Disciple Making For Introverts

Jesus made disciples, and sent them to make disciples who would in turn make disciples.  This is the way of life we are called to.


When I look at the Gospel accounts of the start of this process for Jesus, I see:
that a group of people are drawn to him, and invited to spend time with him;
and that, from out of that group he calls specific people who he will focus investment in, people who are shown him by his Father as he prays about who to invite.


This would seem to me to be the model Jesus gives us.  But Jesus is clearly very at home in social gatherings, is clearly the sort of person to whom others are drawn; and I am an introvert.  Not only that, but I know that I am not alone!  So how do we navigate the first stage of discipleship as introverts?


Not everyone is drawn to extraverts.  Indeed, some people are repelled by extraverts.  There will always be people who are drawn to introverts – and not only other introverts – but this will almost certainly be a slower process and a smaller number of people than will gather to extraverts in general and certainly to apostles who are, among other things, natural people-gatherers.  And if this is our only model, we will be frustrated!  Certainly, we have found that it takes a long time to see people respond to our repeated invitations to share our lives with them (my wife is not an introvert, but having been married to me for so long has made her more attuned to introvert preferences); but also that the few who do have often (though not always) become very committed friends.


Starting with a smaller group of people to choose from, I think there is a temptation to hope to invest meaningfully in each of these people.  Experience tells me that this is a mistake, and one that sets us up for disappointment.  Indeed, it has been those people where I have had a very clear sense of God’s voice saying “I have sent this person to you” that have proven to be the most lasting relationships.


Throughout this initial, perhaps speculative or at least preparatory stage, we have modelled those values that are core to us: values that include hospitality, and service; values that have marked every community we have nurtured.  Over the years, the number of people who have responded has been relatively few; but, we have seen those who God has given us to disciple reproduce those values, in a host of diverse expressions, all over the world.  And again, this is what we see modelled by Jesus, who, though he drew large crowds, invested in a few, and in so doing touched – and continues to touch and to transform – the whole world.


So be the person God created you to be, with your preferences and interests, and watch to see who is open to you.  Then be unswervingly true to who God has made you – not because they need to become your clone, but because the discipler sets the culture, in order that, having assimilated the values, the disciple expresses those values in their own ‘voice’ and so becomes a discipler in turn...

Commemoration : Imitation : Discipleship

Today in the Church Calendar is the commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran Pastor who was executed by the Nazis on this day in 1945.  Bonhoeffer was a prophetic voice in a dark time, and continues to inspire those who are called to call the church to repent and believe, to forsake the false comfort of nostalgic patterns to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of us.


I am thinking, how do we commemorate a life?  I believe we best commemorate a life not by enfolding it within those very nostalgic patterns, but by identifying something in that life that we choose to imitate.  And by imitate I do not mean slavishly attempt to copy – we are called to grow into ourselves, not into someone else’s calling – but to ask, what would that look like for me?


Recently, Jo and I, along with our good friend Mark Carey, have been reflecting on what we experienced, and he observed, in Sheffield when Mike Breen was Rector at St Thomas.’  Mike lived by the apostle Paul’s pattern, “imitate me as I imitate Christ.”  Mike called people to join his team, and he and Sally invested their lives in us.  We were regular guests in their home.  I was part of a group of people who Mike met with on a weekly basis – and Jo was part of a similar group Sally called together – and week by week they would share with us what God was showing them.  Week by week, we were brought to Jesus; and we saw the difference that Jesus made in our lives, we watched transformation take place in the lives of others.


In time, we were challenged to go and do likewise, to invite people into our lives, to bring them to Jesus.  Not that we were completely Christ-like by any means – and neither were Mike and sally – but because this was Christ’s model, investing in a certain group of people, making disciples who in turn would make disciples.


Since we have left Sheffield, we have not experienced anywhere else what we experienced there.  In college placements and curacies we have experienced vicars who chair business meetings, but not that sharing of life, not that bringing their team to Jesus.  Our observation is that it isn’t even on the radar: not for church leaders, and not the expectation of church members.


What has this to do with imitation?  Well, we are convinced that we are called to imitate what we saw in Mike and Sally, as they imitated what they saw in Jesus.  We are convinced that we are called to call people into life-on-life relationship, and in that context to bring them to Jesus, over and over again; and to challenge them to do likewise.  We are convinced that this is how it should be.  But, I am not Mike; and Jo is not Sally; and we are not in Sheffield.


Mike is an apostle.  He is larger-than-life.  He is someone to whom people are easily drawn, to whom people gather.  Mike and Sally are both big-hearted people, and in Sheffield they were able to throw their home open to lots of young adults who were asking questions about life, and looking for something other than just the bubble that student life can be.


I am a prophet, intense, introvert.  My tutor at college summed it up well when he wrote that the more he got to know me, the more he appreciated me, the more he recognised of real value in me: but it wasn’t (and is never going to be) something up-front and out there.  In some ways, people have to work quite hard to get to know me.  And in part, that is something I have to work to bridge; but in part that is simply me.  So it takes time for people to be drawn to us – and for the time being we are in a season of moving every two years!


