why do we feel forced to publicly declare our identities? What is the purpose of the obsessive discussion and demands that we affirm one another’s current identity as the definition of ‘loving’?

Rightly or wrongly, I believe that love doesn’t just accept the other as they are but is expectant that the other will continue to change. I am who I am today, but tomorrow I have hope that my voice might be different. I hope that tomorrow I’ll sound less like me and more like Jesus Christ. The voices I hear in the public square at the moment are not ones that I find comfortable or desirable. So I am strangely content to step aside from the competing noise of public life and find my voice in harmony with his, who created me and who desires me to change from glory to glory; for that is what means to be on the pilgrim’s progress.

Chapter 29: readmittance of departed brothers

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A brother who has left the monastery, either through his faults or by expulsion, and wishes to return must first promise the complete amending of the fault.

Can we welcome back?

I am taking a short break from Riding Lights Summer Theatre School to write this post. Our theme at the summer school this year is ‘Peace: Make It or Break It’ and I want to write a bit more about ‘reconciliation’ in the light of ‘peace’.
In this week’s chapter, St. Benedict challenges us with even more radical hospitality and grace towards those that cause conflict and division. His compassion and grace is matched by a firm resolve to remain committed to those that hurt and upset him and he calls us to do the same. This resolve to welcome back a previously unrepentant monk is granting that brother the chance to experience grace and forgiveness.
I have written, in the past, on the social tool, ‘Open Space Technology’. This means of discussion has several principles to facilitate multiple creative conversations to occur and to be united together by a common goal or desire. There is also one ‘law’: the law of mobility that suggests that if a participant is not learning or contributing in a particular conversation they should leave and move else where,

In this way, all participants are given both the right and the responsibility to maximize their own learning and contribution, which the Law assumes only they, themselves, can ultimately judge and control. When participants lose interest and get bored in a breakout session, or accomplish and share all that they can, the charge is to move on, the “polite” thing to do is going off to do something else.

I had real difficulty with this aspect of Open Space Technology but I have come to realize, through experience, that it is not about self-autonomy but about the necessity for us to step out of the heat of relationship before it breaks irrecoverably, to gather some perspective, to admit weakness both on the part of ourselves and the others involved and to make a decision as to where to go next. We all are autonomous to a greater or lesser degree; God has given us free will to use, to choose what we do and where we go. Some people will abuse that freedom and cause harm to others or demand their choice is held in higher esteem than others but it is in that freedom we are advised to discover the beauty of real relationship; with God and with others.

Phalim McDermott, Artistic Director of Improbable and an Open Space practitioner, once talked with me about this law and said there’s a reason it is sometimes called the law of two feet (even if those feet are only metaphorical). The first foot is used to retreat from a place, to propel you out. The second is the more important foot for it is used to send you to the next place. That place could be back into the group you left, to repent, to turn back or it could be to go somewhere new. I once noted,

What the law of two feet does do is enable the whole to function and feed itself. The parts need to be attuned to where the information may need to be passed to in order to grow and develop and create. When this happens then the second foot is an important engagement of the individual with the whole. It is not clear, however, if this indeed is how it is used.

In order for community to function it requires the parts to freely choose to participate in the whole. This commitment will require a handing over of a certain amount of autonomy for the ‘common good’. It mustn’t, however, lose all traces of freedom of choice as that free element contains the free choice to commit and to love. Communities are healthy when they hold that tension between the individual choice and the relational imperative. St. Benedict has balanced this to give space for people to be removed without a door being locked to them.

The three strikes aspect maintains the need for the community to be protected so one person’s will is not encouraged and fed so they take the power on themselves completely; for relationships that are based around only one person’s desires are abusive and unbalanced. This aspect of St. Benedict’s Rule, I feel, allows the gracious hospitality of reconciliation without compromising the strong encouragement to challenge our selfish tendencies as fallen humanity. It is radical in that it challenges while, at the same time, welcomes.

Reflection

After a breakdown of relationship how do we give space to the possibility of reconciliation? Do we really hope and pray for such healing to happen? I can talk for ages on my desire to be reconciled to someone who has hurt me but do I actively give space and time for that to happen? It’s far easier to cut the ties with them and move on. To seek healing means to allow mess to exist close by and our lives to be impacted by it. The real path to reconciliation and peace is working hard at entering into painful and difficult spaces to take the battering of relationship breakdown holding onto hope. We, as Christians, enter into conflict with our sights fixed on the end promise that all things will be re-bound together through Christ who is the source of all things and the goal of all things.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard. (Colossians 1:15-23)

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.(2 Corinthians 5:16-20)

Loving Father, I thank you for your grace that despite my many failings and stepping away from you you always welcome me home. The door is open. You do not force your will on us but call us to accept the task you desire. Transform my heart to be more like yours, flexible and open yet steadfast in love. Teach me to reconcile and to participate in your ministry of bringing all things together for good.

