Bob Jackson

Church of England consultant, Ven. Bob Jackson, proposes an answer to his own question in a recent paper.

“Once upon a time we thought we knew what church was and how to measure it. Church happened when we gathered in a consecrated building for a public act of worship with a priest on a Sunday. So we measured the size of the church by the number of people who attended the public act of worship. Until the year 2000 we counted ‘Usual Sunday Attendance’, and since then we’ve also used ‘Average weekly attendance in October’, including weekdays.

But attendance & electoral roll measures have never done full justice to what we think church really is. So today I want to pose the deeper questions: ‘What is church?’ & ‘How do we measure it?’”

Read complete text

Time to start new churches 

John Bowen

 

By John Bowen

Published: April 2011

If church attendance is declining, what should be our response? Start new churches, of course!

If that seems counter-intuitive, consider the following:

• One reason churches decline is that populations move, and churches do not move with them. What about new churches for new population centres?
• There is clear evidence that there are more “new Christians” in new churches than in older churches. There is something that makes a new church more readily accessible to someone who is exploring faith.
• New churches are nimble—like young children—and able to adapt to newcomers, new cultures and new demands more readily than older churches which often suffer from structural and cultural arthritis.

Read the complete article.

Thomas Brauer

Ministry at the edges of Church and culture is a challenge, to say the least.  It is often hard to discern which particular edges should attract our limited mission attention (and budgets).  With challenges in finding both people and money for long-term mission projects, it is often helpful to find “one off” mission opportunities which can still work to build community, offer opportunities for discipleship,  even worship, and to build the skills and capacities of potential mission volunteers.  Many of our communities have just such mission opportunities, ready made and waiting, in the shape of festivals, fairs, and cultural events.

All the major cities of Canada, and many rural communities, have significant annual cultural events of some sort.  There are theatre festivals, Jazz, Blues, Folk and Rock festivals, fall fairs, rodeos, and agricultural exhibitions almost every week somewhere in the country.  Many of these events draw significant crowds and offer tremendous opportunities to serve many people at one go.  Yet these events are often neglected as mission and ministry opportunities for churches.

Where to start?

So, let’s say you have a passion for mission, and live in a community with a festival or cultural event coming up. Where do you begin to plan for mission to that festival’s community.

Step One is to find a group who might be interested in serving with you – this is your mission team.  They should be willing to give their time, and energy, and they should share your vision of service.

Step Two, is, gathering your team together, pray for God’s wisdom, and guidance as you ask yourselves the following questions:

1. Who is involved in the upcoming festival?

(think of patrons, artists/presenters/contestants, commercial supporters (food venders and such),  residents of the festival area, and anyone else you think might be impacted by the event).

1. How might those involved need to be served?

(go through the list of groups you think are involved one, by one, discerning how they might need/desire to be served.  If you don’t know – find someone involved in the festival to ask.  They’ll tell you.  Usually you won’t be able to serve them all, but you might well be able to serve a few.)

1. What are our capacities?

(spend time thinking about what resources you have – personnel, time, money, space, gifts and talents, etc.)

1. Knowing who is involved, how they might need to be served, and what we have to share, how can we best be of service to the people involved in this event?

(don’t be afraid to go small, perhaps focusing on one involved group and serving a minor need.  It doesn’t have to be big, it just needs to be done with love, and with the intent to serve.)

Step Three is to get the permissions you need.  Do you need a bishop’s approval, or parish or denominational approval?  Do you need municipal permission/licenses?  Do you need permission from festival staff/organizers?  Depending on what you have chosen to do, you might need permission from multiple sources.  If so, get them.  It will make your life much easier later.

Step Four is to make an implementation plan with your team.  Make sure you’re all on the same page, you all know what is going to happen, when, and where.  Also make sure you’re all on the same page about why you’re doing this.  There is always one person who thinks it’s about getting bums in pews.  It’s not.  It’s about serving out of the love of Christ for the sheer joy and purpose of serving.

Step Five is to get to it.  Let people know what you’re doing, that you have permission, and that you want to be a part of the festival fun by serving the festival itself, and get on with it.  Enjoy yourself, and pray often, giving thanks for the opportunity, seeking wisdom for all involved, and pursuing how your team might be of greatest service.

What might this look like?

Perhaps a concrete example or two would be helpful.  I’m involved in a mixed economy church setting in Edmonton.  I’m working to plant a Fresh Expression of Church called the Project, currently based out of Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Edmonton.  Holy Trinity is located within blocks of the Fringe Theatre Festival grounds, and for years has served as a venue for Fringe productions (the Edmonton Fringe Festival is the world’s 2^nd largest Fringe, and has a central festival location).

Two years ago, members of Holy Trinity and I began plotting how we might be of service to the Fringe.  I made the announcement on a Sunday morning that I would be leading a project to serve the festival, and would welcome as much input and support as possible from the congregation.  Together, we discerned who was involved in the festival – we used the language of ‘stake-holders’.  We knew there were artists (foreign and domestic), festival staff and volunteers, vendors, commercial service providers, neighbourhood residents, and patrons.  In all, this was several hundreds of thousands of people (the 2010 Fringe served well over 400,000 patrons, with another 1400 volunteers, several hundred performers and artists, and several dozen staff, not to mention the 20,000 people who live or work in the festival area).  It was clear that we couldn’t serve them all, but it was necessary to now discern the needs of the various stakeholders.  Through long discussion, and working through the questions above diligently, we settled on serving first the artists and patrons that would be coming to Holy Trinity as a venue.  We also thought we could manage serving festival patrons who might need a place of rest and peace between shows during the day, or who might just need a break from the activities of the festival itself.

In the end, we decided we had resources and opportunity enough to offer the artists volunteer support during shows, there by relieving them of the onerous task of finding their own volunteers for box office and ushering duties.  We also operated a concession stand at reasonable costs (most festival venues charge exorbitant rates for concessions as a cash grab).  We provided clean and comfortable green-room space for the artists (a green-room is a room for actors to relax in before and after a show) as well as food and drinks for them.  And we simply went out of our way to be as welcoming as possible to both artists and patrons.

Over and above show time support, we offered three other services during the days of the festival to create a space of rest for tired patrons.  Our biggest hit was the “Green Room Teahouse” where we served (in good Anglican fashion) tea and fresh scones (made to order with our own heavenly recipe served with clotted cream and jam).  We also set up “Father Tom’s Lemonade Stand”.  This was a wonderful way for me to meet people in the community and to talk to folks who were walking by the church building.  The third offering was ‘solace’.  ‘solace’ is a contemplative arts installation located in the nave and chancel of the church, and offers people a place of rest and peace, and an opportunity to (re)engage with Christian spirituality.  One of the most gratifying results of these activities was seeing how many people made one or more of our offerings a daily part of their life for the ten days of the Fringe.  This year, our second year, we saw almost all of last year’s folks come back, and they brought friends.  We ended up serving over 400 scones in 10 days.  A lot of work, but well worth it.

The combined impact of our activities of serving the Fringe resulted in many, many people commenting on how welcome they felt, and how Holy Trinity embraced the spirit of the Fringe in a unique and meaningful way.  From their perspective, we met them where they were, and valued what they valued, and offered a little bit of the peace, generosity and welcome of Christ to them during their festival.  Clearly this worked to build community, but it also created many discipleship/evangelism opportunities as people asked why were doing this, and what we as a Christian church were about.  And it was greatly appreciated by the more than 4000 patrons who made Holy Trinity part of their Fringe in 2009, and the 6,100 patrons did so in 2010.

Now, not everybody has access to the kind of support necessary to serve a festival as large as the Edmonton Fringe in as robust a fashion as we did (year one saw 50 volunteers put in 500 hours, and year two saw 66 volunteers put in 640 volunteer hours).  But there are other ways.

While traveling in the UK, I met a woman who leads missions into New Age Spirituality and psychic fairs and festivals.  These are events that are shunned by many Christians and churches, but she felt that they posed wonderful opportunities to meet people who were actively seeking a spiritual life.

Her process was this: she would rent a space at the fair, like any other vendor or service provider, then she would communicate with local churches to find mature, prayer centred Christians interested in mission to join her team.  Together, they would decorate their booth/table/tent in the classic purple and gold beloved by this community, and would post a sign reading simply “Healing Prayer”.  While most ‘healers’ at such events charge for their ministrations, the ministry team would not, and when someone came seeking prayer, they would explain that they were Christians, and that they were there to serve in love, and that the healing they were offering came not from themselves, but from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Some people would walk away, but the vast majority were so taken aback that Christians would come to them and offer spiritual support and prayer, that they stayed and often asked many, many questions.  This is a very simple and direct approach to serving the spiritual needs of people in a distinct environment and culture.   It could easily be adapted for any kind of event.  Imagine a booth at a folk festival offering prayer, or one at a business convention, or even just setting up a table on Main Street at noon with a sign reading “willing to listen and pray for free.”

It is astonishing what opportunities for mission there are in festivals and cultural events.  I’ve discussed only two, but I know of several “rodeo churches” that follow the rodeo circuit in the west, and others who open prayer booths at folk festivals and such.  The options for mission are limited only by our imagination, and the gifts of the Spirit.  Which is to say that there are no limitations at all!  If you are looking for opportunities to engage in fresh mission in your community, but don’t have the resources for sustained programs, or ongoing ministry support, I’d encourage you to consider what festivals and cultural events are going on in your area, and how you and a few friends might be able to serve them in the name of Jesus Christ.

Note: for a far from comprehensive list of Canadian festivals, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_festivals_in_Canada

Or here:

http://www.storytellersdirectory.ca/Pages/CultFest.html

or contact your municipal offices for a list of local events.

On Monday nights in Toronto’s Bloor West Village, the Yellow Griffin Pub’s upstairs room hosts “God at the Pub”.  A ministry of Runnymede Community Church for seven years, “God at the Pub” is the result of the church leadership’s fervent prayer and missional impulse to lower the “barriers to entry” posed by their traditional church building.  By bringing the Alpha course, and a homegrown curriculum called “Jesus Who?” to this non-traditional environment, the church and its pastor, Mike Wilkins, hoped to share the gospel with the unchurched in their community.  Has it worked?  Is this a fresh expression of church, of evangelism, or something else?

All the textbook prerequisites for reaching the unchurched seem to be present.  A welcoming, neutral venue, good food and community, and accessible, biblical content that presents the great news of Jesus Christ.  On opening night in September, there were 18 participants, 2 leaders, 3 visiting pastors (guilty as charged) and 1 bartender in attendance.  Drink orders were taken immediately, nametags distributed, and participants struggled in their first small group exercise, deciding among the pub’s vast selection of burgers.  The first night is free, but the $150 course fee, payable if you decide to stay for the ten week session, covers all the food and drink expenses.  Yes, people are paying and committing up front to learn about Jesus, and to enjoy some great food and drink!