The way an apostle will lead a team will be different from the way a prophet leads a team; will be different from the way an evangelist or a pastor or a teacher leads a team.  But teams do not simply exist by bringing people together: they are built, and they are built through a process (we call it the Square).  At different times, at different stages in the process of building a team of disciples, we are required to lead them in different ways.  At least some of the time, we will be operating outside – perhaps well outside – of our comfort zone (and these are the times when we are stretched most, when we go deeper into Jesus).  I may not be an apostle, but if I am to call people to follow me as I follow Jesus – if I am to model a particular culture, to instil particular values we might cohere around so that as we move forward we don’t pull apart – then I must allow the Holy Spirit to draw me into an apostolic phase.  Just as an apostle will need to allow the Holy Spirit to draw them into a pastoral and/or teaching phase when the going gets hard and those who have gathered are questioning their decision; just as we are, perhaps (thanks, Mark, for these suggestions), led into an evangelistic phase as we send our disciples out to find their own People of Peace; and, perhaps, a prophetic phase as we release them to pioneer the territory God has called them to chart so that new communities of faith can be established.


While I am not called to copy Mike, I did get to observe him for years.  There are things I can learn from him – some things that are transferable and some things that are translatable – that can help me to operate in apostolic phases, even if they are never going to come naturally to me.


While I am not called to copy Bonhoeffer, I am invited to commemorate his life: exploring with God what I might learn from him and how I might apply those things in my own life.

The Turning Of The Eastertide

So now that Easter is over...Oh, wait: Easter lasts forty days to Ascension Day, and then a further nine days to the eve of Pentecost.  Why?  Because it takes time to live into resurrection: chronos time, setting aside seven weeks; and kairos time, encountering the risen Jesus.


If we have died with Christ, if we have been raised with him, if the life we now live is his living in us, then the resurrection has implication for us, here and now.  It is not simply the guarantee that after our bodies die, we will each receive an imperishable body.  What has begun here is nothing less than a new humanity, within a new creation, and in this new order the church is, in the words of Rowan Williams, an experimental “pilot project for the human race.”


And if the church looks more like a museum, or a mausoleum, or a waiting-room for heaven, than a pilot project for the human race then that is an unsurprising consequence of doing Easter in a day, and of making it about what Jesus did for us as individuals rather than what he has done for and to all creation within which I am not the centre of the universe.


If Christ is risen from the dead, then every barrier is broken down.  But we have loved our defensive walls, our elaborate socio-architectural structures, our clear divisions and classifications; we have loved to fight our corner, to determine who is chosen and who is side-lined; we have loved our petty triumphs, and our scapegoats for our failures.  And if we are to delight in those who do not look like us, if we are to rejoice to see them flourish, if we are to revel in the unity-in-diversity that God has championed since the very first chapter of our Story, it is going to take time.


And just as the first disciples did not at first recognise the risen Jesus, did not recognise his face but only saw him in his authentic words and familiar actions, so we must learn to see Jesus in unfamiliar faces, in unfamiliar places.  Until we can, Easter has passed us by...

In A Garden

In a garden, the serpent swallowed the woman first, and then the man.


In a garden, the serpent swallowed their seed, the Christ.


Christ split open the serpent’s belly, a fatal wound, from within.


And in a garden the Christ restored the woman first, and then the man, so that what was captive is set free in the proper order.

Peter

My world is over.


I left everything to follow him, and now he is dead.


And at the end, I denied knowing him.  My testimony denied my own existence, who I became.


He was the structure and the content of my days.  Now structure, content, days themselves are lost to me, and I to them.


My world is over.

Mary

My firstborn son is dead.


I have already lost the man who sheltered me, who raised my son as his own; have already released his hands, so gentle and so strong, to the grave.


And now my son.


They pierced his heart.  They pierced my heart in that moment, too.  Time might heal the wound, but its scar will last for all time...


My firstborn son is dead.

A Death In The Family

It is with the deepest sorrow that we must inform you of a death in the family.


Jesus, the Son and heir, died yesterday, in violent circumstances.


His voice has fallen silent; the dynamic Word now still.


His chair at our table, lightly empty since he left home, is now heavy with the weight of emptiness.


We would ask all our friends to gather at our house early tomorrow, to pay your respects.  Thank you.


The Spirit of God, who broods over the waters

Sunday Is Coming But Not Yet

There is an old Pentecostal sermon-in-a-sentence, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!”  And there is some truth in that...but the problem with some truth is that it inoculates us against full-blown truth.


Don’t rush from Good Friday to Easter Day.  Don’t miss Saturday.  It is easy to dismiss Saturday, because we know What Happens Next; but Sunday does not wipe out Saturday.  For Jesus’ first disciples, Saturday was living with the death of all their hopes and dreams.  We might say that that was only because their hopes and dreams were misplaced, that they didn’t match God’s hopes and dreams: but we’d be wrong.  Yes, their expectations might not have matched God’s, but their hopes and dreams and God’s were focused on Jesus, and Jesus was dead.  At the level of chronos, chronological time, Saturday was momentary.  At the level of kairos, experiential time, we cannot imagine how long it dragged on for.


We, too, will have hopes and dreams – God-given hopes and dreams – that lie dead.  And the Story of how God acts to reconcile all things does not violate that death.  Rather, Jesus comes to lie there next to us, to be one with us in our deaths, that we might become one with him in his life.  These things are mystery, too deep for words.  But if we ignore Saturday, then Easter is hollow and trite.


