Celebrating goodwill and partnership

Just a few days ago, I was blown away by the kindest of gestures. In recent weeks, a focus of our attention in church has been developing plans to open a satellite Foodbank in the New Year. Word of our plans has reached another agency in our area who contacted me with the offer of a Christmas gift, sacrificing the presents which would otherwise have gone to their staff.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this gift, especially in light of Mark 9, which tells the story of an incident when John comes to Jesus, complaining about someone, ‘casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’John is clearly appalled at this unregulated activity on behalf of kingdom, but Jesus shows no inclination to rein in such work. He points out that those who do work in his name are unlikely to turn against him in the future and someone who isn’t an enemy can instead be considered an ally. Finally, he tells the disciples that, ‘whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.'

In his excellent commentary on Mark, Binding the Strong Man, Ched Myers comments on these verses:

John is entertaining “holier than thou” delusions, but Jesus points out how his followers will often find themselves on the receiving end of compassion. In other words, disciples have no corner on the ministry of healing and liberation, and therefore should without prejudice work alongside those whose practice is redemptive.

Our friends in Birmingham have offered us this generous gift, and they’ve come in on the ministry of ‘healing and liberation.’ So often, it seems we’re still like John, still wary of ‘the world’ and suspicious of partnership with agencies outside of the church, who we regard as being in competition, or even opposition, to us. In the process, we blind ourselves to the goodwill and grace which is extended to us by so many people who want the same as us, the redemption of our communities.

Today’s news is all about the question of whether or not we need regulation of the press. I sometimes wonder if we need a debate in church on our attempts to regulate the work of God...

James 5 and The Gospel in Urban Britain

This evening we spent some time in our Evening Service having a retrospective look at the letter of James, as we draw near the end of a series of sermons on the book.

Over the last 8 weeks, one of the things which has struck me most forcefully is the polemic tone of James’s language, especially the way he speaks about the rich. James hints at what is to come in 1:9-11, but the opening verses of chapter are 5 are the most strident, a famous warning about the impending judgement the rich are facing.

It’s hardly surprising that James addresses these themes.  He’s writing at a time in history when most wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very rich minority, and the vast majority of early Christians are very poor, right at the bottom of the pile in terms of status and economic power. The issue of wealth, of who has it and how it’s been acquired, is one of urgency.

So how does this apply to us? The similarities between James’s time and our own are striking, with the gap between rich and the poor widening. Last week, the BBC reported that senior executives in the UK's biggest companies have seen their average earnings go up by more than a quarter in the past 12 months. All of this during a year when we’ve seen long-term unemployment rise and benefits cut, and when manyemployers still fail to see the need to pay a living wage.

What would James have to say about this? The answer seems fairly clear:

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten.

James 5:1-2

The question we thought about tonight is how we express this truth is our own times? Is it appropriate, in 2012, in an area like Billesley or Yardley Wood, for part of the message of the Gospel to be: a day of justice is coming? One day, the rich, the privileged people who run the coalition and cut the benefits of the poor, the board members of companies who earn huge amounts of money while their staff struggle, the boards of companies who avoid paying corporation tax on UK earnings... one day, there will be a reckoning for these people. There will be a levelling, their wealth will not count anymore.

This brought us on to the topic of evangelism – the most successful tool in British churches, over the last twenty years, has been Alpha. It’s been great – but it has worked in a time of prosperity, the nineties and noughties, it’s asks quite abstract questions which appeal to educated people.

If I live in Billesley, I am not asking questions like, ‘Why should I read the Bible?’ or ‘How does God guide me?’ I am asking questions like ‘Why do I have no prospect of ever having a job?’ ‘Why is life unfair?’ ‘How come the bankers got away with it?’

Interestingly,  the early Christians never became a political movement. Except for the fact that they pledged their allegiance to Jesus not Caesar! They didn’t grab power... but they were not embarrassed about talking about justice and economics and how this impacted their understanding of what God was doing in the world, and how it shaped their hope of what he would do in the future. Just as a new expression of the justice of the kingdom emerged from the flavellas of Latin America in the 1970s, is now the time for the church of urban Britain to articulate the same message?

Session 3 – Challenging Powers

The Jews in Babylon – a powerless group of exiles, who nonetheless challenged the Empire

Models of challenging powers

Asking awkward questions, e.g. the assumption that economic growth is always desirable. We also need to be willing to question – often Christians seem more ready to simply provide answers.