Come, Lord Jesus

Creativity is My Faith

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder… If this is the case then you must all be terribly fond of me!
I’ve been on our annual UK tour visiting different people, catching up and falling in love again with friends, family and places. This year we had three legs of our tour; York (Riding Lights Summer Theatre School), Tunbridge Wells and the Kent coastline. All of these excursions took up time and focus and I couldn’t find much space to take myself way to write and be creative on my own.

I managed to keep one deadline, enforced from an external source, whilst at Riding Lights Summer Theatre School. I want to briefly reflect further on my experience of ‘creativity’. (Read ‘Creativity in Community’ post)

I tried, whilst in Folkestone last week, to get some writing done for my ‘god of the gods’ book. As I sat down to write out some of my theories on what it means to be ‘christian’, I clammed up. I got writer’s block.

I have experienced writer’s block before but this time was different. Before, the sensation was one of not having anything to say. The mind goes blank and you have no original thought to express. You are acutely aware that your mind is currently just ticking along with nothing of any great worth going on. This is difficult, particularly when there is a pressure to produce or be creative, either from an internal or external source.

This time, however, there was a different sensation, one where I had lots of things to say but no way of expressing them. I could, if asked, talk on the topic for a long time and draw all the sources I needed to express what was going on in my head. Instead, I just sat there,

“Where do I begin? How do I say…?”

I tried writing everything out in mind map. I tried speaking ideas into a dictaphone. I tried asking questions in a philosophical argument structuring way. I thought about how I write blogs, sermons and other creative writing exercises and then it occurred to me…

I had forgotten how to do it.

It seemed that, having stopped being creative, I actually stopped being able to be creative.

Creativity, for me, is participation in the life of God. Is everyone creative? No. Is that because they can’t be? No. It’s because they choose not to be. I don’t mean this in a condemnatory manner. Creativity is available to us all, i.e. the life of God is available to us all and some choose to participate and others don’t.

Creativity can borrow language of faith here. If you choose not to participate in a relationship with God you will discover that you can’t relate to God. You will find it difficult to understand any possibility of having a relationship with God. This then becomes your barrier to having that relationship with God which was available to you before. You then begin to say “I can’t have a relationship with God” as if it was a question of logic. I would say that anyone can have a relationship with God but some don’t want to and choose not to. So instead of saying “I can’t” (which I believe to be a fallacy) one can only say “I don’t want to/ choose not to.”

No one can say “I can’t be creative.” The perception is too timeless for it to be correct. You may not be able to be creative now but you can be creative because you are human and creativity is a possibility for all. You choose not to be creative and so it is difficult for you to see you being creative, you have forgotten how to be creative.

Trying to stay on track before I spurt out all my dissertation research…

Creativity, like a relationship with God, is made possible via a choice. This choice opens up both a growth in a competency as you allow the ‘creative power’ to move you and a transformation in self perception as you allow the process of creativity to impact your view of yourself from ‘non-creative’ to ‘creative’. We are correct when we say “I am not creative” but the understanding of what that term means is wrong. Ontologically we are not creative; we are but dust. We are able to participate in creative acts, however, and so, in the world’s eyes’, we can ‘be creative’.

What I experienced was a forgetting of how to be creative. I could have started to believe I was incapable of being creative. This would have led to a death to that which excites me and brings a sense of life to me. Creativity is, at its most profound, the participation in life. Not existence but life. Life as the quickening of the heart, the discovery of purpose, the eyes opening to dazzling beauty. The truth is many have forgotten how to participate in life and they believe this is not available to them. I believe they have just forgotten.

As a Christian I see participation in creativity as the same thing as my participation in God. For Creativity gives me life and the product of that creative process seems to give life to others. The fruits of creativity inspire others to participate in creativity. Many feel they cannot move beyond the desire to participate because they ‘can’t’.

You can and you must.

Theatre Church (part X)

I sat in Sanctuary 21 tonight waiting for the time set for the big introduction to this ‘thing’ that has been playing through my mind since Christmas to arrive. As the time ticked by and it got closer to the start, the big cloud of doubt floated into the space and hovered over me. “What if no one comes?” “What am I doing?” Throughout this all I remained optimistic “People said they’d come.” “This is clearly a need in this theatre community.” “People are excited about it.” The event was scheduled to begin at 6.45pm. Fifteen minutes after this time one person walked through the door.