So Saturday precedes Sunday.  But even then, we need to be reminded of what Sunday brings.  Consider Mark’s account.  The women come to anoint Jesus’ body for burial, belatedly not only because he has risen, not even belatedly because he was already buried, but belatedly because he had already been anointed for his burial in advance.  They come asking a question that they don’t even realise is irrelevant, knowing only that they are compelled by their love.  And what they discover causes them to respond with alarm, trembling and bewilderment, to turn and run away, to keep silent.  They don’t even encounter the risen Jesus, but instead are asked to trust that they will – a trust they cannot respond with to begin with.  (And then there are those resurrection appearances where Jesus isn’t recognised at first...)


What begins on Sunday is, ultimately, Good News.  But if Sunday is answers and explanations, and celebration that has no room for celebrating through our tears or for having more questions raised than answered, it inevitably becomes trite news.  And if we have tamed the resurrection so that it is safe, if we have contained it within the limits of our own understanding, then for us, ironically, Jesus is still within the tomb...


So may we all have a most disturbing weekend, because the world is not transformed through platitudes but by the deep, rich Story of the Truth who comes to set us free.

Good Friday Installation

Noah and I have made a very simple Good Friday installation in the south transept, for the final Hour at the Cross this afternoon.  He lay down to provide the template, and I formed the outline using red electrical tape (left over from wrapping around Christingles, to represent Jesus' blood).  We marked the wounds of Jesus with little tape crosses together.


(Then we discovered that we were locked in the church, as I had locked the outside door behind us, and then left my keys in the only internal room with a self-locking door...Thankful that Jo, at home which is next door, has a part-set of keys, and that I had my mobile phone with me!)

My Girl

Susannah's eleventh birthday.

Easter : Archives

Two more posts from my archives:


Reading The Resurrection


Easter Sunday : Don’t Skip Forward

Holy Week : Archives

For the first time in years, I have not been able to engage creatively with the events of Holy Week.  It feels very strange to me.  Anyway, here are some links to my archives:


Palm Sunday: 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011


Maundy Thursday Stations of the Passover 2010, with photos


Maundy Thursday meditation 2011


Good Friday Stations 2010: [1] Stations of the Cross [2] the wounds of Jesus [3] the words of Jesus on the cross


Good Friday meditation 2011


Resurrection Icon 2011

The Permanent Revolution : A Personal Review

Alan Hirsch’s latest book, The Permanent Revolution: Apostolic Imagination and Practice for the 21stCentury Church - this time written in collaboration with Tim Catchim, and with significant contribution from Mike Breen – is the most comprehensive work yet written on the necessity to recover the roles of apostles, prophets and evangelists alongside shepherds and teachers, in order to restore ‘the inherent diversity in the body which provides us the essential resources and relational frameworks to grow into the fullness of Christ.’

The scope of the authors’ inter-disciplinary engagement – ‘biblical studies, theology, organisational theory, leadership studies, and other key social sciences’ - is an example of genuine genius; their observations thoughtfully nuanced; their reflections insightful and practical.  I am hugely thankful to them for this gift to the church.

Others will write overview book reviews.  At the risk of implying a limited usefulness, the best I can do is offer a personal interaction.  For an appreciation of the case Alan and Tim set out for their thesis you’ll have to read the book for yourself.  I recommend you do anyway.

Alan has long argued that while each one of us is at the most fundamental level called as an apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd or teacher, the motivation and expression of our ministry is shaped by the integrated interaction between these different callings.  Our unique call is composed by the unique combination of these five elements, through personality, gifting, experience...

For example, my own APEST (apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher) profile indicates that my primary motivation is as a prophet, with apostle as a strongly developed secondary; teacher also being well developed; with shepherd and evangelist being significantly lesser motivations and strengths (as such, I am a frustration to the institutional church, which struggles to see beyond the pastoral role for the spiritual health of the existing body and the evangelist role as the primary means of numerical growth).

Moreover, Alan and Tim suggest that our primary motivation is expressed through our secondary motivation (which may vary from season to season, context to context).  In Alan’s case, his call to be an apostle is expressed through his gifting and call to serve as a teacher, through his writing and speaking.  In my case, it would suggest that my call to be a prophet is expressed through my secondary call to be an apostle, which would certainly fit with the journey God has taken me on, including my alignment within an apostolic movement (The Order of Mission; 3dm; and wider relational networks).

Alan and Tim present a case for ‘dispersed intelligence’ in the body of Christ, whereby apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers are by design attuned to different things that the church must be aware of and hold in creative tension (just as eyes, ears, noses, taste-buds, and nerve-endings in our skin alert us to different kinds of information we must take into account).  Moreover, they offer real wisdom in how each one relates to the others.

As generative callings, apostle and prophet are particularly designed to work together.  Apostolic intelligence acts as custodian of the ‘DNA’ of the body, as the church goes out; while prophetic intelligence acts as guardian of covenant faithfulness, ensuring we go deep as well as out.  As a prophet, that is one significantly concerned with calling the church forward – energising - or back – criticizing - to covenant faithfulness, I find their careful mapping of prophetic ministry, including the potential pitfalls to be aware of, extremely helpful.

