Breathing Space

There are times when the Minster is full of people. We are increasingly partnering with others to shape ‘the Minster Quarter’ into a part of the city centre that is an inviting place to be. At the recent African Festival, 3,800 people visited the Minster in 36 hours – and the surrounding retailers also reported their best shopping day in 3 years. Within the past two months we’ve hosted Sanctuary – a weekend festival showcasing local bands, beers, and food; Messy Minster – a holiday club in the last week of the summer holidays; a very successful Wedding Fayre; and the African Festival to coincide with the arrival of The Lion King at the Sunderland Empire.

But alongside the events, when the building is full of noise and movement, we note another very different trend: the people who come into the space when the building is empty, precisely because they need to find a quiet space, a still space, a breathing-space in the midst of the movement going on all around. Daily. Not quite a stream – that might undermine the purpose - but a constant trickle.

And the request for us to host conversations between different groups who live and work in the city, because this is a space where people of different views can be heard because they are listened to. This is not unique to our Minster by any means, but would increasingly appear to be a characteristic of larger city-centre churches: that part of their distinctive calling, and gift to the wider community, is what I heard the CEO of a (different) northern city describe to a conference of such churches yesterday as our ‘convening power’. Places where, as someone put it, the ‘unspeakable things that need to be spoken, can be’ – given time, and space.

We want to play our part in the flourishing of our city, in every sense – including economic or financial capital (as over the African Festival weekend), physical capital (space for gathering), intellectual capital (learning from those with a different experience of life), relational capital (building partnerships to work together for the common good), and spiritual capital (the resources to navigate the deeper seas of our common life). [link to my most frequently visited post, written in a previous context.]

It matters to me that there is a diversity of things going on here, that there is life in all its fullness, including its mess and noise and celebration. Some find it incomprehensible, that we should permit such ‘secular’ activity in a ‘sacred’ space. Others would like to see ‘visitors’ translated into ‘congregation members’, to attendance at our weekly services. We do see some of that. But for me, that people discover this gift in the heart of the city and return for the stillness, the sense of God’s presence, a connection with those they have loved and lost, a connection with the history of this city that transcends the pre-occupied present … this is a significant metric.

That they might find a breathing-space, where the Spirit broods over the waters, waiting for the moment to call out what will become - light out of darkness, and life out of chaos – that is the first gift in order for life to flourish.

After all, unless the Spirit breathes life into us, we are but dust, billowing in the endless rubble of a city being dismantled and re-routed. When we stop rising to receive that breath, we return to the earth from which we came: for if we will not tend it with our hands, we can at least nourish it for a moment with our marrow.

And yet, where can we find such breathing-spaces?

Some, at least, are finding one such space here.

Movement

It is around a year now since we knew that we would be moving to Sunderland, although we didn’t actually move until November and I didn’t start in my current post until December. So it is not yet quite a year that we have lived here, but getting there.

A year is no time at all to get to know a place. But already we have moved beyond first impressions – which were largely positive, but necessarily superficial – into a growing sense of attachment to a place in which we are still getting our bearings.

It happens by imperceptible degree, sneaking up on you, catching you by surprise.

And in this instance, it is different. The Church of England is first-and-foremost parochial, rooted to a place that – in an urban context, at any rate – you can walk around. And while the church exists for the benefit of those beyond the church, the church as a congregation inhabits that place, comes across herself and her shared neighbours on a daily basis. Her ties go deep, not wide. But Sunderland Minster is what we call an Extra-Parochial Place. That is, it is not grounded in a circumscribed locality, but grounded in (the heart of) the city - an amorphous living organism. I cannot walk around my parish, and I do not obviously come across the church as congregation as I go about the business of my days. Our parishioners are not a particular public but the general public. Our map is the network of connections and intersections between the business community and city council and emergency services and National Health Service and university and voluntary sector and … which is to say that the map is both real and invisible.

The glass artist Tom Denny created three windows for the Bede Chapel at Sunderland Minster. The one on the left depicts Benedict Biscop, polymath and patron saint of Sunderland; the man of action. The one on the right depicts Bede, first historian of the English people, another polymath; the man of prayer. But the central window depicts the city of Sunderland today, the top part being a bird’s eye view of the river Wear emptying into the North Sea. This out-of-body experience, detached and looking down, perfectly illustrates my extra-parochial entrance to the city.

I did not think that I would miss the narrow grounded-ness of the parish, knowing – in as much as we know anything – that we were being called out from such a fixing. But I have had to pass through a sense of loss, and recognise it as such, before I can be free. Before the gull’s view is not so much detached as visionary; the Minster a grounding-place to rest, for those who take in the city centre as a whole, who note its landmarks shift like sea-cliffs.