After rushing to eat, Mike stood at the front of the room under a small projector screen to introduce the course.  “Jesus Who?” is an exploration of Jesus’ identity, what Mike described to me as a “Pre-Alpha” course, to introduce the “who” of salvation history before the theology of salvation covered in Alpha.  It’s designed to connect with those who are open to Jesus, but have little interest in organized religion.  The course begins with some of the most universally accepted ideas about Jesus, as a teacher, rabbi, guru, friend and revolutionary, before dealing with more challenging aspects, like Jesus as master, Christ, Saviour and Son of God.  The first week’s content was shorter than usual, and meant to get people thinking about how Jesus is portrayed in culture and media, and in their own minds.  Normally there would be a half hour talk, followed by a half hour of small group discussion, but not the first week.

Instead of small group discussion in the first week,  Mike asked each participant to introduce themselves, and tell the group why they’ve come.  Person after person introduced themselves, and nearly every person said they attended Runnymede Community Church, or were visiting from another church.  Many of them were new members, and could be described as “de-churched” people exploring their faith once again.  What was missing, however, was the demographic we could call “unchurched” – those with no past or present involvement in Christian faith and/or the church.

Is “God at the Pub” a fresh expression of church?  That is defined as “a form of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church.  It will come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and making disciples.   It will have the potential to become a mature expression of church shaped by the gospel and the enduring marks of the church and for its cultural context.”

The first part applies – it was established to reach those who are not yet members of any church.  However, those it was intended to reach (the unchurched) are no longer present.  Past sessions have included unchurched people, and hopefully future courses will also, but none were present this time.  Perhaps we can call “God at the Pub” a fresh expression of evangelism, since it explains the faith to new attendees at the church, and then feeds them back to the established congregation, with no intentional plan for a mature expression of church to arise in this context.

“God at the Pub” is a creative, fun way to teach Christian basics.  However, even with the barriers presented by traditional church buildings removed, it appears that there still exist other barriers to entry for the truly unchurched.  It’s possible that the content, explaining the identity of Jesus, is still too advanced for the truly unchurched, and that a more general introduction to the “unknown God” of Acts 17 is in order.  It’s possible that the icon of Christ used as the course’s logo and on posters turns people off, and they ignore the advertising.  Another possibility is that “God at the Pub” has even more barriers to remove to truly reach an unchurched audience.  It still relies on participants intentionally coming to a space set apart (the pub’s upstairs room), to commit to any pay for a complete session, and to join an unfamiliar group of people.  A truly incarnational approach to pub ministry might arise downstairs, in the pub itself, with Christians sharing the content of “Jesus Who?” one on one, where people truly gather.

The formative journey of fresh expressions describes a movement from loving service to community to discipleship to worship.  “God at the Pub” jumps right in with community and discipleship.  Loving service exists, but in the form of basic Christian education or discipleship, which likely meets the needs of those consciously wishing to explore Christianity.  They are tapping into the needs of church members, those on the fringes of church, but not the dechurched (those with a history of Christian faith, but who have drifted away) or even unchurched (those with no such history).  This reinforces the importance of “listening” to and knowing our communities before responding with any form of church, fresh or not, and that this listening must continue throughout the life of the ministry, as the community’s needs change and the church adapts its response.

My congratulations go to Runnymede Community Church, Mike Wilkins and God at the Pub.  This is a creative and fun extension of the church’s ministry, and has reached countless unchurched and dechurched people for Christ in the last seven years, and continues to engage and disciple newchurch members.  As with every church, their challenge is to keep the gospel and the principles of incarnational ministry before them, and to constantly proclaim the gospel afresh in a rapidly changing world.  “God at the Pub” is lightweight and nimble enough that I won’t be at all surprised to hear how God uses and adapts it transform lives for many years to come.

Link: This article from the local community paper from the same evening.

Let’s start with the first single “Get On Your Boots” (GOYB), released a month before the album No Line On The Horizon (NLOTH). While panned by some critics, GOYB served the role that U2 seems to look for in a first single—revealing the band’s new musical and thematic direction (and getting folks excited that “U2 is back!”). GOYB offers a different sound from previous albums, but the lyrics also deserve some attention. Bono singing of “love and community” how “the future needs a big kiss”, and not wanting “to talk about wars between nations” makes one thing clear—on this album U2 won’t be dealing with the familiar issue of social injustice (in concert is another story though). GOYB’s repeating phrase “let me in the sound” is also intriguing. Is it frivolous or does it have some meaning? We’ll return to that point shortly. What is clear is that something new is afoot for U2 on this album.

No Line on the Horizon, the album, begins in an unusual spot for U2. While the band’s past few albums start in a broken world but lead the listener to spiritual safety (see album-closing songs like “Grace” and “Yahweh”), NLOTH turns this approach upside down. The title track bursts open the album with a mix of heavy guitar, drums and Dr. Who-like sonic effects that conjure a sense of racing over a body of water—fitting, given the album’s cover art of merging sea and sky. Bono’s wavering vocals express how “infinity is a great place to start” and “time is irrelevant, not linear.” Bono has described “No Line on the Horizon” as that place where the earth meets the sky, and possibilities seem infinite. U2 drew near to this space in songs like “Gloria” (from the album October) and “Where the Streets Have No Name” (from The Joshua Tree), but here they’ve gone deeper, crossed a line (no pun intended) and reached an altogether different place.

Hints of that somewhere different can be found in Bono’s recent comparison of NLOTH to The Beatles’ White Album. With closer inspection, the comparison is fitting. While The Beatles went to India on pilgrimage to meet the Maharishi and write music for the White Album, U2 went to Fez, Morocco, to attend the World Festival of Sacred Music and work on NLOTH.  While there, members of U2 seem to have taken inspiration from the faith expression of Sufism, a sect of Islam found in North Africa, whose members seek ecstatic communion with God through physical, emotional, and vocal expression—a form of faith that three members of U2 are familiar with from their early days as members of a charismatic Christian group named “Shalom.” While The Beatles’ White Album was a double album, and “No Line on the Horizon” a single CD, U2 have recently mentioned a “companion disc.” Scheduled for release in late 2009 or early 2010, the new disc is to be named “Songs of Ascent” and is described by Bono as a “ghost album of hymns and Sufi singing . . . a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflexive piece of work”.

One need not wait for the next album to ascend though. The heavenly direction of NLOTH continues with “Magnificent,” a song carried by a powerful drum rhythm that will no doubt shake stadium audiences and rally them to singing. Lyrics about making “a joyful noise,” being “justified until we die,” and “you and I will magnify, oh, the magnificent,” take the album deeper into the unusual territory of unbridled expression of faith and hope, unhindered by the earthly challenges previously encountered in U2′s music. What U2 has been reaching for throughout their career seems finally within reach here. Bono told Rolling Stone magazine that “The Magnificent” was inspired by “The Magnificat,” the gospel passage where Mary expresses joy at being chosen to be the mother of Jesus. By choosing the term “The Magnificent,” one of Islam’s 99 names of God, and shooting a creatively spiritual music video for the song in Fez, Morocco, U2 also extend an olive branch and find common ground with Muslims.

“Moment of Surrender” is a slow gospel tune that stands out with its moving vocals and evocative imagery. The line about “love believing in me” may ring a bit over the top for some, particularly Christians familiar with such language, but the lines, “I did not notice the passers-by, and they did not notice me,” and “a vision over visibility,” describe a scene of spiritual conversion or renewal at its most tender and intimate.

Opening with an exquisite “sunshine” harmony, “Unknown Caller” picks up the pace while carrying on the theme of renewal found in “Moment of Surrender.”  U2 guitarist The Edge described the song’s narrator as being “in an altered state, and his phone starts talking to him.” The lyrics “cease to speak, that I may speak” echo Psalm 46:10—“Be still and know that I am God.” While the language of entering passwords and rebooting yourself initially sound awkward, the power of `this song grows and will no doubt stir stadiums to sing along. Observant fans will note how “Unknown Caller” uses a reference to 3:33 on a clock, which U2 also used as an airport gate (J33-3) on the cover art of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. During press for that album, Bono told Rolling Stone that it refers to Jeremiah 33:3 (“Call to me and I will answer you”) and described it as “God’s phone number.

Bono speeds up his phrasing and applies his falsetto skills in “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.” While the lyrics in “Crazy” seem random at times, lines such as, “Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear” and “a change of heart comes slowly,” are intriguing, if not familiar. When added to others such as “it’s not a hill it’s a mountain” and “we’re going to make it, all the way to the light,” one can hear echoes of Martin Luther King’s famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. It is tempting to wonder if Obama’s historic election inspired Bono to write this song, one of the album’s stronger tracks.

While the US reference may be subtle, there are Canadian connections to NLOTH worth mentioning. First, there is Daniel Lanois, the musician and producer who, along with English artist and producer Brian Eno, worked on this and many other U2 albums. Then there is Lori Anna Reid, a talented Canadian singer who receives a mention in the CD liner notes. Daniel Lanois explained to the National Post (March 11^th 2009) how U2 were looking for hymns to draw inspiration from while they attempted to create “future spirituals.” One of the ones Lori Anna suggested was “O Come, O Come Emanuel,” which U2 ended up working with when writing “White As Snow”. Finally, there is a connection to Canadian folk singer Bruce Cockburn. The line “shouting to the darkness, squeeze out sparks of light” from “I’ll Go Crazy” is a paraphrase of Cockburn’s lyrics on “Lovers in A Dangerous Time.” U2 referenced those lyrics more directly twenty years ago in the song “God Part II” from the album Rattle & Hum (“I heard a singer on the radio…say he’s gonna kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight”). “Cedars of Lebanon” also has a very Cockburn-style travel monologue that his fans will recognize and appreciate.

Let’s return now to that phrase “let me in the sound”. Bono sings it repeatedly in “Get On Your Boots”, and it echoes quietly at the start of “Fez Being Born”. It appears a third time on “Breathe” near the end of the album. Anything repeated on a U2 album is a concept with real currency. So what is this about? The answer may again lie in U2′s “pilgrimage” to Morocco. This repeating concept of entering the sound echoes the Sufi approach to finding union with God through music and dance. To this end we hear Bono calling out “meet me in the sound” in “Get On Your Boots”. Later in the song “Breathe,” Bono sings of being “people born of sound” and finding “grace inside a sound”. Who is being met here? U2 often leave much open to interpretation in their music, but the source of grace in this context rings most true when understood as God.