Their primary concern, however, is apostolic calling; and as a prophet whose prophetic ministry would indeed appear to be expressed through an apostolic calling – something I had not fully appreciated – I have found their work here too extremely helpful.  They offer a differentiation of emphasis (not exclusive) between Pauline apostles, called to cross-cultural extension of the church (one of the reasons I had not fully considered the apostolic element of my own calling, as I am not primarily called to pioneer in this sense) and Petrine apostles, called to renewal within the already-existing church.

They further nuance our appreciation of the apostolic by differentiating (again, not as exclusive categories) between apostles-as-explorers and apostles-as-catalysts (my limitations as a catalyst being another reason I had not fully considered the apostolic element of my own calling), presenting four broad fields of apostolic ministry anywhere on which we might locate the current or long-term emphasis of the work of any given apostle.  By observation, they suggest Pauline explorers, or pioneers; Pauline catalysts, or networkers; Petrine explorers, or miners; and Petrine catalysts, or mobilisers.

With this as a lens, I can locate myself, certainly at this given point, most fully as a Petrine explorer – and Alan and Tim’s observations would confirm that someone whose APEST profile is PATSE, and whose Myers-Briggs personality-type is INFP, is well shaped to be a Petrine explorer – that is, the particular form of apostolic ministry through which my prophetic calling is expressed is not primarily cross-cultural pioneering or networking, or direct mobilising, but is concerned with the renewal of the existing church through unearthing both those concealed things that are holding the church back from being all that God intends us to be, and those buried resources that Jesus has given us to that end.

While we must attend to the general things – the call to all of us to be and to make disciples, growing together in the character and competence of Christ – we must also attend to the specific things, our particular and unique role within the body.  From a personal perspective I am finding The Permanent Revolution to be the most helpful book I have read, in regard to the latter.  Reflecting on their insight into my experience has given me a greater level of understanding of who I am called to be and what I am called to do (insight that the institutional church I serve, and which seeks to shape me, is simply not equipped to help me discern).

But, sharing their understanding of the importance of this endeavour, I believe The Permanent Revolution is also one of the most significant contributions I have read to the general things we must attend to – offering a paradigm to imagine (so much more is covered, but I have not attempted a comprehensive review), and a vocabulary with which to discuss, what the church is called to be and to do.  Again, I am indebted to them; and again, I recommend their book to anyone concerned with the missional sent-ness of the church.

International Women's Day

Today is International Women’s Day.  Here are three women who inspire me:

My mum, Rose Dowsett.  A church historian and one of the most respected missiologists in the world; a true pioneer in the field of missiology, and a women recognised by evangelical men who, as a tribe, do not have a great track-record for recognising women...A trail-blazer, at great personal cost.  Not only did she give birth to me; she also passed on the missiological genes of her DNA.  My passions, while unique to me and distinct from hers, come to me from and through her.  Thank you, mum.

My wife, Joanna Dowsett.  A true noble woman, and unsung heroine.  A pioneer, but a rare breed – a pioneer pastor, one who makes the frontier home, in the face of adversity.  Again, at great personal cost.  Without her, I am nothing.  Thank you.

My friend, Joannah Saxton.  For now, her life inspires many others.  But when they come to write down the legends of our generation, her name will continue to inspire countless others, long after we are no longer to be found in this world.  I am proud to call her my friend; even to call her sis...

And countless other women.  Thank you.

Culture Eats Vision For Breakfast : Part 2

I want to push the ideas I reflected on in my earlier post ‘Culture Eats Vision For Breakfast’ a little further, and in order to do so want to bring in an idea I wrote about back in 2006, Kester Brewin’s ‘local maximum.’

Imagine that you are climbing in a mountain range.  You climb a mountain, and its peak is as far as you can go, unless you then journey down away from the peak in order to head towards another.

Imagine that you have oversight of a particular community – a local church or school, for example.  It has a pre-existing culture, which determines what is or is not possible.  Say, for example, that the culture is one where every contribution is welcome, whether it is very good or not.  This can be a positive decision, one that helps people to discover and develop their gifts.  But say that there isn’t a culture of investment, of development, but simply a culture of settling for poor quality, driven by a lack of resources.  And so you set about changing the culture, to one that demonstrates that it values people and wants to invest in them.  You make a few quick-win changes, things that have a big impact without great expense: replacing instant coffee with filter coffee; replacing tired signage with fresh display boards; spending time listening to people, and explaining the values you hope to introduce over and over until others start taking them up as their own.  So far, so good...But any culture reinforces itself, to the point that it dominates other cultures and rules out other possibilities.  In the above scenario, real gains in professionalism will result in better-equipped and trained people; but at the cost of a ‘family feel’ and with the loss of the ability to be spontaneous and eventually generous.  That is, you eventually reach the local maximum – as far as you can go in this particular direction – and then you face a choice: settle here, and eventually decline; or choose to set of in a new direction.  This new direction will involve leaving behind the comfort zone of experience (walking down the mountain on the other side from which you climbed up it) and then the hard work of establishing a new culture (climbing the next mountain) before you reach the next local maximum – and are faced with the same decision all over again.

Any culture change goes through these stages: setting out into the unknown, leaving behind what is familiar but has become restricting; figuring out how to express a new culture; and establishing that culture in its fullest expression – until it in itself becomes restricting.  No-one sets out to found a culture that is intrinsically worse than the one they know; but anyone with wisdom will recognise that every culture eventually becomes in need of renewal, of reinvention, or face extinction.  And that the initial stages of that renewal will be ‘backward steps,’ not as good as what we currently know.