New Season

It is a new season of life in our household. On Monday, Jo returned to full-time employment after thirteen years. She is now senior secretary to the Bishop of Durham (4 days/week). Today the schools went back. Elijah has added Breakfast- and After-School Club to the school day, en route to Jo’s commute to/from Bishop Auckland. Noah has joined Susannah at high school. (And just to make a big day that little bit crazier I had a meeting in Lancaster, on the other side of the country.)

Weeds

I’ve been digging dandelions out of the narrow strip between our front wall and the pavement. At some point in the past, someone has laid down a membrane and covered it with stone chipping in an attempt to suppress weeds. Given the ability of these plants to push through concrete, it seems a wasted effort to me. As a malfunctioning Dalek – that race of soulless destroyers of worlds – realises in the latest episode of Dr Who [Series 8:2 Into the Dalek], ‘Resistance [To Life] Is Futile.’

Weeds, of course, are simply plants that are growing somewhere where we don’t want them to grow.

Jesus told a parable of a man who had a field planted for a crop, only for someone else to maliciously sow weeds. The man’s servants ask whether he wants them to weed-out these plants, but are instructed not to, due to the likelihood of accidentally uprooting the intended plants along with them. Jesus’ point is that there are some judgements that we aren’t equipped, or called, to make. (Those who think that the harvest and the weeds represent righteous and unrighteous people should note that both are destined for the furnace, the latter to be consumed by fire and the former to be consumed as bread.)

Weeds, of course, are simply plants that are growing somewhere where we don’t want them to grow. They can be beautiful and brilliant, and remarkably resourceful. They might even possess the cure to some malaise, healing properties known to mediaeval monks but since forgotten.

When it comes to shaping communities, whether congregations or neighbourhoods, decisions need to be taken and resources focused on agreed objectives. Increasing investment in one area will mean reducing investment in another. Certain things will be nurtured and others neglected. That is not only inevitable but in fact right and proper: to keep with the gardening analogy, gardeners shape the garden in order to create something beautiful and productive and appropriate to their setting, and no two gardens will be the same. But though we are called to shape environments for life to flourish, more life will grow than we intend, because resistance to life is futile.

In any community, there is more going on than is planned, organised, given structure by some official decree. There are flowers flourishing that we did not plant. They might even grow more vigorously than those we are trying to develop or train. And we might want to uproot them. But we might want to think twice before we do, and let them be.

To see people – whether individuals or groups – as weeds is to pass a judgement on them that is not ours to make. To declare that they are not wanted in this place. That they are of less worth than others. That we are better than them. Which, over time, will result in the atrophy of our soul.

At the very least, when shaping environments for life to flourish, we ought to let the life that grows there without our active encouragement grow. We might even come to value people enough to see them in a new light, to drop the derogatory label, to make room, even to be changed ourselves by the gift they bring.

But I’m not yet happy about having dandelions in my front yard.

Adventures In Time And Space

‘If we are to plan sustainable communities, then, we have to have a good nose for what depletes human capital. And I want to suggest that one major threat to human capital is the sense of living without landmarks in time or space…Human beings from their earliest days work out their identity by learning to cope with a specific set of triggers and stimuli, the geography of a room, the rhythms of feeding and sleeping, a face that becomes familiar. As their awareness expands, they still work out and define who they are in relation to patterns of activity in time and to a differentiated space; their mental world is in pat a set of routes between familiar points. We inhabit a map. It is most dramatically expressed in the Australian aboriginal idea of the ‘song lines’ that give structure to the world: the aborigine knows the landscape as a series of songs to be sung as you move from this point to that. Geography is a set of instructions for responding with this or that song to the visual triggers you encounter.

‘Now of course any landscape, any physical environment, has such triggers. But it seems fairly clear that a physical environment that is repetitive, undifferentiated, can fail to give adequate material for a person to develop. A varied environment with marked features, that perhaps have narratives and memories attached to them, offers multiple stimuli to respond to. There is a local geography that is more than just an abstract plan of the ground: it invests places with shared significance. A landscape which proclaims its sameness with countless others, in its layout, building materials, retail outlets and so on, is a seedbed for problems. If it’s true that I can’t answer the question ‘Who am I?’ without at some level being able to answer the question ‘Where am I?’, the character of built space becomes hugely important. There will always be small scale domestic answers to ‘Where am I?’ because we all imprint distinctiveness on our homes and are ‘imprinted’ by them; but when this is restricted to the domestic, we should not be surprised if there is little sense of investment in the local environment outside the home.’