If the trajectory of recent U2 albums was an arc of challenge and adversity ending in hope, that journey is reversed on “No Line”. In fact Bono has said that you could call this album, “The Pilgrim and His Lack of Progress.” It bears true, for while U2 start out elevated, magnifying “The Magnificent,” they descend into the earth’s atmosphere from that place in the heavens. Along the way they teach over-sensitive Christians a thing or two on “Stand Up Comedy” (“Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady”) while rallying them to live their faith in a “dizzy world.” Midway through the album songs deal with rebirth, and by the end, it lands in the middle of life’s challenges with “Cedars of Lebanon”, where a war journalist struggles with a “shitty world” that “sometimes produces a rose.”

It is fair to say that U2 have been seeking “grace inside a sound” their entire career. Bruce Springsteen may have described U2 best when inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, calling them “a band that wanted to lay claim to not only this world, but had their eyes on the next one as well.” U2 prove Springsteen true on No Line on the Horizon. Grabbing hold of the sky right from the start, U2 refuse to let go, pulling the power of heaven down into the heart of earth’s challenges. Bridging divisions and erasing boundaries, whether between the stage and audience, between east and west, or between heaven and earth, is what U2 has been all about for some 30 years now. With this new tour, concertgoers have the chance to join them in that journey, and find grace inside a sound. Many will lose themselves for the evening in U2’s fantastic light and sound show. Some will be found in the sound as well.

Henry is also author of Faith, hope and U2: the language of love in the music of U2 a booklet in the Institute of Evangelism’s Dare series.

We all know what Jesus did to the herd of swine in the gospel story when he allowed the demons who were harassing the demoniac to enter into the herd grazing nearby. Not a PETA poster moment, for sure.

Three weeks ago in Egypt, the government there began a pig slaughter on a slightly bigger scale: some 350,000 pigs were led to the slaughter for fear of the dreaded “swine” flu. Countries all over the world began to ban pork imports from North America and we saw news clips of well-intentioned people (usually in the grocery store, mid-shopping) telling the reporters that they were eliminating pork from their diet, “just in case.”

What these stories intimately share is the fact of possession, of being possessed. In the gospel story, the demonic possession of the pigs leads to their plunging death off the cliff. In our more recent dealings with swine (which extends far beyond Egypt’s rash reaction), it is us, as a culture that is possessed. We are a society that is possessed by fear and being possessed by fear always ends in death.

The days following the swine flu outbreak from Mexico were a newsmaker’s dream and an opportunity for our culture of fear to kick it into high gear. A new, hybrid flu that was unheard of with a catchy name, and an increasing death count—what more could the networks ask for? We were then all witnesses and participants in a quickly escalating panic.

Why did alarm spread so fast even though this flu turned out to be nowhere near as fatal as a regular seasonal flu? Why were we so quick to panic? I think Frank Furedi, in his book Culture of Fear, hints at why when he reminds us that “the risks that kill you are not necessarily the ones that provoke and frighten you.” What does he mean by that? He simply means that while we are afraid of what statistically usually kills us (cancer, heart disease, and stroke) we are, as a culture, more pointedly afraid of terrorism, school shootings, pedophiles, serial killers and these new killer viruses (which, statistically, come nowhere near to the risk of the big three above).

So, again, why did panic spread so quickly over a flu that we now know was overblown? I think the answer is that, as a culture, we’ve transformed fear, like everything else, into a commodity that is bought and sold and we’ve become proficient peddlers and consumers of fear. In other words, just like sex, fear sells. And just like selling sex, marketers, advertisers and producers hold a vested interest in shaping our collective imagination and influencing our desires to line up with what they’re selling—and we’re buying.

In his book, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, Scott-Bader Saye makes the observation that in Scripture when we meet an angel from God, they begin their message with “fear not”. Why is that? He says he always thought that it was because angels must be such imposing and frightening figures. But there’s more to it than that. He thinks the reason they tell us to not be afraid is that the quieting of fear is required in order to hear and do what God asks of us. And I think he’s right.

Thomas Aquinas taught, eons ago, that disordered fear is a result of disordered desire. Simply put, we fear in deformed and distorted ways because our imaginations, and consequently, our desires are screwed up—which is another way of saying that we are a sinful people who can’t imagine a world of quieted fear and so we act, think, and speak accordingly.

You see, this culture of fear is all about shaping our imaginations through the various rituals that make up this culture from the ways and forms our news is disseminated to the methods with which producers market their products as the ‘safe’ alternative to their competitor’s. This is an embodied cultural reality that is practiced over and over again in order to intentionally form us to be a certain kind of people—in this case, scared.

As followers of Jesus in this culture, we are called to be a living alternative to it. Jesus, like God’s angels, told his disciples over and over again, “fear not”. As the church, our liturgy is all about shaping our imaginations through the rituals that make up this alternative culture of the church. Nowhere is this more clearly, visibly and physically true than in our practice of the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is an embodied reality that is practiced over and over again in order to intentionally form us to be a certain kind of people. It is the act of the church whereby it remembers who she is as follower of a crucified and risen Lord. So, it is in the ritual practice of the Eucharist that we learn that death is not the worst thing that can happen to us—which puts us deeply at odds with this predominant culture of fear which feeds off this fear of death.

As Bader-Saye notes, this isn’t about telling ourselves not to fear. Our fears are primal, overwhelming and overpowering. We can’t just tell ourselves to feel less fear—that would be disingenuous. What we need is for our desires and our fears to be re-ordered, or rather, rightly ordered. In other words, our overwhelming fears need themselves to be overwhelmed by something bigger and better. That is what we recognize and practice in the Eucharist. In consuming Jesus we are consumed into the body of Christ; we are consumed into a wonderful adventure where our fears are rightly ordered because we know this story to be ultimately hopeful and not tragic.

So what, in the end, of the pigs? It is our task, as those people whose imaginations are shaped and formed in the Eucharist to embody that imagination in our world through practices that upend the culture of fear. Being a people that don’t buy into the consumerism of fear is a good first step and is part and parcel of our commission as followers of Jesus in our world. We ought to be God’s disciplined people in a scared world—a people who practice hospitality to strangers, who love enemies, who bring gentleness to violence, a people who, in our day to day lives, are dispossessed of the demons of fear and filled with God’s Spirit of peace.

Most of the time, the only real obstacle to moving into new life is our fear — nothing else! Fear of the unknown, fear of the known, fear of giving up control, fear of the hidden motivations of the institution, fear of __________ (please fill in the blank!). In the story of 2 Kings 7, there were four lepers hanging out at the city gates, in fear because their city was under siege. They couldn’t find a home in the city and they were terrified of the enemy outside the walls, as well. Mind you, they’d never actually encountered the enemy – just heard about it. Finally, the storyteller quotes them as saying, “Why stay here until we die? So let’s go out . . .” Well, the story goes on to confirm that the threat we are familiar with may actually be worse than the one we’re imagining!

As I respond to some of the fear-filled correspondence, I’m learning that asking, “What is it that you fear?” only makes things worse. People can expand on fear, forever. Lately, I’ve started asking, “What would you need in order to feel safe enough to try . . . ?” Now, instead of expanding on their fears, they are working toward a plan, an approach, a venture — even new partnerships!

Much of what we fear exists where there is a lack of love. In our Christian Scriptures we have the assertion that perfect love casts out all fear. I often wonder, when feeling fear (even institutional anxiety), “What (or who) is it that I need to love, right now?” I can tell you that, when the answer comes to me, and I follow the Spirit’s leading to Love, it’s actually OK to feel insecure, rather than fearful. I can live with not knowing; I cannot, however, find life through fear. Rudolf Bahro (German activist and iconoclast) explains that “When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.” Imagine us leading – loving but insecure with asserting Truth – “insecure” enough to stay curious and loving enough to stay clear of the sticky web of fear.

Postmoderns are sometimes critiqued for too glibly denouncing that which smacks of modernity. Reading religious ‘blogs lately convinces me that most of us could spend the rest of our days apophatically asserting our various realities. If we’re to prepare ourselves for the “not yet” Kin-dom of God, though, we have to gird up our loins to walk in that in-between place where the old language is inadequate and the new language is still coming to us. We’ll daily be humbled by recollections of the certainties we used to herald. We’ll more freely admit that, well, we just don’t know (yet!). All we’ll have is the Holy Visions that wake us in the night and a longing to be a part of what the Spirit has been birthing for millenia – right in our collective midst. Some of us will paint our memories of those visions; others will put music to them; fewer still will design buildings and sacred spaces and most of us will try language – old wineskins for new wine!

I imagine that when the original drafters of the 20/20 vision first came together with their love and hopes for the Episcopal Church and all that it has to offer, they shared a passion not too dissimilar from what we share on this virtual community. They were afire with visions of what might happen if we were to open our hearts and hands and churches in new ways to new possibilities. They too were concerned that the “same old – same old” might subsume their Spirit-led ventures and they were cautious not to limit the Spirit’s work with small expectations. They prayed and they hoped and they shared, tirelessly. I know, because I’ve been blessed to hear their stories. Many of them are now watching and praying and listening to this conversation regarding Angli-mergence – hoping from the sidelines that the baton they passed will be cherished, regardless.

Here are the questions that shape my conversations, these days: “How might we choose love over fear? How might we get comfortable with insecurity in this strange place we presently traverse? How might we honor the Episcopal Church we’ve inherited while preparing ourselves to offer ancient gifts to new cultures? And most of all, how might we do that, TOGETHER?” I think that courageously answering that question may be more important than many of us realize.

With crazy hopes and growing cheer,

Tom
646-203-6266

As you may recall, the parish voted to build a new church and parish centre. The design is simple yet practical, it provides for congregational worship, three Sunday school classrooms, a nursery, modern washroom facilities, kitchen and storage space. The one and only step in the entire building is the one up into the sancturay. It is warm, comfortable, useful for many kinds of functions and accessible by all.

Click here to read the rest of this article from the Diocese of Fredericton’s web site

Click here to read the full article from the Diocese of Toronto’s “The Anglican”, by Henrieta Paukov.

Now imagine this. It’s eight o’clock on a cold, dark and rainy Saturday night in West London and we are about to experience a new way of doing church. The pews have been pushed aside and we are lounging on oversized beanbag chairs spread around the sanctuary. There are over fifty of us including about fifteen clergy from the Netherlands who, like ourselves, have come to experience and learn. The lights have been dimmed and soft ambient music plays in the background.