What is the culture in your context?  What stage is it in: being discovered; being developed; or mature, and in need of renewal, of a culture-change?  What is needed from leaders – exploring, embedding, dismantling – will vary depending on the stage the context is in...

That said, most churches (and most schools) are at their own local maximum, albeit that that maximum might not be very high, simply because of the enormous pull of institutions to settle for the known, the established, and merely to tweak rather than fundamentally re-imagine.  What we need from within our institutions is something very hard but not impossible: a desire to endorse and support people who love the institution enough to refuse to conform to it.  And there is, undoubtedly, vision for such a future among our senior leaders.  But without commitment to culture-change, the existing culture will eat that vision for breakfast...

Family On Mission

This post is concerned with the particular challenges of missional living as families.  In my own case, family is primarily myself, my wife, and our three children; but I think the principles apply for any family construct, including circles of close friends who are single as well as married and/or childless as well as parents.

In our opinion, FAMILY OR MISSION is a false choice, and one with potentially disastrous consequences.  Just the other day, an older woman was telling me of how her father’s ‘wonderful ministry’ caused her deep hurts, through much of her life, as he placed mission over family.  On the other side of the equation, we’ve known many people who have said, ‘If we didn’t have children, we’d go there/do that, but we can’t do that to them...’  If God has a mission in the world to which he calls us to join-in, opting-out is not an option.  If God has given us a family – whatever that looks like – opting-out is not an option.

So then there is the FAMILY AND MISSION approach.  And to be honest, that feels like trying to pour two pints into a pint bottle: much spills out and is lost, wasted.  This way leads to burning out, and very often results in retreating into family, or mission, at the expense of the other.

The way that makes most sense to us, and to many of our friends, is FAMILY ON MISSION.  That is, mission is something we engage in together, albeit contributing in different ways.

As we moved to a deprived neighbourhood in Liverpool, the local primary school was put into Special Measures: that is, following government inspection it was given notice to improve, or (ultimately) be closed.  It was very clear that our mission as a family was to support the school on this journey.  I offered to join the Board of Governors, eventually becoming Vice-Chair.  Jo joined the Parents’ Forum, a means of two-way communication between the school and the parents.  Our older two children modelled an engagement with learning and with teachers (You Can’t Be What You Can’t See) and our youngest child, in nursery and then reception, modelled an engagement with the wider environment that many of his peers lacked.  We got stuck in, prayed, served, stood in solidarity with the head-teacher and her staff, cried with them in the hardest moments, celebrated the milestones and the eventual coming out of Special Measures and being in a good position to continue from strength to strength.  And then we moved on, leaving behind friends who we miss and who we know miss us.

To be honest, we have not yet been able to identify what being family on mission looks like where we are now, in a very different setting.  Of course, it will not always be so clear; and it will not only be dependent on the context.  We have a core calling to grow into, which will stay the same from context to context, even though it will be expressed differently from context to context and in the changing seasons of our family life.  Being family on mission is not a way of life we can say we are experts in.  We are not perfect examples.  But we want to be living examples.  And in this, we are glad for the many other imperfect living examples, the families on mission we get to call our friends.

Culture Eats Vision For Breakfast

Here is another maxim I have come across recently: culture eats vision for breakfast.

Here is an example.  An aging local church congregation might agree that they need to be more welcoming and inclusive of families and children.  They might recognise that their future as a community depends on it.  They might even decide to appoint a family and children’s worker.  They have a general vision, and that worker might observe and reflect and discuss and present creative ways forward, giving shape and definition to that vision.  But if the underlying culture is one that values order and reverence, a liturgy that is light on participation, old hymns accompanied by an organ...that culture will consume any vision for change.

Very often, as church leaders, we seek to hold out fresh vision.  Increasingly I am coming to the realisation that this is misdirected effort, likely to frustrate both leaders and those we have oversight of.  Rather than set vision, the primary focus of the leader’s attention must be to model and promote the kind of underlying culture-change that is needed if fresh vision is to be released from within the body, the community itself.  In Sheffield, this came to be known as ‘high accountability, low control’: that is, senior leaders nurtured a culture of discipleship which released people into mission, and held them accountable to being true to the cultural values while giving them significant freedom – and, as far as possible, appropriate resources – to pursue the vision God had sown in their own lives.

Changing the culture of any given community takes a long time.  Holding out vision is far easier, can take place very quickly – especially in a church that is aware that it lacks vision.  But it is a shortcut that ultimately turns back on itself, leading to greater entrenchment of the very culture that you might hope to change.  Culture-shifting takes longer: but once the hard work has been done, vision is released and nurtured.  To return to the example above, if a culture of valuing children, of discovering more about the world through play and questioning, trial and error, imperfection and wonder, can be nurtured, space can be created for the young-at-heart of every age to share.

Of course, that new culture will also eat any fresh vision that seeks to depart from its values for breakfast...

You Can't Be What You Can't See

A friend of mine is fond of saying “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

As a phrase, it perfectly encapsulates discipleship: both the need for, and the process of, discipleship.