Modelling creative alternatives, e.g. restorative justice

Protest, e.g. civil disobedience.

Prayer – e.g. Daniel 9, the imagining of an alternative reality.

It’s hard to challenge the powers individually – note that Daniel was part of a group. We need to think about how challenge as a community, and how we resource each other.

How to challenge as a community

We need to understand that we live in a discipling culture. We are being discipled by our culture all the time, our culture wants us to see things in certain ways.

We can be a community of resistance and discernment, e.g. being discerning about the TV adverts we watch.

We need to be realistic about our capacity. We are a sizeable minority, but still a minority. We must be careful not to wear ourselves out.

We need to keep checking our tone of voice. Think again about how respectful Daniel was. We still have a ‘majority complex.’ We need to move from being a moral majority to a prophetic minority.

We also need to consider how we can challenge powers, for the benefit of others. If we only challenge for the benefit of ourselves, how are we different from anyone else? What about love for others and the oppressed? What would be the impact of Christians standing up and saying that they’re distressed about the upset caused to Muslims about a film which is so offensive about the foundations of their faith?

Stories of Challenging the Powers

Christian Peacemaking Teams

Standing up for the disappeared of El Salvador

Making cakes to combat the gang culture of an estate in Bristol.

Freemantle, Australia – clearing utility debts, as a sign of Jubilee

Prayer for Kolkata by its Christian minority

The example of Jeremiah 29, the ‘Letter to the Exiles’: an alternative approach to exile.

Session Two – Forming Habits

Our society is now moving beyond the era of Christendom, a long period when the church held considerable power and influence over the laws, practices and culture (e.g. calendar, architecture, art) of much of the Western world. Christendom has left an enduring legacy in our societies, but we also need to acknowledge Christendom often displayed little capacity to love ‘the other.’ Consider, for example, the frequent persecution of Jews and Muslims.

Consider habits and reflexes. Habits are things which we do over a sustained period of time, so that eventually they become natural to us. Reflexes tend to be the things we do when we haven’t time to think.  Habits are not immutable. They can be formed and broken.

Read Daniel 1-6 – what habits do we see lived out by the Jewish exiles in Babylon?

Consider the remarkable response of forgiveness demonstrated by the Amish community of Nickel Mines, following the shooting of five girls by Charles Roberts in October 2006. The community had been shaped by its regular sharing of the Lord’s Prayer, seven times a day.

In his book Seeking Spirituality, Ronald Rolheiser writes about the following barriers to forming healthy habits:

Naivety about the nature of spiritual energy

Pathological busyness, distraction and restlessness

The problem of balance in life which has led to a separation of things that should belong together:

Religion and eros

Spirituality and church

Private morality and social justice

Rolheiser suggests ‘four pillars’ or responses

Private prayer and personal integrity – wholeness in life

Social justice – standing with the poor

Mellowness of heart and mind – staying grateful

Participating in the community of the people of God

What formational practices can we develop as a community?

Prayer – ways of praying

Scripture – ways of reading

Testimony – ways of speaking of God

Worship – Word, Water, Wheat and Wine

Service – laying down our lives

Session One – Loving People

The situation facing the church in the UK is not unlike that which faced the Jewish people dragged off into exile in Babylon. Read Psalm 137, and you quickly get a sense of how painful their loss was. Consider the emotions which are expressed in this psalm – bitterness, loss, injustice, humiliation, a desire for vengeance. The presence of the psalm reminds us it’s ok to bring such feelings to God in prayer, but we need to think seriously about how we process such feelings.

We are now a minority. Only 6-7% of the British population are involved in churches, and we don’t feel ‘at home’ in our society like we used to. This leads to a strong desire that we have to blame certain people and groups for what is happening in our culture.

Think about the people we struggle to love:

The growing Muslim community

Secularists/the ‘new atheists’

The media

We need to think seriously about how we love ‘the other,’ those who are different to us. We also need to understand that to love others is to pass on the love we ourselves have experienced on God. You might it helpful to reflect on a passage Sian read, John 15:1-17, which speaks of the centrality of love.

You may also want to take time giving to God the people you find it hard to love, reflecting on the following questions:

Why do I find it hard to love this person?

What does their presence do to me/

What thoughts and feelings do they raise in me?

What do they teach me about myself?

How do I feel about that?