A voice begins reading Acts 10 starting at verse 9 then slowly a black sheet is lowered from above by its four corners. As it reaches the floor spotlights show all manner of four legged animals as well as reptiles and birds – all plastic replicas of course. Then, as the voice continues, our attention is drawn to a figure dressed in a white robe walking into our gathering. He is blindfolded and carries a staff. He gazes upward as he hears a sound and the lights follow. Slowly descending is a pink piñata pig covered in small disco mirrors. The spotlights seek it out and the light is reflected around the sanctuary in a strange eeriness, as if something important is about to happen, as the voice continues, “Get up Peter; kill and eat.” Going off script Peter says, “Wait!” “What is it now?” asks the voice. Peter replies, “I am about to beat the stuffing out of a pig in front of all these witnesses and some of these people might be vegetarians.” The voice responds, “Good point! Now that I am freeing you from all those rules and regulations, these are exactly the sorts of things you need to bear in mind. I shall make it clear to them that this is merely a metaphor – no matter how sweet it looks.”

Peter swings at the piñata and candies cascade downward when it bursts. “Gather around,” says the voice. “Take and eat. Find something tasty or sparkly that will remind you of the freedom you have. Everything is clean.”

This is Grace, a Christian community that meets twice monthly at St. Mary’s Church (Church of England) in South Ealing, London. Grace is unique in many ways, but most interestingly they have no staff and no budget; everything is run by volunteers. Dean, a Chaplin at a nearby college, is a member of one of the planning teams and is available to celebrate the Sacraments when they are included as part of a service. A large part of the mission of Grace is to develop cutting edge, multi-sensory worship experiences for its members, the wider church in the UK and around the world. Grace has just celebrated its fifteenth anniversary as an alternative worship community for people who are seeking non-traditional ways to engage with God and the Holy Spirit. Grace is about worship using ways and forms that relate to our culture, an authentic offering to God out of who they are, not something they target other people with. It is not unusual for visitors from abroad to worship at Grace to discover how Grace’s style connects with those who seek liberal alternatives to traditional worship styles. Following each service everyone gathers for conversation and fellowship around food and drink.

The theme for this worship experience was “Clean” and the planning team arrived at six o’clock and spent the next two hours setting up for worship and the café afterwards – the service itself was approximately ninety minutes. At first the furniture in the sanctuary was moved to make room for the beanbag chairs, then the projectors and the screens were set up. Members were also in the galleries setting the rigging for the lowering of the sheet and the disco pig. Behind the scenes there were many hours of planning, preparing and procuring. Of course, since every service is different, there is always some anxiety on the part of the planners as to whether their ideas will effectively translate into a meaningful worship experience that those present can engage in.

As worship continues with the theme we are invited to take a fallen leaf – gathered from one the large trees outside the church – and write something on it that we do or use that might be wrong or bad for us. Then we broke into small groups to explore why the writing on the leaves might be bad or unclean. For example, my group discussed the dangers of too much television. Not that watching TV is bad or unclean in or of itself, but because it may disrupt our relationship with God and other people if it consumes our lives. Then a bare white tree made of branches and bright lights is brought to the centre of the worship space. We were invited to attach a leaf to the tree to symbolize the reconnection of all our broken/unclean things to the source of life – God who redeems all the ways we harm ourselves.

Then the following confession was said:

One : Most of us would prefer to live in a castle than a tent. Castles have stout walls that protect us from the contamination of the outside world. Within your walls you can bring order and control. In your castle you can admit nothing that may be bad. You can banish the unexpected and the unpleasant, and live a life that is secure and protected.

But in a tent, you aren’t in control; you are open to the world. You can’t shut it out; you have to learn to live with it. The green and vital grass outside becomes dirt when you bring it in on your feet. It’s your choice whether you call it muck, or consider it a natural carpet. You learn to see that what you might call dirt. God has made to be exactly what it is. Whether we might use it for good or bad doesn’t change its essential nature. It is what it is.

All : Help us to be tent-dwellers rather than castle builders, ready to see the hand of God in all creation. Forgive us when we divide the world into things that are good or bad. Remind us that good and bad can be found in our actions, not in objects.

One : Living in a castle, you can create exactly the impression you want to the outside world. People can’t see inside; all they can see is the exterior that you want them to see; the carefully manicured flowers around the walls, the polished paintwork and the trim lawns. No matter if the inside isn’t quite so clean and tidy; no-one sees it anyway. All that matters is the front you put up.

In a tent there’s nowhere to hide, and no appearances to keep up. By day, you never know when a gust of wind will billow the tent flaps, giving passers-by a glimpse of your inner world. By night, your lamp casts shadows on the canvas wall. You learn to live with your inner and outer worlds in sync.

All : Help us to be tent dwellers.

Forgive us when our righteousness is skin-deep.

Give us strength to dismantle the walls behind which we hide.

Give us courage, in community, to drop the front,

Come out from behind the mask of respectability,

And greet others with love and acceptance as they do the same.

As I continue to contemplate this worship experience I keep asking myself if I am ready to sell my castle and move into a tent. I pray that some day I might be able to.

Originally published in the Niagara Anglican

With a powerful endorsement from the Archbishop of Canterbury, thousands of people across the U.K. have taken part in Vision Days, which are designed to create a forum for Christian communities to discover more about fresh expressions of church in their communities.  Having now caught the attention of church leaders in Canada, receiving nods from The Primate and our Bishop George Bruce, the movement is beginning to generate interest at the grassroots level right here at home.

The Ven. William A. Clarke, who attended the Vision Day, said he was impressed to see such a strong turnout from among the older, more established crowd of committed church people in the Diocese, “maybe they are here because of a ‘we’ve got to do something’ attitude, or perhaps they are seeing through the eyes of their children and grandchildren that the traditional model of church isn’t working for them, and asking themselves if there is a way to find something new that will get their attention and get them involved again.”

At its core, fresh expressions of church are about churches listening to who people are, and how they are, and creating forms of church that connect with their needs.  Officially, a fresh expression of church is “A fresh expression of church is a form of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church.  It will come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and making disciples.   It will have the potential to become a mature expression of church shaped by the gospel and the enduring marks of the church and for its cultural context.”  The Vision Day was an opportunity to learn how fresh expressions can empower churches to relate to contemporary culture, instead of railing against it.  Accidentally dressed alike in t-shirts and cargo pants, which they now jokingly call a fresh expressions “uniform”, the message from workshop leaders, The Rev. Ryan Sim (Parish of Kitley) and the Rev. Matthew Kydd (Parish of Oxford) was that we need to accept that the social landscape of Sunday has changed and that we can’t go back.  Ryan Sim says that fresh expressions of church “answer God’s call to ‘go and make disciples’ and respond to the deep spiritual hunger that exists in our society today.”

One of the key features of a Vision Day is a character discovery exercise.  Working in an interactive group setting, the exercise first challenges participants to identify a person or demographic whom they are not currently serving in their church community and then to imagine an identity for this individual – ranging from the simplest details like a name and what they might watch on TV, to more intimate details like where they might go on vacation and what they might do while away.  The Rev. Blair Peever, Incumbent of Christ Church Cataraqui and member of the Diocesan Evangelism Committee said the exercise is designed to get people out of their comfort zones and to challenge them on “how much they know and how much they don’t know about the groups and demographics that they are not currently serving through their churches.”

In the second part, the groups were asked to tap into their imaginative centres and create a church for their characters.  During the sharing portion of this exercise, participants were introduced to “Justin”, the skateboarder, who – sometime after his return from vacation in California – would attend a rather untraditional service right in the bowl of his local skateboard park.  They might gravitate towards use of the Old and New Testaments in full-colour comic-strip form from the Comic-Strip Bible series.  Another group developed a church for a homeless man named “George” who, together with his friends, would gather for communal acts of worship at mealtime in a soup kitchen.  Their worship music of choice would be the “oldies” with a blues vibe played on harmonica.  Because some of them might have literacy challenges, they might not use a written translation of the bible, but rather opt for the Gospel in a story-telling format.  These are just highlights of the kinds of fresh expressions that were imagined as people freed themselves to envision their church reaching out to a changing society.  The team’s hope is that parishes will conduct the same exercise, not with imaginary characters, but by getting to know those who actually live in their communities.

I was beginning to wonder if this level of “coolness” and Anglicanism could peacefully coexist in the real world, at which point Ryan Sim and Matt Kydd led us through a set of core values for fresh expressions that attempts to bring the “cool factor” in line with our theology and our traditions.  In a conversation during the lunch break with The Rev. Nick Trussell, another member of the Diocesan Evangelism Committee, shared that “when we look at the core values of a fresh expression of church we will recognize them as the values of the churches we’re already in.  Being mission-shaped, transformative, sacrificial – these are all marks of the church that we know and we can’t let those things go simply for the sake of fresh expressions.  Fresh expressions need to be more than something that is just engaging or ‘cool’, they need to truly present the Gospel of Christ.  We can get a community together around skateboarding, but we need to do it in a way that is done for the Glory of God”.

For more information about fresh expressions or to find out about an upcoming Vision Day please visit:  http://www.freshexpressions.ca/

“We speak of the Church, we pray for the Church and now we are growing in our capacity to plant Churches… BUT how do we know it’s Church????

As the grain from which the bread we break was made 

were once scattered over the fields,

and then gathered together and made one,

so may your Church be gathered from all over the earth into your kingdom.

~ from the Didache 9, as reprinted in 2000 Years of Prayer, M. Counsell, ed., Canterbury Press, 1999

 What is it we mean by “Church”?  This question has been asked and answered thousands, tens of thousands of times throughout the centuries.  One thing that is commonly attested is that we refer to the whole body of Christ, meaning all the people throughout the world who believe in Jesus Christ, when we talk about “the Church.”  However, sometimes we get confused between the Church as the body of Christ, and the Church as an institution, or even the church as a place.”…

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I came across an article in TimesOnline about a month ago now. It was a top twenty list of the most religiously offensive cultural moments of the last thirty or so years. The article, “The Blasphemy Collection” listed one of my personal favorites. Monty Python’s Life of Brian was there with its infamous protagonist, Brian Cohen, who, being born in the stable next to Jesus’, spends the rest of his life mistaken for the Messiah. Especially offensive in this one is the final crucifixion scene where those being executed burst into song, “Always look on the bright side of life” with Eric Idle playing the lead singer crucifee. What I didn’t realize was that this film wasn’t officially shown in some countries for years after it was made (in Ireland it took 8 years, in Italy 11 years!) because of the offence it caused to some Christian groups.

There were some other more arcane moments in this top twenty, like the artist Cosimo Cavallaro’s My Sweet Lord, a 200lb figure of the crucified Christ carved entirely out of chocolate, which was pulled from a New York art gallery after protest from the Catholic League during Holy Week earlier this year.