Take, for example, being a parent.  Being a parent, or at least making a good job of being a parent, is tough.  Nothing really prepares you for it.  Sure, there are shelf-loads of books on parenting out there, but really the only way to learn how to be a good parent is to have in your life other people who are trying to be good parents, who are perhaps a little further down the road from where you are right now, who you can look to and say, they seem to be doing something right.  Not perfect examples – they don’t exist, and unless I mistakenly believe I can become one, they wouldn’t be much help to me if they did.  But living examples, accessible examples, who are willing to share with me their successes and failures, their highs and lows, what they found hard and what helped and what enabled them to keep going when things were hard.  What they discovered about God and themselves and their children along the way.  It might help a little if we ourselves experienced good parenting as a child; but to be honest, as a child you don’t watch your parents to learn how to be a parent; hopefully, you are – quite rightly – free to learn how to be a child.  Really it is when you become a parent that you need role-models, or disciplers – and not least because with God explanation generally follows experience, rather than being front-loaded and abstract.

Or take, for example, any calling to serve others, whether we felt that we chose it (of course, the truth is never so simplistic) or whether we felt that it was thrust upon us (of course, the truth is never so simplistic).

You can’t be what you can’t see.

And neither can anyone else.

Which is why discipleship can never simply be about my receiving from others (and far less about my taking abstract theological information from anonymous others).

To what has God called you?  And who do you have in your life to whom you can look, to learn how to be the person God has called you to be?  What examples can you look to, in Scripture, in church history, in your local community of faith?

Who around you has a similar calling?  How might you make your life available, as a living example, enabling them to learn how to be the person God has called them to be?  Jesus puts it this way: that thing that has been given to you, that thing you have received from someone else, pass on to others.

Trees In The Mist

It has been a while since I posted a photograph, so I thought I would make amends with this one I took looking across Ullswater, towards the end of the seven-mile trail from Howtown to Glenridding I walked with a friend on Thursday this week.

Ash Wednesday : Repent And Believe

So Lent begins.

Listen!  Can you hear the whisper?  The whisper inviting you to lose yourself in order to find yourself; to die to false self in order to rise to true self; to be transformed.

To be found in Christ; filled with the Holy Spirit; fathered by God.

This is what you were made for.  And yet it requires a turning away from all other grounds for identity.  Away from self-sufficiency (i.e. I can meet my needs).  Away from ‘celebrity’ status (i.e. you can meet my needs).  Away from ‘political’ power (i.e. I can meet your needs).  To God, your father, who loves you and is pleased with you.

How do we do that?  First, we allow God to reveal to us where our identity is really grounded.  For example, in ‘celebrity’ status.  I don’t mean celebrity like you see in the media; I mean, that thing for which you are known, that thing you do that causes people to praise you.  The person who is known for their delicious cakes; or their successful dinner parties; or their musical talents; or their confidence in public speaking.  There is nothing wrong with doing something well, something well that others respond to with praise.  But something subtle can happen over time: we find ourselves doing this thing because we will be praised, in order to trigger praise, in order to experience the buzz, the high, praise gives us...before the inevitable low that follows, and the need to repeat or even excel our past moments.  A subtle thing, by degrees, perhaps un-noticed – as parents don’t notice the day-by-day growth of their children in the way that friends who see them less frequently do – and so it may be that you will need the help of others to identify where our identity is grounded.  If we are to repent, we must observe, reflect, discuss.

This thing, that God reveals to us as we withdraw a while from the society that fuels our mis-placed identity, is the thing we are invited to ‘give up for Lent.’  Stop doing it; and instead, rediscover that God is your father who loves you and is pleased with you.  Repent, and believe.  And having rediscovered this amazing truth, we can take up that thing again, re-aligned.  We can make our delicious cakes – or host parties or make music or address crowds – not for the praise we might get from others, but as an expression of whom God has made us to be, the unique ways in which he has gifted you...recognising that we might lose sight again, might fall off the path again.  And so, again, don’t do it on your own.  Invite a friend, or friends, you trust to help you plan how you will keep sight, stay on the path – for example, by consciously and publically giving thanks to God for his good gifts when you are praised, neither dishonouring him through wallowing in false modesty nor dishonouring him through revelling in false glory – and hold you accountable by calling you out when your identity begins to send out roots into poor ground.  If we are to believe, we must plan, and give those who help us plan permission to hold us to account in relation to our plan, before we act.

Approaching Lent : On The Eve Of Battle

Once, God brought his people out of slavery with the intention of giving them territory in which they would exercise right living; territory possessed by others who did not acknowledge God; contested territory God and his people would together have to make their own.  And so, on the eve of invasion, in the wilderness overlooking the Jordan river, God reminded his people of the covenant they had entered-into – a joining of identities, a belonging to one another, a being for the other.  We can read that account to this day, in the book of Deuteronomy.

Once, God called out his Son, Jesus, with the intention of giving him territory in which he would exercise right living; the kingdom of heaven, expanding, claiming back what had been abdicated in Eden; contested by the one who had taken for himself Adam’s discarded crown.  And so, on the eve of invasion, in the wilderness overlooking the Jordan river, Jesus reflected on the reminders of Deuteronomy, in preparation to face his enemy.  We can read the account to this day, in Matthew and Mark and Luke’s Gospels.

Today, God wants to give us territory in which we can exercise right living by loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself.  This territory is both communal and physical – such as a formal or informal parish in which a local church is set – and also personal and metaphorical – such as a sphere of influence, in the home or workplace.  The territory is contested; God wants us to take it, together with him.  The Season of Lent is our choosing to enter-into this pattern, to be led by God to the wilderness at the very edge of the territory he wants to give us – for no ground is taken except that we first spend time in the wilderness – in order to be reminded once again of our covenant relationship.