Ministry training does not prepare you for this. One person! There are two responses to this fact; one, be positive or two, be disappointed. If you’re positive there’s plenty of Scripture that talks about persecution, the hard walk of faithful discipleship but then again, there’s of equal balance Scripture telling of God’s blessing to those who are faithful. I have spoken in the past about how to face disappointment and justifying reality til the metaphorical cows come home. This is not a time, while it is still raw and fresh, to justify what God is doing (or not doing). But I think it’s important to talk about failure.

In our church we hear success stories all the time, it’s not good for publicity or authority if we fail. Despite our deep understanding that for every good idea there are an average of 8 not so good ones. We push, as leaders and visionaries, our connection with God’s vision and God’s plans. In order to have the authority to lead a community one needs to have the discernment of God’s will and dream dreams and see visions. The truth is, we are not immune from spiritual confusion. But if I am to model authenticity then I need to tell the stories of failures or misguided vision as well as success and ‘wins’.

To be a pioneer is to take risks; to see an opportunity and to resolutely pursue it. I have taken a risk and it hasn’t worked so what is the response?

Return to the original, basic call.

What was it that God put on my heart that drove me to pursue this opportunity? My passion to connect with those involved in the theatre community, to offer them an opportunity to explore who they are and discover their creative voice; to give them a place where they can truly express who they are based on a knowledge of themselves.

Has that call changed? Is that not what is being asked of me now? No. That call is still there. What, therefore, is the next step? To continue and persevere with this idea or to change tact? Two interesting reflections; one, if I think back to my time in Byker (see ‘Death and Resurrection’ post) I am reminded of the power of continued presence in the face of so much temporary incarnations (quangos, consultants,etc) The second reflection is one that I want to explore in more detail and extends my reflections on the Cathedral Event that I’m apart of (see ‘Theatre Church (part VIII b)’ post).

In both the church and the theatre world the majority of thinkers and commentators would agree that to be product focussed stunts the exploration and deep reflection on culture and social movements. Both parties would bemoan the emphasis on being activity driven rather than the existence as good in and of itself. In the theatre, as the funding is cut, companies don’t have the luxury to explore, to research and develop ideas. There is no space, time or finances to allow the artists to explore, discover new things. Peter Brook suggests this replication, churning out products that are safe and driven by success, is ‘deadly’ and most people would agree. In the church, as we discover that creating a weekly event/service is sucking all our time and resources and distracts us from being community together, we speak about the ideal of being process, relationship based. The truth is, however, that processes, relationships, explorations cannot be measured. It is part of our capitalists’ mindset that if it has no profit, measurable success then it is worthless.

Success is measured on product shown, assets, ‘what have you got to show for this?’ The worth of something must be measured. Fresh Expressions are trying to counter this thinking but we can’t fight free from it. My latest experience would be measured as failure. If someone had invested in it then I would have failed and now would be the time to lessen the losses and salvage something from it. I want to shout from the rooftops “This is worth it! I have risked something, stuck my neck out and now I know what would happen!” To butcher a quote from Ernest Hemingway,

‘Only those who are prepared to go too far can possibly know how far they can go.’

I want to stay true to my call to process. To resolutely pursue this call to process, relationship and swim against the current of the capitalism that is a part of both church and theatre. I want to own my disappointment, yes, but to continue to explore the call put upon me. But how do you incarnate the importance of process in a world of product?

Well, like the Cathedral event, work with the current in order to subvert it. Sell a product in order to achieve a process and get people to explore and discover the benefits of the process. It’s a paradox that we exiles need to live in. In order to be counter cultural we need to be in the culture. To show the alternative we need to shine a light on the weakness of the option. Daniel, when in Babylon, lived the good Babylonian life and it was within this that he showed of the alternative way of life or the Pauline model, to become a Jew for the Jews, a
Gentile for the Gentiles all in order to show them the way of Jesus.

Connected with this is some thoughts on Fresh Expressions which were sparked by a fascinating conversation with Paul Burbridge from Riding Lights Theatre Company I had last weekend. He suggested the reason a theatre company cannot be church is down to the need for it to be inclusive of all people. If you limit the membership to those that understand theatre then it cannot be broad and inclusive. This is a very fair point. What makes a ‘theatre church’ church? Inclusion of those from all walks of life. Fresh Expressions need to embrace this inclusivity and not be limited to ‘skater church’, ‘curry church’, etc. Community must be defined by that which unites people in a group. These ‘expressions’ (skater, theatre, curry, etc.) gather people round something that makes them distinct but in order for them to mature into full expressions of church there needs to be deconstruction of that which excludes others.

It’s a paradox that one must define and sell the product in order to show that it’s not about the product; to show people that it’s the process of belonging that is more important than the product that you belong to.

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!