Now there were also some whose vulgarity even shocked me (which, I must admit, takes a bit of work), but I’ll save you from those (just follow the link, if you’d like). What I want to get at is that it’s easy to be offended when we feel as if our faith is being ridiculed, or when we feel as if the profane is encroaching too close to the sacred. It’s sort of a natural reaction. St. Paul, though, had a different idea. For St. Paul, the cross is an offence; the sacred is profaned in the reality of the cross of Jesus. Here’s Paul, writing to the congregation at Corinth:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…. we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are…

It’s a bit of a cliché to say that the church has domesticated the message of the cross, but I’ll say it anyways. Imagine for a moment, if you will, that this coming Sunday, instead of a cross sitting atop the steeple of your church as you’re walking in, there was, in its place, an electric chair. Digest that for a minute. Then, when you walk inside, this common symbol of execution is all over the place, even hanging around the necks of some of the people inside. How many of you would voluntarily associate yourselves with such an offensive place and with people like this? Well, given that you’re reading this, you probably do so on a weekly basis. Maybe now you can appreciate a little better this “foolishness” the apostle is talking about.

Perhaps it takes some of our artists, poets, writers, and film makers—the best of religion’s cultured despisers—to remind us, as St. Paul reminded the believers at Corinth, that what we’re all about is, at first, second, and maybe even third glance, foolish. And why foolishness? Why does Paul use this language? Not because, it seems to me, he wanted to delight in the absurd (after all, he was a fairly reasonable person), or even because he wanted to confound conventional wisdom, but because, for Paul the God who is revealed at the cross, the God who is revealed in weakness and death, is, by all appearances, a fool (how’s that for offensive?)!

And we’re called to follow this God, this Jesus in this way, in a way that seems to be a fool’s game, at least according to the rules of this world. This crucified God is an offence. This God offends our sense of what we ought to value, of what’s up and of what’s down. Power, strength, security, and success are the goals of the game according to our pervasive culture of entitlement. But this God has changed the rules, upended our game, and has showed us, from the darkness and offence of the cross, the true bright side of life.

1 Making Sense out of Suffering

The Shack is an unusual book, and for me the measure of that is that I have put it on a very short list of helpful books to do with suffering and evil. The list really came about by accident. For years I have felt that the best book I knew on suffering is Peter Kreeft’s Making Sense out of Suffering. It is in Kreeft’s best style: lucidly written, witty, wide ranging (“Seven Clues from the Artists” is a typical chapter heading), and in the form of a dialogue—by which I mean that The Reader frequently interrupts Kreeft with “What on earth do you mean by that?” or “Well, OK, but how do you explain X?” or even “You’ve got to be kidding!”

2 Cry the Beloved Country

Then, more recently, my wife encouraged me to re-read Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton’s heart-breaking 1948 novel of a black South African pastor’s son who goes to the big city and gets into deadly trouble. As I read it, I thought with amazement (how could I have been so slow?): this is actually a book about the problem of suffering. Probably I hadn’t seen it that way before because, well, I was twenty-five years younger for one thing, but also, I suppose, because we now live in a postmodern world where story is more powerful than proposition. Not that Paton gives you The Answer to the problem of suffering—he hardly even gives you An Answer—but he shows you something more helpful—a man of faith (the pastor, Stephen Kumalo) coping with the most unimaginable evil with grace and patience and love that are both remarkable and totally believable. So that went on the list.

3 The Boys

The other book that’s on my short list, and which speaks of suffering in a narrative kind of way, is by a friend and neighbour of mine, John Terpstra, nominated for the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry in 2004. In 2005, John wrote a book—not poetry this time—simply called The Boys, about his wife’s three younger brothers, who died, one after another in their teens, of muscular dystrophy. The amazing thing about this book, like Cry the Beloved Country—although this is a true story, not fiction—is to watch a family of deep faith dealing with the most outrageous form of suffering possible (to lose one child is inconceivable to most of us—to lose three is beyond words) with resilience and faith, and even humour. And that went on the list.

4 The Shack

And so to The Shack. This is fiction—although it is clear that the author himself, William Young, and his family have endured trials beyond the lot of most people—and it is also about the problem of suffering.

The story opens with the main character—Mack—receiving a note from God, inviting him to meet at the shack. Mack’s youngest daughter Missy was abducted and killed some years earlier at this shack—and now God is inviting Mack to meet him there. If that were not a bizarre enough premise, when Mack arrives, he is greeted affectionately by a large black woman named Papa, Papa’s son Jesus, who looks Middle Eastern, and Sarayu, a mysterious Asian-looking woman. Yes; you guessed it: this is the meeting with God.

Over the course of a weekend with this God, Mack has endless discussions with the three, and has (literally) awesome experiences and encounters which change him, his outlook on life, his feelings towards God . . . and the murder of his daughter.

The book is far more didactic than either Cry the Beloved Country or The Boys—what would you expect in conversations with God?—but on the whole Young’s touch is light and even humorous, and the lessons find their mark. One friend commented, “But he doesn’t answer the question!” And it is true: why do awful things happen in this world? If you surgically extracted the lessons of The Shack, you would probably end up with ten propositions about suffering and evil that are familiar to any thoughtful Christian. On the other hand, the lack of new conclusions shouldn’t surprise or even disappoint us: author after author over millennia—from the Book of Job to, well, Peter Kreeft—has wrestled with the question and done the best that limited human beings are ever going to do. Nobody is going to wake up tomorrow morning and cry, “Eureka! Finally I have it: The Answer to the problem of suffering!”

So, yes, Young traverses familiar ground in terms of the content of what he says about the problem of suffering. What is new is the way he tackles it: in the form of a story that is alternately harsh and whimsical, realistic and mystical. What he says about suffering may not be new, but the way he says it engages the imagination and the heart in such a way as to circumvent what C.S.Lewis calls “the watchful dragons” which keep us from a real encounter with God—the God who made the world, who allows the world to suffer, who suffers along with the world, and who will one day wipe away every tear. A God who might just appear as a large black woman called Papa.

The first part of this article was about in-house distinctions of spirituality: what are the different branches of the Christian tree, if you like. In this second part, I want to think about—well, I guess the opposite of in-house is out-house—what distinguishes Christian spirituality, this Christian tree (whichever of the five types we’re taking about) from other forms of spirituality?

Before we get to that, a couple of things by way of introduction:

1. You have probably noticed that the word spirituality is used in our culture as though it is just one thing, the same the world over. But in fact this is not the case. Different religions and traditions actually have different definitions of what it means to be spiritual, and indeed of the idea of spirit. This is one reason the word is notoriously difficult to define!

Some time ago, my friend Faun Harriman drew my attention to an article in Chateleine magazine (that well-known authority on spirituality) which was quoting researchers at the U of T, who defined spirituality as “the beliefs we hold concerning our place in the universe and our connection to a higher power. Spirituality (they say) reduces stress, promotes healthy lifestyle choices and increases a sense of belonging.”

Is that right? Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Are those characteristics of Christians? Does Christian spirituality have to do with knowing our place in the universe? Yes, I suppose that’s part of it. Does it have to do with connection to a higher power? Sure, though it makes a big difference whether the name of your higher power is Jesus Christ or The Force of Star Wars!

Does it reduce stress and promote healthy lifestyle choices? Well, that depends. Faun commented that spirituality “didn’t exactly boost Jesus’ longevity.” Did it reduce his stress when he set his face to go to the cross? Was it a healthy lifestyle choice to oppose the Pharisees? What did the families of his disciples say when they went home and said the master had called them to take up their crosses and follow him? “Wow, that’s great. What a healthy lifestyle choice you are making! That’ll really increase your sense of belonging.” Probably not.

Those researchers are not describing Christian spirituality. They’re not making allowances for the diversities of spiritualities in our world.

If there could be a common definition, it would have to be a very minimal one, something like, “those things that connect a person to a bigger reality than the material.” As soon as we move beyond that, we start getting into differences.

2. The second thing is this: how many of us were using the word spirituality twenty years ago? Probably only one or two of us. So why has it become almost universal in recent years, as in the phrase, “I’m a spiritual person, but I’m not . . . religious”? There are at least a couple of reasons to do with changes in our culture:

(a) One change is that people have come to realise that there is more to the world than simply the material. We have realised that there are other parts of us, which for convenience we call our spirits, that also need tending and nurturing. It seems to me that that in itself is a good thing.

But the other reason it’s gained in popularity I don’t find so encouraging:

(b) In western countries thirty years ago, if we wanted to take care of our spirits, where would you go? We would probably have checked out some churches. But now we don’t want to do that, because we are “spiritual but not . . . religious.”

What’s the problem? Why do we make that distinction? I suspect that too is to do with changes in society in general. Church is too restrictive. After all, most churches/synagogues/temples/ mosques tend to have definite ideas about spirituality, and people now are more inclined to want to do their own thing, not accept someone else’s ideas. You’ve heard the kind of statement: “Nobody can tell me what to believe; nobody can tell me how to behave; I’ll decide what’s right and wrong for me.” It’s not rocket science to realise that that kind of attitude is hardly likely to drive people into the arms of organised religion (can you imagine someone saying, “I’m creating my own spirituality, so I’m thinking of becoming an Anglican”?). (It has to be said, however, that those who talk about organised religion obviously don’t have much experience of the average parish council.)

So the concern with spirituality actually comes out of the individualism of our world, it comes out of the idea that spiritual stuff is private and personal, and that if it’s for real it’s unlikely to have anything to do with an institution. (As someone pointed out recently, in our world, formal has come to signal hypocritical, while informal has come to mean genuine and authentic.)

These things should alert us to the fact that what Christian tradition has to say about spirituality may sound quite different, and not necessarily appealing to the average person who is “exploring their spirituality.”

One more thing: you know, don’t you, that the world divides into those who divide things into two categories and those who don’t? I do, so it won’t surprise you to know there are two ways of thinking about Christian belief and practice.

One is that it is like a tightrope—narrow and straight, and if you step even slightly to left or right, you’ll fall off. I know Christians who regard their spirituality that way, and maybe you do too. That’s not at all what I’m trying to do here: to define a tightrope for you.

The other way of thinking about it is that Christian belief and practice are like a field with a fence around it. It’s a big field, it’s a beautiful field, and there’s lots of space in the field for Colin and Astrid and Eddie and Chris and Samantha to run and jump and dance and explore and pick flowers. But the fence is there to say, This is the territory marked out for us by God: there are dangers outside.

So what I’m going to do is list some of what I would say are the fence posts that define the field of Christian spirituality.