Jesus is led into the wilderness with these words ringing in his ears: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased!”  In these words, covenant is affirmed.  In these words, we (who share in Jesus’ identity, Romans 8:14-17, because our covenant with God is focused on and mediated by and expressed through the person of Jesus) discover our true identity.  God is our Father, and therefore we experience his family.  God is our Father, and therefore we experience his love.  God is our Father, and therefore we experience his approval.

Immediately, Jesus’ identity is challenged: “If you are the Son of God...”  And it is no different for us, who share in what is done to him (his ‘sufferings,’ Romans 8:17; literally, those things, whether good or bad, done to him by others; as in the famous verse ‘suffer the little children to come to me,’ which means, bring them because they cannot bring themselves, and not, force them to come whether they want to or not and hurting them if necessary), whether by God or John or the Holy Spirit or the devil.  The temptations of the wilderness are temptations to locate our identity elsewhere than already conferred to us by a loving Father, and they are very much alive and well today.  The temptations are to find identity in self-sufficiency (in what I can provide for myself and those who depend on me), in celebrity status (in how many know my name and massage my insecure ego) and in political power (in how I can use a fundamentally corrupt system as a means to my own ends, whether those ends are noble or ignoble).

Where we find our identity has a direct bearing on our impact on the world.  If our identity is located in self-sufficiency, we will ignore others.  If our identity is located in celebrity status, we will be manipulated by others.  And if our identity is located in political power (by which I do not necessarily mean party politics, but exercising power over people), we will manipulate others (perhaps arguing that we do so for their own good).  With the best will in the world, these are the inevitable out-workings or outward expressions of these three inner motivations.

If our identity is grounded in God as our Father, we experience his family, not isolation: and this inner reality resources us to open our lives to others, hard though that often is in a world of hurt and hurting people.  Rather than seeking independence, we start to discover God’s better way of inter-dependence.

If our identity is grounded in God as our Father, we experience his love that is unconditional, not fickle: and this inner reality resources us to open our lives to others, hard though that often is in a world of hurt and hurting people.  Rather than seeking status, we discover that God is faithful, whether we are recognised by anyone else or not.

If our identity is grounded in God as our Father, we experience his approval, which is freely given as gift and not earned: and this inner reality resources us to open our lives to others, hard though that often is in a world of hurt and hurting people.  Rather than seeking power, we discover that God’s power flows through the powerless, as it did through Jesus who submitted himself to being baptised by John and led away from all that was familiar by the persistent Spirit-filled dove.

The greater the extent of the internal territory that we, together with God as our covenant partner, win back from the Accuser (for the terms of a covenant state that my enemies are my covenant partner’s enemies, and my partner’s enemies are now mine), the greater the extent of the external territory that we can win back.  The more our communal and personal lives are rightly grounded, the greater the impact we can expect in our neighbourhoods, in our homes and workplaces, as we grow in confidence that God can work through us, and he grows in confidence that he can trust us with greater responsibility.

And so as we find ourselves once again at the start of Lent, here are some questions for us to wrestle with over the next forty days:

For what territory has God put a longing in your heart, to see his kingdom extended or consolidated, where you are yet to see any victories?

What might the wilderness – the marginal place on the edge of that territory – look like?  Where are the unseen places in your community; in what areas of your home life do you experience incompetence; who has the least influence in your workplace; and how might you meet God in these places?

What kind of God draws us out from our own places of self-sufficiency, celebrity status, or political power, to rediscover his care for us, his hopes and dreams for our lives, and to rehearse again his incredible commitment to our future together?

What is the source of our identity?  Do you experience God as Father, and look to him for your identity?  Do you look elsewhere?  Are you uncertain that God is a sufficient source of a healthy identity?  Have you experienced God as Father in the past?  Do you need to return to him – or make a change in direction so as to keep close to him?  Allow him to strip away your false selves and provide food and water for your true self...

Breath

Today, as so often, I am rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn. We experience love and breath-taking joy because the universe is not meaningless. We experience loss and breath-taking sorrow because the universe is not meaningless. If the universe was truly indifferent, we would be truly indifferent too. But we are not, and so there is hope, in the face of unimaginable gift and of unimaginable tragedy, beyond our understanding.

Repent And Believe

Jesus holds out for us a defining way to live: repent and believe (Mark 1:15).

To repent means to embrace a change of mind, of perspective, of direction, of purpose, in order to keep in step with God, in order to walk with him as with a friend.  It includes turning around, turning back, when we have gone away from God, but it is much bigger than that.

To believe means to step out, actively, with a deliberate intentionality that gives outward expression to our new inner purpose.

This is how Jesus lived.

Jesus pioneers the life of repentance and belief for us:

at his baptism, where he turns from the purpose of an itinerant construction worker (carpenter = more house-builder than furniture-maker) (absolutely the right purpose up until this point; but no longer so, moving into the future) to the purpose of an itinerant preacher, healer and demon-confronter;

when he calls certain others to turn from the varied purposes of harvesting fish, or collecting tax, or participating in the royal court, or murdering Roman soldiers, or life lived under demonic affliction, or (after his death, resurrection, and ascension) persecuting his own followers, to share in and extend his mission;

whenever he moves from one village, where God has sent him, to another village, to which God is sending him now;

when he turns from Galilee towards Jerusalem...