…

‘And last, planning should, then, look seriously at how the reality of faith becomes part of the landscape – how religious buildings figure among the landmarks of a community. But this is not only a question of attending to the pragmatic needs of religious groups. Like it or not, there are unsought experiences that communities share, trauma and celebration which call out for the kind of space that carries no political or sectional agenda, that is not for anything but the expression of certain serious and complex emotions…And whether we are thinking about personal trauma or collective…it is emphatically true that a very large number of people, far larger than the statistics of regular worshippers, urgently need a place for certain things to be voiced. What is offered by a space dedicated to worship is essential – somewhere where events may occur that belong to a whole locality, where solidarities of a mysterious but very important kind can be reinforced.’

Rowan Williams, essay on ‘Sustainable communities’ in Faith in the Public Square.

Last weekend saw the second ‘Sanctuary’ event – a three-day festival showcasing local bands, ale, and street food, organised by local business-men and -women and held at Sunderland Minster - and I am struck afresh by the thoughts offered by Rowan Williams above. I’m struck by the response, over and over again, of people coming into this space for the first time, and finding somewhere to which they are drawn back. I’m struck by the requests to host conversations between different groups – the recognition that this is a safe space in which difficult but greatly-needed communication can take place. I’m struck by the gift that we have been given, by those who have gone before us and by God, for the people of Sunderland; and by the great honour it is to be here.

Tribes

There has been a lot of blood shed this summer. It is hard to know how to respond to the information – unconfirmed, confirmed, falsified, justified, ignored, flaunted, demanding action or reaction – that has bombarded us.

The nature of our information age is to over-saturate our attention with the now, promoting the idea that this moment is of all-consuming importance.

I live in England, one of three countries – at this point in history; in past times there have been several more, smaller, kingdoms – on Great Britain, the largest of the British Isles, a group of islands off the coast of mainland Europe. This island has been invaded many times: by Britons, by the varied peoples of the Roman Empire, by Angles, by Saxons, by Vikings, by Normans. People-groups have swept across the land, bringing different ideas, different values, different gods, different languages. At times, different communities have co-existed in unstable peace; at times, one has put another to the sword, destroying everything in their path; and at times, they have inter-mixed.

There has been a lot of bloodshed on this island. The second-half of the fifteenth-century saw the Wars of the Roses, dynastic wars for the throne of England. The mid-seventeenth-century saw the Civil Wars. As Scotland considers independence after some 300 years of union, we are reminded of bloody battles, some won by Scottish armies and those of their allies, some by English armies and those of their allies.

Then there are the wars this country has taken part in beyond our shores, whether building an Empire or opposing empire-building on the part of others. Our history is soaked in blood. Had we lived in any of those moments, our own personal experience would have been much closer to that of men, women and children in Iraq or Gaza or many other parts of the world this summer.

And this history has made us who we are as a nation. This history has shaped us, for good and for ill. There have been a great many atrocities, and a greater still number of tragedies. And there has also been a great deal of good in the unfolding of our history, our culture, our discoveries, our inventions…

I would suggest that the great deal of good that has come out of our folly and mis-directed passion is evidence of a God who loves human beings; who gives us great freedom but also sets limits on our triumphs (so we do not utterly destroy others) and on our tragedies (so we are not utterly destroyed by others); and who is at work in all things to bring good out of even the most evil of situations. Good that is testified-to in former enemies becoming friends.

This does not mean that it does not matter that, all over the world, one tribe is putting another to the sword – literally and metaphorically. It does not mean that we should not speak out, or act.

It does mean that we should be very careful in our choice of words, and actions. There is no people on earth who occupies the moral high-ground; nor any low-point that cannot be transformed by love. The longer we hold on to our commitment to violence towards one another, the longer it will take to see enemies become friends. And yet this, and not our present troubles, is the ultimate reality, because in and through Christ, God is reconciling all things.

Eight

In honour of Elijah’s eighth birthday today, some photos of him from our recent holiday, in the last days of being seven.

Disclaimer: no owls were eaten…

On Holiday

From tomorrow, I will be on holiday. I’m looking forward to getting away with my family.

Knowing various people who are on holiday at the moment, or just returned from holiday, or going on holiday within the next month, has given opportunity to reflect on what holidays are for.

There is a school of thought that suggests that, given the amount of extra work that needs to take place before going on holiday, and the amount of extra work that needs to be dealt with on returning, not to mention the decompression time it takes to actually enter-into being off work, and the time spent preparing to re-enter ‘everyday life,’ there is no benefit to taking holiday at all.