Fence post 1: Christian spirituality centres around a relationship with God.

Now, you may ask, isn’t this stating the obvious? No, because this is not true for all spiritualities. Others might say the goal is to be one with the universe. (You know what the Buddhist said to the hotdog vendor? “Make me one with everything.” Buddhists tell that joke, so I think it’s OK.) Others might say the goal of my spirituality is self-fulfilment.

For someone like Shirley Maclaine, it is something else again:

I am God, you are God. God is not something or someone separate from the world or from me. . . . If one says audibly ‘I am God’ the sound vibrations literally align the energies of the body to a higher atunement. You can use – ‘I am God’ or ‘I am that I am’ as Christ often did . . . Each soul is its own God. You must never worship anyone or anything other than self. For YOU are God. To love self is to love God. (Dancing in the Light)

Now it’s her right and privilege to believe whatever she likes. But as a simple observation of fact, her understanding of God and hence her spirituality is not one shared by Jews, Christians or Muslims And all the streams of Christian faith we looked at in Part I say the same: God is in some mysterious sense has a quality we can only call personhood, and God is a “person” who is other than us.

C.S.Lewis describes a young woman whose parents were very concerned that she should not think of God as a person: as a result, when she was asked as an adult what her picture of God was, she replied, God is like an infinitely-extended tapioca pudding. No, as Christians understand God, it’s not like that. Think of the opening scene of the movie Contact, where the camera moves out from the earth, back and back and back, into the infinite vastness of the universe. The Christian claim is that behind all that, through it, in it, above it, is a vast, mysterious, wonderful, awesome Being who loves me and invites me into a face-to-face, I-Thou relationship.

And when we speak of the Incarnation, God being revealed in our world, it is as a person that God is known.

Suppose that Bill Watterson, the cartoonist who created Calvin and Hobbes, wants to communicate with his creations, Calvin and Hobbes. So he creates a new cartoon character, and draws him into the strip. His name is Bill Watterson. In character, he is very like the “real-life” Bill Watterson, but, of course, he exists in two dimensions, and he communicates through speech-bubbles. In the strip, this character shows what the “real” Bill Watterson is like: his ideas, his values, his attitude towards his creation are all consistent with those of the cartoonist. Thus Calvin and Hobbes can know their creator in a way that’s real authentic but of course it’s limited. They are faced with the possibility of a relationship with their Creator.

But this whole idea of incarnation only works because we believe God has this quality we can only inadequately describe as personhood.

Sometimes, you know, we may take it for granted, and talk flippantly about “my relationship with God”, or (to quote the movie Dogma) my “buddy Jesus” but actually it is radical and overwhelming thing to claim what Christians claim.

So this is our first fencepost: for followers of Jesus, the heart of our spiritual life is nothing more not less than to know God, this God, and to be known by this God. This is primary: everything else is secondary.

Here’s fencepost #2: Christian spirituality is not a do-it-yourself faith.

This too goes against the spirit of our age. We tend to say things like, “Do whatever feels good”; “Find whatever works for you”; “My beliefs are true for me but it doesn’t mean they’re true for you”; “Nobody can tell you what to believe.”

And so much current interest in spirituality takes a kind of mix and match approach: a bit of Buddhist meditation, a bit of Gregorian chant, and a weekly Catholic mass. In other words, take whatever practices you want from wherever you find them, and put them together in whatever way works for you (though what it means to say a spirituality “works” is not very clear). After all, who’s to tell you you’re wrong?

But in Christian tradition, the way we express the life of the spirit, the way we nurture our spirits, is not in the first place something we work out for ourselves. In this sense, Christianity is not a grass-roots faith: we don’t arrive at it by personal investigation or voting on it to find a consensus: it’s a top-down faith–by which (trust me) I don’t mean through bishops and synods particularly, but from God. Christian spirituality is, or at least claims to be, a gift from God, and our job is to receive it with gratitude. Now this is not to say there’s no freedom or diversity in Christian spirituality. Of course not—that’s what I wrote about in Part I.

This blend of a form given by God (on the one hand) and yet freedom that is up to us (on the other hand) is explained I think brilliantly by New Testament scholar Tom Wright. He suggests the Bible lets us in on the story God is writing about the world. (He says it’s a play in five acts. Following Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh in Truth is Stranger than  it Used to Be, I think it works better with six.)

• In Act 1, God creates an incredibly beautiful world. At the heart of it are human beings who live in a dance of perfect harmony with the Creator, with one another and with the environment.
• In Act 2, things go horribly wrong. Human beings try to play God. They step out of the choreography of God’s dance. They get out of step with one another, and with the environment, and, most importantly, out of step with God.
• In Act 3, God begins to restore his work of art to even more than its original glory by calling one elderly couple, Abraham and Sarah, to be the ancestors of a nation through whom this restoration will come.
• In Act 4, God writes himself into the script of human life, to model for us what human life should really look like, to die for our sins and to rise again.
• Act 5 is the period between Jesus’ return to heaven and his return; and:
• Act 6 is the end of our world, when Jesus returns and restores the world to more than its original beauty.

Now, says Tom Wright, suppose a previously unknown play of Shakespeare’s were found today. He suggests that it’s all there except Act 5, which is missing. What could you do about the missing act? He suggests the best thing would be to get together the world’s top Shakespearian actors, tell them to immerse themselves in the play as we have it, and then let them loose on the stage. They would perform acts 1, 2, 3 and 4 as Shakespeare wrote them, but then they would ad lib act 5! All they know is that their characters have to behave in a way that is consistent with the play up to this point, and (if there are six acts) it has to connect convincingly with the events of the final act.

Now, says Tom Wright: that’s where we are. God has given us a framework for our lives, to understand the story as it was before we came on the scene, and as it will be after we are gone. And it’s as though God says to us: This is my story: do you want to be a part of it? This is the way your spirit will come to life and flourish. It will stretch you, there will be adventures you could never have imagined. Sometimes it will be hard, but it will bring you joy. And it will be the right part for you, the part I dreamed for you before time began and for which you were made.

Fence post #3 really follows from this: Christian spirituality affects every aspect of life

Christianity, you know, is a horribly practical religion. Sometimes it would be nice if it were only a matter of candles and incense and prayers. (I think it was Chesterton who said that Judaism was the first religion in the world to link spirituality and ethics: if you follow this religion, you have to act in a certain ethical fashion. When you think about it, there is no obvious reason why you shouldn’t keep your worship life and the rest of your life separate: it depends on the kind of God you worship.) Christianity, the child of Judaism, is the same.

As a result, our spirituality will invade every corner of our lives, from our work lives to our sex lives, from our reading habits to our shopping habits.

And, if we ask why the Creator of the Universe would care about such everyday things, the answer is simple: because God made the whole of life, not just the religious bits of it, and because God loves us and wants us to enjoy life to the full in this amazing world. You know what the greatest privilege is for any human being? It’s to able to live as God’s person in God’s world in God’s way 24 hours a day. It’s the most beautiful thing in God’s world. It gives God great joy. That’s why it’s so important for our spirituality.

So:

• If you’re an artist, your art will be different because you love God. Not that it will all be realistic paintings of Bible scenes (heaven forbid! those are not necessarily Christian!). But as you paint a landscape (say), it will be with the knowledge that God made that landscape, and that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” If you paint a portrait, it will be with the knowledge that it is the image of God you are representing. And so on.

• If you are a store-keeper, you will be aware that your calling is to be the channel through which God’s material blessings come to those who need them. So you will sell products that honour the creator—that are well-made, that didn’t exploit those who made them, that are beautiful as well as useful—and you will treat your customers not as your source of income, but as amazing creatures who reflect the majesty of their Creator.

• If you are a teacher, you will teach with the consciousness that you are teaching children how to live in God’s world, how to treasure it, steward it, make responsible use of it. And you will treat your students equally because each is in the image of God, and because Christ died for each one.

We could go on, but you get the idea. This is part of spirituality? Absolutely. Because in Christian spirituality, there is no secular/sacred distinction, as Samantha tried to get through to us in Part I. Our spirituality filters into every corner of our lives, and brings light and beauty, meaning and joy.

After that, #4 may seem rather jarring:

Fence post #4 Christian spirituality is tough

Those researchers at U of T seem to have missed this one. But it is crucial. Think of Christians who are killed for their faith—more, we are told, in the twentieth century than in the previous nineteen put together—had they made a healthy lifestyle choice to follow Jesus? Yet Jesus made it very clear that anyone wanting to nurture their spirituality in the Christian tradition needs to know that it will mean some costly and uncomfortable choices, if it hasn’t already done so.

You know the sort of thing Jesus says: “Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, child, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s very self—can’t be my disciple. Anyone who won’t shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can’t be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27)

Jesus, frankly, is not a nice person who only wants us to be happy and comfortable, and his spirituality is probably not a kind of spirituality we would choose, left to our own devices: “Hmm, I’ve got some ceremony here, I’ve got some mystery and some meditation. I think what I’m missing is a little suffering, and I guess I’d better be open to the possibility of martyrdom. Sure: why not?”

It’s unlikely we would do that. But if we begin to explore Christian spirituality, we will quite quickly discover that this is inescapable. After all, the cross of Jesus Christ is the central symbol for Christian faith. And we are told that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” so in the crucifixion God has also suffered. C.S.Lewis even wonders whether the act of creation itself may have been a kind of crucifixion for God: “Perhaps there is an anguish, an alienation, a crucifixion involved in the creative act.” (Letters to Malcolm) In other words, difficulty, suffering, hardship are inseparable from the heart of Christian faith.

But let’s notice this too: Jesus is not being a sadist when he says such things, though it can look like that at first sight; in fact, there can be days when it feels like it. No: actually the opposite: he’s being kind. He has understood something very profound about the way God has built the world. Listen again: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:23-25). Did you get it? God’s ultimate goal is not that we should lose our lives: he wants us to save our lives and he’s telling us the way to do that.

Now, this death and resurrection can happen in any one of a million ways. It’s about ten years now since I decided I was meant to be an evangelist (I’m still embarrassed by the word), and, as you might expect, it wasn’t an easy choice. I was doing good ministry, working with students, directing an area and supervising staff. But then there came a crisis: one of my staff burned out and I felt I was responsible and that I should resign. IVCF kindly said, We don’t want you to resign, but maybe there is a different job you should be doing with IVCF.