Church

Mark 1:29-39

In the fishing town of Capernaum lived a man called Jonah.  Jonah was a fisherman – with a wonderful ironic name for a fisherman.  He was in business with Zebedee, and they were, apparently, doing very well.  Jonah’s sons Simon (sometimes known as Simon Peter) and Andrew, and Zebedee’s sons James and John, were all involved in the family business; which also provided employment for a number of hired fishermen.  Our story today is centred on the home of Simon and Andrew: that is, Jonah’s house.  Most likely, the family lived in one space.  Simon is already married, and the custom of their culture was (and still is today) that when the son of a house became betrothed, a room was built on the flat roof – effectively a second floor was added to the house – and once it was ready and the wedding took place, his bride came to live with him there: that is, they started their married life in a literal as well as a metaphorical sense building on his parent’s family life.  (When Jesus uses this imagery hours before his crucifixion – John 14:1-4 – he is saying that the Church is his bride, not that he goes to prepare rooms for each one of us.)

We can be fairly certain of the exact location of this house, because after the resurrection, it became the gathered place of one of the very first churches, and was so for generation after generation.  And so what we see in this story is the very beginnings of the Church (which, after all, Jesus would later say he would build ‘on’ Peter).  Beginnings matter – not because the mature expression should look like the juvenile expression, but because the juvenile form expresses the genetic composition that will be present in the mature form, if it is truly what it is thought to be.  And so we ought to pay close attention to the church we see here.

In this home we find Simon’s mother-in-law.  That she is part of his home suggests that she may be a widow, vulnerable in her society unless provided for, as God required of his people.  She has a fever: and the others tell Jesus about her.  He goes to her, takes her hand, and helps her up – and as he does so, the fever departs.

It is a reality of our experience of life that there are times when we cannot do anything: perhaps because we are ill, or aging, or existing under chronic sleep deprivation due to a baby who does not sleep, or all-but-overwhelmed by any number of circumstances.  And part of what it means to be church is that at such times others tell Jesus about us; that through their ministering to us Jesus comes to us, takes our hand, and helps us up.  For some of us, loss of independence is very hard to accept; we do not want to be a burden to others; we have our faith in Jesus, and that is enough.  But Jesus comes to us with brothers and sisters, or not at all.  We get to have Jesus and our brothers and sisters, or not at all.

As soon as she is healed, Simon’s mother-in-law responds in an amazing way, which is almost entirely lost in translation.  She ministers to Jesus and his companions.  The word has appeared already in Mark’s Gospel, of the angels who ministered to Jesus at the end of his forty-day fast in the wilderness.  This happens very rarely in the Gospels – the woman who prepares Jesus’ body for burial before his death, pouring perfume on his feet, does so; and so, I suppose it could be argued, do those who offer a drink to Jesus as he experiences thirst during his crucifixion – but Simon’s mother-in-law is the first person who realises that part of what it means to be church is to minister first-and-foremost to Jesus.  That if we do things for people but miss that in that way we are serving Jesus, we’ve missed it.  This is our first ministry: to make who we are – our gifts, our passions, our experience, what we can offer – available to Jesus, who has made himself available to us.  Just as it is true that from time to time all of us will experience the inability to do, so it is also true that all of us have much to offer.  This, to, is part of what it means to be church.

As a result of what happened, lots of other people turned up and were healed.  We are told that they came after sunset.  This is important: in the Jewish understanding, the day begins at sunset (this is why in Genesis 1 it says, “And it was evening, and it was morning: the first - etc. – day”).  Here we see the beginning of a new day: God is doing a new thing, working with and through a renewed community.

But Simon does what the church has had a tendency to do ever since: he concludes that the thing that Jesus has done is the thing that he wants to be done.  That is, having seen that people gathered to the church and were healed, Simon assumes that this is the agenda for the church: but it isn’t.  Jesus says, no: we need to go out, be sent out, to the surrounding villages.  The church is sent.  The gathered church is family, come together to bring Jesus to one another for healing and strengthening, and to minister to Jesus and his companions, and so to be sent out again.  This, too, is part of what it means to be church.

Over the past six months, literally hundreds of people have come into our church building, on a variety of regular- and one-off occasions.  And very, very, few have had their lives transformed by meeting Jesus as a result, in any way that they or others can measure (e.g. comparatively) or testify to.  In fact, where people’s lives have been transformed – and quite dramatically – it has been where they have happened upon a family-time gathering and encountered Jesus; not on those occasions where the family has been overwhelmed by visitors, which tends only to result in resentment.  Perhaps we need to rediscover what it means to be church?

Here, at the very beginning, we discover that the church is meant to be a three-dimensional community, described by the presence of height, depth, and breadth:

UP-ward space: attending to loving God by ministering to Jesus, making ourselves (our homes; our gifts; our lives) available to him; and

IN-ward space: attending to loving ourselves by bringing the healing presence of Jesus to one another; and

OUT-ward space: attending to loving our neighbours by going out, together, carrying good news with us.

In what circumstance do you need others to bring Jesus to you?  How might you offer yourself to minister to his needs?  And to whom, and with whom, is he leading you out from the church into the world?