Given the demands of work many of us live with, and the effort of juggling time-off-work across a team, many other people simply default into not taking all of the annual leave they are entitled to.

The purpose of holiday is not to recover from work. That necessary space needs to be built-into our daily and weekly routines (and yes, I know that is easier said than done).

Neither is the purpose of holiday to build-up some reservoir of energy to take back into the workplace. We are not batteries. Rest, and its benefits, cannot be stored for a later time (another reason why we need to build-in rest as part of our daily and weekly experience of life).

The purpose of holiday is the recognition that there is more to life than work – even if we are blessed to find work a fulfilling experience – and the ongoing practicalities of life that are part of our regular routine.

God has given us a world to be enjoyed, as well as – and, indeed, even before – cared for. A big world to be discovered, as well as a small patch to tend.

Holidays are for exploring: landscapes and cityscapes and spaces of the imagination; beaches and mountains and bookshops and art galleries…and building a treasure-house of shared memories.

Holidays are holy days, days to recognise that all of life is gift, not reward; and to be reminded that the world will not end if God rests, let alone if I do…

I am about to go on holiday. It will be very good.

Clay

Today at the mid-week lunchtime Holy Communion, we read these verses from Jeremiah:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord:

‘Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.

Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as the potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

Jeremiah 18:1-6

I love these verses. I love the idea that we might hear God speak to us as we observe people going about their daily work. Recently I have been visiting members of the Sunderland Minster family in the places where they go about their work (in the broadest sense, including paid employment, voluntary, and recreational activity), and my sense is that God still speaks in such ways.

But to return to Jeremiah: there is a flaw in the clay, and as the potter shapes it, the vessel crumples in his hands. But the clay is far too precious to discard, to throw away. Instead, the potter starts over, trying a different shape, making another vessel. And not a second-best vessel, either: a quality piece of craftsmanship, a thing of beauty and usefulness.

And God says, what the potter has done with this clay, I can do with my people. My flawed people. I don’t discard people – whom I have made from the clay of the earth, and breathed life into. They are far too precious to me. As I shape them, flaws might cause the vessel to collapse; but when that happens, I pause, and consider, and try again. Even if you can’t see the potential, can I not do this, says the Lord (rhetorical question)?

We human beings are quick to judge one another as flawed-beyond-beauty-or-purpose, quick to consider one another as disposable, to be discarded. Quick to judge ourselves as such, too, at times.

God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor his ways our ways. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

Rejoicing : Weeping

Today the General Synod of the Church of England voted Yes to having bishops who are women, as well as bishops who are men. This is an historic moment. It is an event that is located in a process, a process that has brought us to this day and a process that will continue onwards from this day – a process that has had both positive and negative consequences, and will continue to have both positive and negative consequences.

Personally, I am delighted by today’s vote. I believe that men and women have a biblical mandate to share in oversight of the local and trans-local church, and that there is biblical guidance as to how men and women ought to exercise such oversight. For me, today is not so much a departure as a returning to something God-given that we had surrendered: for me, today is a prophetic act of repentance.

And yet it is also a departure. And I recognise that while there are many women within the Church who this night feel that they are no longer second-class citizens within the Church they love, that there are also many other women and men who this night feel that they have become second-class citizens within the Church they love.

These people are my brothers and sisters in Christ.

I might disagree with their position, at times in the strongest of terms. They might on occasion deeply anger and sadden me in equal measure. But together we are part of the Body of Christ, and when one part of the body hurts, the whole body feels pain.

Tonight, I am struck by Romans chapter 12, the whole chapter, and in particular verse 15: ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.’

Tonight, there are those in my Church who are rejoicing, and those who are weeping. We are called to rejoice with those who rejoice: that is, those who disagree with today’s vote are exhorted to rejoice with those for whom it is a cause of celebration. And we are called to weep with those who weep: that is, those who agree with today’s vote are exhorted to weep with those for whom it is a cause of deep sadness.

We don’t always manage to live out the life to which we are called. We don’t always get that right. But when we do, it is a powerful witness to the reconciliation God is at work to bring about in and through Jesus Christ. When we do, our choosing to rejoice and to weep opens us to a transformative encounter with the life-giving Holy Spirit. When we do, we are at our most counter-cultural in a society that constantly demands that there is a Winner and a Loser, and that we must be(come) the Winner.

So, whatever our view regarding today’s vote, are we willing to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep?