Well, as I thought about it, two options came to mind: one was that maybe I could be a teacher of the Bible available to students across the country; the other was to offer myself as an evangelistic speaker for students across the country. I had recently read Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled, and as a result I was thinking about the importance of taking risks. That would mean the evangelism option—certainly a road less travelled. Bible teaching would have meant appreciative audiences; evangelism could mean the opposite! And what if it didn’t work out? What would I do with my life then? What if no-one wanted an itinerant evangelist (specially an Anglican one!)? Did I even want to be known as an evangelist? What if no-one became a Christian through my ministry? What if there was opposition to the Gospel? Would there be the financial support to do it? It felt a lot like a choice to “give up my life”.

But it was one of those times when I knew Jesus was saying, “Take up your cross . . . If you give up your life you will find it.” To my amazement, within a couple of months, I had received invitations for the following two years. I was involved in that ministry of evangelism for almost ten years, and I have to tell you I have seldom found such joy in serving God. To my faithless surprise, I found that Jesus was right: when I gave up my life, I found my life.

Well, no two stories are identical, and I don’t know how Jesus has called you to give up your life or where he will call you to give up your life. But this I know: if you are a follower of Jesus, it will happen if it hasn’t happened already. It feels like cruelty, but in fact it’s kindness, and it’s central to Christian spirituality.

The next fence post can also feel like a death.

Fence post #5 Christian spirituality thrives in community

Again, there are many spiritualities which are individual and private. You can just figure it out for yourself, you can practice by yourself. There may be no-one else in the world who shares your spirituality, and that may not be important for you. But Christian spirituality is inescapably corporate.

I suspect for most of us this community thing happens on different levels. For myself, it works like this. My wife Deborah is my closest source of Christian community, with whom I read the Bible and pray and share life every day. But then I also have a prayer partner, a male, with whom I meet every three weeks or so, and we share different kinds of things and pray for one another. I have a men’s Bible study group called “Saturday Stuff for Guys” which meets every other Saturday morning, which I wouldn’t miss for the world because it brings me great encouragement. And then there is the larger, Sunday congregation, some of whom I know and love well, some of whom I hardly know at all, and some of whom (if I’m honest) I find a bit difficult.

But if Christian community feeds our spirituality, it can also be a real pain in the anatomy and very destructive. I bought a second hand car recently, and it turned out that the dealer was a Christian. I asked him what church he attended, and he said, “I’m not involved in church right now. I go to my Promise Keepers group, but that’s it. You know, I’d heard the saying that the church is the only army that shoots its own wounded. Now I know what that means.” And he wouldn’t tell me any more, so I didn’t pry.

If it’s any consolation, it’s never been easy. Even when Jesus hung out with the twelve, more than once they were divided over who was the most important among them. And the reason we have much of the New Testament is because letters had to be written to churches that were divided!

The easiest response to problems in the church, I know, is to say, Oh, I’m going to leave this church and go over to the next one. Eugene Peterson in his book Under the Unpredictable Plant says this is why the Benedictine Order added to the traditional three monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience the vow of stability. What does that mean? It means you can’t switch monasteries. Deborah discovered this not long ago, when she happened to be visiting a Benedictine monastery, and learned that not only can monks never leave their monastery, they will sit between the same two people every mealtime of their lives until they die and someone takes their place. (You just hope they have good table manners.)

Does it sound extreme? Maybe, but it’s saying something important. Christian spirituality is not nurtured in a community consisting of all the people we like best in the world. It grows by learning to live and work and worship with all God’s people, the difficult ones as well as the easy going ones, the ones who are like us and the ones who are different from us.

This isn’t just something God dreamed up to make life difficult for us. Rather, it’s God saying, This is how you function best. If you work at this, this is how you reflect who I am. After all, if God is a community of three, and we are in God’s image, then it is only in community that we will grow into the likeness of our Creator.

Conclusion

So . . . five fence posts around the field of Christian spirituality. Christians don’t need to be ashamed of their spirituality or apologise for it or water it down. It makes sense, it’s resilient, and, in spite of the abuses, it has produced the fruit of beautiful lives for two thousand years.

But, you know, I have to confess I don’t really like talking about Christian spirituality. It seems to me one of the good things about political correctness is that we call people what they want to be called. So we don’t call the Inuit Eskimo any more, because that’s not what they call themselves; we don’t call First Nations people Indians any more because it’s inaccurate and it’s not how they think of themselves. (I would like to think that one day this principle will be applied to the Welsh, since Welsh is an Old English word meaning foreigner.)

But what of Christians? Even “Christian” isn’t a word that Christians chose for themselves: it was a label stuck on them by other people. And I for one don’t particularly want to be thought of as an adherent of Christian spirituality! Sounds so dry, doesn’t it?

The way I want to think of myself is the way the first Christians thought of themselves, simply as disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus, students of Jesus. The focus is not on us and our spirituality but on the journey and on him, our Teacher and Friend, our Lord and Guide, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

A few years ago, I was leading a workshop on evangelism, and said something about “the Gospel.” An elderly gentleman in the front row spoke up and said, “I’ve been in church all of my life, and I can’t say I have ever heard anything I would call ‘the Gospel’.” Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), his priest was sitting beside him, and turned to him open-mouthed: “But you hear it every Sunday!” he gasped.

So who was right? In a way, both of them were. Certainly there are many references in our prayer books (both BCP and BAS) to “the Gospel” and we always have a “Gospel” reading-so the priest was right. But Gospel means “good news”-and somehow that parishioner had never heard anything in church that struck him as really, really Good News.

So what is the Gospel? There are many ways to describe it, but I believe most of them, while true, are not big enough:

• The Gospel is that through the death of Jesus our sins can be forgiven, and the gates of eternal life are open to us. That is great news, of course, and we celebrate it every time we say confession and are absolved. But it’s only a piece of the truth.

• The Gospel is that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are offered reconciliation with God, and as a result, a peace and a purpose that comes from knowing our Creator. That’s wonderful news-and many people long for such peace and purpose-but it’s more than that.

• The Gospel is that by following Jesus, we become the people God designed us to be. The Holy Spirit shapes us, drawing out our gifts, helping us deal with our failings, so we can become more like Jesus. That is truly good news-far better to be God’s person than to be “my own person”-but it’s still not the whole story. 

So what is the whole story?

I was born after the Second World War, and I remember my parents talking about the effects of that victory. My father came home, put aside his army uniform, and entered university. I was conceived and, in due time, born. Windows no longer had to be blacked out at night. Food rationing came to an end (though not as soon as people hoped). Every single change that peace brought was good news to someone. Every aspect of “normal life” that was restored brought joy to people.

But none of these single changes was the biggest good news of all. All were the trickle-down effect of what was truly the best good news: that the war was over.

Something similar is true of the examples I gave of the Gospel above. They are some of the authentic ways the Gospel impacts us as individuals. They are real and they bring joy. But what then is the overarching truth, the equivalent of “the war is over”?

I can’t do better than to quote Jesus’ words at the beginning of his ministry: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:14-15)

The good news is that God, the God of Israel, Creator of the cosmos, is doing something new in the world, and we are invited to be a part of it. That “something new” Jesus called “the Kingdom.” That “something” hinges on Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. That “something” is at work in the world at this moment, bringing life and hope and healing everywhere it goes. And that “something” will ultimately bring about the renewal of the whole of God’s world, such that it can be called “a new heaven and a new earth.” That’s the really big good news, that’s the equivalent of “the war is finished.”

And our response to the Gospel? According to Jesus, “Repent and believe.” Too bad “repent” and “believe” have become such exclusively religious (and often negative) words. They’re not meant that way. “Repent” means basically to change our minds.  Jesus is saying, “Give up your petty ambitions and plans: they’re not big enough. Don’t you know the amazing adventure God is inviting you to?” And “believe” means to commit ourselves to that adventure -to throw our lot in with Jesus and with the new thing God is up to in our world.

Isn’t that good news?

First printed in The Anglican, Newspaper of the Diocese of Toronto, October 2008

Vision Day in Rosemere, Quebec

Fresh Expressions…honestly?  Sounds like an air freshener.  Reality?  It is.  Unfortunately, the air surrounding the institution of the Anglican church these days seems to be stagnant; as such, we need to refresh ourselves and  re-evaluate who we are as CHRISTIANS.  Christ commissioned us to “GO and make disciples of every nation…”  Yet we seem to be fixated on the concept of “come to us, and we’ll make you disciples.”  We have turned away from the mission to which Jesus has called us.  Fresh Expressions challenges us to envision what being a mission people is all about at a congregational level. 

I am a 39-year-old “cradle Anglican”.  For those unfamiliar with that term it means I have been attending since my birth.  My three sons, aged six, three and six months are also cradle Anglicans. Both my father and brother are Anglican ministers.  I have been ensconced in tradition my entire life, and I have come to truly appreciate it.  Having said that, I realize that for most of my peers, our ways are not their ways.  Yet I still have a calling from God.  Saturday, September 20, 2008, I and my six month old son, Joshua, were among more than 30 members of 5 Montreal North Shore parishes and from 2 parishes in the Diocese of Ontario who were gathered at St. James, Rosemere, for a special Vision Day.  Nick Brotherwood presented Fresh Expressions, a “form of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church”.  With dwindling numbers in the pews, many churches are facing uncertainty.   Yet, as long time members of these churches, we strive to keep our parishes afloat.  Why?  The spirit urges us to keep the faith.  It is not that the world is neither in need of God nor of his healing and fulfilling spirit.  It is simply that society is changing while the methods of the church are not.  I am NOT suggesting that we tackle the issue of doctrine.  I am suggesting that we need to be alive and open to the spirit and alive and open to the NEEDS of the communities in which we find ourselves.  Do we REALLY listen to their needs?  Do we REALLY know WHO is in our communities? 

Fresh Expressions challenges us to open ourselves to methods of service and worship to which we are perhaps not familiar.  In one inner city church in England, for instance, the church opens its doors at pub-closing, and invites people to come and chat or pray.  In another example, a Christian skateboard complex has been opened to suburban teenagers.  The teens are encouraged to explore worship through some of the skateboard tricks they attempt.  Not what we as staunch Anglicans are traditionally about.  But it does spread the word of God and the love and nurture of Jesus, and teenagers need that more than ever these days.  My personal favourite was a Fresh Expressions church called “The Messy Church”.  Here whole families are encouraged to come to worship through arts and through a communal suppertime meal.  It not only spreads the word to the children (something we tend to do in a segregated “Sunday School”), but it provides the adults with a spiritual forum while being close to their young ones.  AND IT’S FUN!!  In Montreal, Emerge would fall into the category of a Fresh Expressions type of church.  Catering to the inner city18-35 year old crowd, Emerge creates a coffee shop setting for worship.  We have become such a coffee shop society, with Starbucks taking possession of every street corner, why not offer a church community to worship in that setting?  The Word stays the same.  Jesus meets us where we are. 