Church weekend 2012

We’re just back from a wonderful church weekend in Cleobury Mortimer, spending time in the company of Sian and Stuart Murray-Williams, who were so helpful to us in thinking through the themes of loving people, forming habits and challenging powers. I’ll be posting notes from each of these sessions. It would be wonderful to hear your feedback on the ideas we discussed, how you were encouraged and challenged, and the ways in which we can live out these values in our YWBC.

Worship - looking for the next hit?

Now I know where I’ve been going wrong. All the time I thought I was leading a church, but have just discovered that instead I could be running ‘powerful purveyors of emotional religious experience.’ Puzzled? Let me explain...

An intriguing new piece of research, reported last week by Christianity Today makes the suggestion that the experience of many worshippers at American megachurches is akin to that of addicts looking for their next high. You can read the full paper, written by University of Washington research staff here.

The article draws on previous work by American sociologist Randall Collins, and begins with the hypothesis that what drives and motivates humans is their desire for ‘emotional energy,’ defined by Collins as ‘confidence and enthusiasm.’ It’s important to note that EE is not presented as just a narcissistic quest for warm and happy feelings; the writers also note the theories of Emile Durkheim, suggesting that EE has a ‘powerful and motivating effect upon the individual,’ which could lead to a change in moral behaviour.

But the Washington researchers also  offer the theory that our feelings of EE are closely linked to our levels of oxytocin, a hormone related to a variety of actions including social recognition, pair bonding and tribal behaviour, including bonding with insiders and the distrust of outsiders. And having established these factors, they then get to the heart of their argument, with the suggestion that megachurch worship effectively offers an ‘oxytocin cocktail’ to those attending, through its carefully choreographed blend of a large number of people, the sharing together of an intense emotional mood and time spent in the presence of a charismatic senior leader.

The sort of techniques referred to in the article may be familiar to many of us. The music is upbeat and loud, not unlike a concert, the lighting is low, all around people will be raising hands and swaying along. In some venues, large screens will even project images of the most intense worshippers in the auditorium, reminding those present of the appropriate response to be making at any given moment. The impact on those present is often deeply intense, and reflected in the testimony of many interviewed for the purposes of the research: ‘Expressions relating to the sensory experience were common—tasting seeing, feeling, touching, listening, feeding, thirsting—and words related to the emotions—loving, longing, feeling, moving, vulnerability, wanting, crying, joy—were not only peppered throughout the interviews, but rather were the driving force behind nearly every description and often the punch line to every story.’

But it also needs to be noted that the article isn’t just about the experience of gathered worship. Those attending megachurches speak passionately about the friendliness and love of others in their community, and also bear witness to a strong sense of purpose they’ve found concerning their personal morality.

So are there any lessons we can learn from this? The suggestion that emotional hysteria, and even manifestations which could be labelled as ‘signs and wonders’, can be generated through manipulation techniques is hardly new news. Inducing fear, failure or hopelessness before introducing the answer, the effect of a large crowd, these are techniques which have been employed by some of the most cruel and unscrupulous political regimes our world has seen. There’s no place for such practices in Christian worship.

But we need to be careful not to dismiss the experience of megachurch worshippers too readily. Reading their stories, I was reminded of the words of Barth in Church Dogmatics, VI/2: “The Christian community, can and must be the scene of many human activities which are new and supremely astonishing to many of its members as well as to the world because they rest on an endowment with extraordinary capacities.”

This doesn’t mean that the experience of church is reduced down to offering an intense hit for spiritual adrenaline junkies. Discipleship, of course, needs to consist of the death of self and the forming of disciplines, as well as the ability to think in depth about issues of faith. In his moving book, A Churchless Faith, Alan Jamieson has chronicled the tragedy of those who have walked away from apparently successful evangelical and Pentecostal churches, disillusioned and stifled with no safe place to talk about their doubts and questions. But surely Christian worshippers also need to feel some sense of intimacy with God, some inkling of having been in his presence, when they gather with others in the community of believers. This doesn’t have to mean making judgements on the worship service on the basis of ‘how I felt’ or ‘what I got out of it.’ But if we’re called to love God with our hearts, souls and minds, our emotions need to be impacted by our faith as well.

I’ll leave the final word to James Smith, from his excellent book on worship, Desiring the Kingdom: ‘While Hollister and Starbucks have taken hold of our heart with tangible, material liturgies, Christian schools are “fighting back” by giving young people Christian ideas. We hand young people (and old people!) a “Christian worldview” and then tell them, “There, that should fix it.” But such strategies are aimed at the head and thus miss the real target: our hearts, our loves, our desires. Christian education as formation needs to be a pedagogy of desire.’