Vision Day in Rosemere, Quebec

It was a day to reflect, to listen, and to contemplate our future as an Anglican society.  It is time to re-focus our congregations’ mission. The average age of congregations is rising and we are seeing more and more empty pews.  Yes, it can be an unnerving concept to adapt to change – and by that I don’t mean either/or, but either/and. What doesn’t change, however, is the need for God’s spirit to move through our churches and to flow to the communities we serve.  What doesn’t change is the power He has to change lives.  What doesn’t change is His love and faith in us.  Nor, then, should ours waver in Him.  While Fresh Expressions emphasizes the Great Commission’s “GO”, let us never forget the last part of that Great Commission:  “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Peace and God’s Blessings,
Christine Sandilands

Want to know more about Vision Days?  Contact Nick Brotherwood, the Assistant Director of the Institute.

What is unique about the Christian faith, I shared, is that God came to Earth as one of us, the very best of us, and so the starting point is not that we have to do the impossible, but that in living the life we could not, and conquering death for us, God has already done it.  Of course our faith has rules and laws, including the Ten Commandments, but as a worshipful response to God’s loving gift of eternal life, rather than as a prerequisite.  He told me he had never heard the gospel story all at once before, and when it came time to go, my new friend was reflectively saying, “that makes a lot of sense” before we traded email addresses to keep in touch. 

What friend of yours echoes a familiar story from scripture?  Do you know a prodigal like the one in Luke 15?  Someone worshipping a nebulous “Unknown God” like those Paul met in Acts 17?  A curious reader like the one Philip met in Acts 8?  As we continue to grow as disciples of Christ, and naturally share our faith with family, friends, and even with new friends as I did this Spring, our witness will often follow the shape of such stories in scripture. Luke 18:18-27 (The Rich Young Ruler) – A certain ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honour your father and mother.” ‘ He replied, ‘I have kept all these since my youth.’ When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’  Those who heard it said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ He replied, ‘What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.’ (NRSV)

So it is with most spiritual conversations.  We enter them unprepared, in the midst of other, seemingly irreligious activities.  My most fruitful spiritual conversations have taken place in living rooms, coffee shops, ambulances and climbing gyms.  They are the conversations I relish most as a priest, and yet they arise regularly in my personal, everyday relationships, the ones that all Christians share.  It is through these spiritual conversations with everyday Christians in everyday situations that people reguarly come to faith in Christ.

If you are like most Christians, I imagine such spiritual questions have been asked of you by friends or family, and you have been equally unprepared.  Why do you go to church?  What is it like?  What do you believe about this, or that?  These conversations can provoke fear and anxiety for the average Christian.  I belive this likely comes from an impression that we need to be Billy Graham, that a spiritual conversation only succeeds if it leads someone from spiritual nothingness to full-fledged discipleship.  This is seldom true.  Good spiritual conversations are seldom one-time encounters, but usually just another chapter in a long spiritual journey shared by two or more friends, in the venerable tradition of the Emmaus Road. 

In my case, I was unprepared to answer my friend’s questions, being unfamiliar with the book he had read and the challenges to Christianity that it posed.  A knee-jerk reaction would have ended the conversation, but with my offer to read the book and respond, we entered into a spiritual conversation that lasted months and led us to much deeper questions.

The Gospels record the spiritual conversations Jesus had with people in the midst of everyday life, such as the woman at the well.  His followers, like Philip, carried on the tradition, and we as his disciples today are called, in fact commanded, to keep sharing the story. 

I don’t know how you feel about that sermon, but the reason I dislike it is that, to be honest, it seems a bit of a rip-off.  Personally, I’d be willing to give up 10% of the blessing for 10% more certainty.
 
I remember once doing a debate with a philosophy professor in Montreal. In the course of the debate, I said something about Jesus coming back from death, and he immediately shot back, “Sure Jesus is alive. You mean like Elvis?” So is that what the resurrection means? A combination of wishful thinking, sentimentality and superstition, on a level with thinking that Elvis is alive?

Let me offer you six ways I have come across for thinking about the resurrection which might be more helpful than simply being told to “believe anyway”:

1. The first is what I would call the historical approach. By that I mean that it seems to work for some people to consider the historical evidence for the resurrection. My wife became a Christian at university, under the influence of some friends who had themselves recently come to faith in Jesus, and they gave her books on this subject. Her conclusion, like that of many others who have followed that route, was that Jesus must indeed have risen from the dead, and that therefore she should follow him.

The Bishop of Durham in England, Tom Wright, has written an 800-page book on the resurrection, Jesus and the Victory of God. He points out that, at the time of Jesus, there were dozens of so-called “Messiahs” around, and not a few of them ended up getting crucified. However, in all cases but one, once that happened, that was the end of the messianic movement. But in the case of Jesus, the opposite happened: the movement he started, instead of dying, grew until it reached the whole world. Something must have happened: but what was it? That’s the question. (The authors of books such as The Jesus Family Tomb don’t seem to have considered this.) The resurrection, impossible though it may seem, makes perfect sense.

Now, of course, this is not the only way to approach the resurrection. If it were, the church would be full of historians. But I don’t need to tell you there are historians who don’t believe, and non-historians who do believe, though for other reasons. But this still seems to be a helpful avenue for some.

2. Then there are some people say, Hey, I don’t have a problem with the resurrection. It happens all the time. Look at the spring: trees and followers which seemed to be dead a few days before come to life, butterflies burst out of apparently lifeless chrysalises. There’s resurrection for you. No problem.

Now, I confess this approach doesn’t work for me. It seems to me there is a world of difference between a seed that appears to be dead and a person who is actually dead. And seeds “come to life” millions of times every day, yet there is only one recorded instance of a human resurrection. So I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.

At the same time, you might point out that it is the same God who is behind the spring and the resurrection; and Jesus did say his death would be like a seed falling into the ground to die and then bearing fruit. So there is a kind of (what can we call it?) artistic style in the spring and the resurrection which is similar. So maybe this is an approach which will work for you.

3. Some people are helped by not looking at the question of the resurrection in isolation. After all, whether you believe in the resurrection depends on what you believe about God. If there is no God, of course, it’s highly unlikely that there could be a resurrection. But, on the other hand, if there is a God like the God Jesus spoke about, then resurrection makes perfect sense. In fact, what would have been strange would have been if there had been no resurrection.

So for this approach to work, the question is: Is there a God and, if so, what is this God like, and what does this God think about Jesus?

4. Other people are helped by listening to people’s stories when they say that the living Jesus has had an effect on their lives. Three examples spring to mind:

* One friend of mine is a librarian and historian, and not the sort of person we generally think of as (what shall we say?) given to mindless religious fanaticism. Yet he says in a firm, matter-of-fact kind of way, that Jesus changed his life.

* Another friend who grew up Jewish had a vision of the risen Jesus, and became a Christian. He is now an army chaplain, and recently served a term in Afghanistan. Again, not someone you would exactly identify with religious hysteria.

* A third friend is a criminal lawyer (not a group known for their gullibility) whose son was miraculously healed a few years ago in answer to prayer. The local newspaper wanted to write an article about it, with the headline. “God healed my son” but my friend said, No, I want the headline to say, “Jesus healed my son.” 

And there are so many stories like this. The question is: do these stories ring true? I remember a sermon (one I did like) on Newton’s second law of motion, which (if I remember rightly) says that a body moving in a particular direction will only change direction if a force from outside, moving in a different direction, impacts it. That’s what these people are saying: my life was going in one direction, then it changed direction, and I believe that the “outside force” was that of Jesus. So what do we make of all this? For some, that’s a fruitful approach to thinking about the resurrection.

5. If the historical question appeals to the mind, this one appeals to the imagination. Some people find it helpful to do a thought experiment: not so much looking into the tomb to see if we can figure out what’s there (or not); but rather standing at the door of the tomb and looking out at the world. How does the world look different if Jesus did rise? How would my life look different today? This week? How would death look different if Jesus did rise? Would it make more sense or less? Try it and see what happens.
 

Bishop John Spong once said, “My daughter-in-law is a scientist. How can she possibly believe in a physical resurrection?” To which Bishop William Willimon replies, “Has she really that little imagination?” Imagination is not against reason: but it can illuminate reason.

6. My last suggestion is this. A friend in Ottawa is a senior civil servant. For years he went to church with his wife because she believed and he wanted be supportive. But he didn’t have what he considered the necessary feelings to call himself a Christian. Then a mutual friend said, “Dave, faith isn’t a matter of feelings. It’s a matter of choice. You choose to believe.” Dave isn’t particularly into “getting in touch with his feelings” anyway, but the idea of choice is something that makes sense to him. So he chose to believe, and his life changed. And maybe that is the approach that will work for you.

Most people, however, don’t believe in the resurrection because of any single thing. Maybe that’s true for all the most important things we believe in. After all, if I ask you why you think Canada is a great country, you would probably give me lots of answers: the Rockies, the CBC, Shania Twain, the Maple Leafs (well, maybe not the last). And all of our answers would be true because it’s such a big part of us. So with the resurrection: it may be any combination of these six approaches (or of any others, of course) that helps you.

It may be that you say, “Well, I still can’t believe.” Personally, I am encouraged that the first disciples also had a hard time believing, and yet they were still considered true disciples. After all, when Jesus first told them he would die and rise again, they basically told him, “Jesus, that’s really not a smart idea.” They just didn’t get it. And even after forty days of appearances after the resurrection, as he was about to return to heaven, Luke tells us “and some doubted.” These were the diehard doubters, far moreso than Thomas. And yet they are still called disciples.

Maybe our problem is that we think of believing as a thing that happens in our minds. But John’s Gospel uses the word “believe” more or less as the equivalent of “follow”. So in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus says, “Follow me”, whereas in John he says, “Believe in me.” In other words, for John, “believing” like “following” is something you do with your feet and your hands and your heart in the first place: the head figures things out afterwards.

And I’m encouraged by the fact that Jesus, like the good teacher he is, is patient with doubters, not just with Thomas but with those who doubted at his ascension–and with us too.  My hunch is that we will always have doubts. In fact, doubts are good for us, because they help separate the wheat from the chaff in what we believe.  We don’t get extra brownie points from God for believing without question.

The thing to do with our doubts and questions is to do what those first disciples did, to bring them to Jesus, and to say, Lord, I don’t know whether I believe, I don’t know what I believe, but I do want to learn to follow you, and I’m open to learning if you’re open to teaching. And you know what? He is. And as John’s Gospel promises, as we learn and follow, we will figure out what to believe and find “life in his name.”