Can You Tell What It Is Yet?

Are we capable of recognising that human beings have the capacity to create and to destroy, to add beauty and ugliness to the world, to enhance and to impoverish the lives of others?

Are we capable of saying that in abusing his position in order to abuse young women, Rolf Harris has destroyed, has made the world more ugly, has impoverished the lives of others – and that for this he must be held to account and face consequences of his actions – but that as a gifted artist this same Rolf Harris has created, has added beauty to the world, has enhanced the lives of others – and that this, too, must be recognised?

Or must we remove, even destroy, certainly devalue (by 90%), his paintings? His life?

If we cannot name both sides of the paradox that is Rolf Harris, then we cannot speak the paradox that is ourselves. That which is destructive, ugly, impoverishing remains in the dark, where it can flourish, so long as it doesn’t step into the light, exposing itself. And that which is creative, beautiful, enhancing is redefined as fake, a front to mask something, simply waiting to be exposed.

If we cannot own both sides of the paradox, affirming the one and confronting the other, then the fallen are damned, their family is damned – condemned to erase a life from their lives, erasing much of themselves in so doing, or to refuse and to be erased by others. All those wronged – both the particular abused and the general betrayed – are damned, their own defaced beauty erased because beauty cannot be trusted, and (the irony!) must be sacrificed in order to starve destruction. Ultimately, we are all damned, because we are all that same paradox.

Beauty in all forms – painting, sculpture, music, fashion, architecture, in every form – is only created by an artist who also destroys. This is as true of the natural world as it is of human artefacts. The darkness does not extinguish the light. We do not need to create a towering bonfire of ‘Works to be expunged from the record.’

We rile against a paradox, hoping to resolve it, when in fact we need it. This particular paradox ought to keep us from idolising heroes. But it ought to keep us from tearing them, and ourselves, apart too.

Fourth Of July

I’m told that nearby Washington – the seat of George Washington’s ancestors, whose crest provides the origin of the Stars and Stripes flag – is the only place in England that celebrates Independence Day.

As any indigenous people group knows, Independence is merely the other side of the same coin as Colonialism.

But to recognise this is to have to acknowledge that Colonialism is not entirely without merit, and Independence is not self-evidently better. Each presents us with a paradox: utterly corrupted, self-serving; and yet – by the grace of God – still capable of being utilised for good, for beauty. Sin – in the sense of falling short of or away from our best intended trajectory, let alone those good goals of which we are unaware – is inevitable and unavoidable; and indeed, is the very thing that is transformed by grace – God’s giving of himself to us, and along with that self-giving, every good gift.

We hold land not as owners, and by right, but as stewards, and by gift; and then, not merely as stewards holding land in trust for our own descendants, but in trust for the whole world. And so National Days – whether Independence Days, or taking some other form – ought not to be a day to celebrate our freedom from others so much as to reflect on what we have done for others with our freedom.

Any sober judgement would recognise that we (whatever our nationality) have done good – intended, and by happy accident – and evil – again, by wilful intention, and unintentionally. And that the good we have done has most often been possible only with the help of other nations, while the evil we have perpetrated has also been in complicity with other nations. At the end of the day, we are more interdependent than we like to admit. And rightly so.

Empires rise and fall, and political borders ebb and flow like the tides. We stand in our time, a time allocated us not by our own decision, with a past not of our choosing, and a future beyond our control. All we have is the present, the inevitability of our sin, and the promise of God’s grace. That is enough, to use our freedom to serve others, with humility and confidence. Which might truly be worth celebrating.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

The Church is no less conflicted, no less corrupt, than any other group of people - and that ought to keep us in a place of honesty and humility. The Church is no more conflicted, no more corrupt, than any other group of people - and that ought to give us cause to remain. The Church is faithless, and faithful. Ugly, and beautiful. And loved. Loved with a transforming love. We rail against paradox, and yet we need to embrace it, for only then can we be embraced.

Doubting With Thomas

Today is the Feast Day of St Thomas.

Thomas, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, is commonly known as ‘Doubting Thomas,’ after the account on John’s Gospel (John 20:24-29) where Thomas refuses to believe the resurrection on second-hand experience, and Jesus tells him ‘Do not doubt but believe.’

The Story of Doubting Thomas is a Tale that contains a Moral: doubt is inappropriate for those who follow Jesus; is incompatible with faith.

Except that Jesus didn’t deal in morality tales. If that is how we understand ‘Do not doubt but believe’ then – as so often – we have misunderstood Jesus’ words.

Doubt is not incompatible with faith, but has an essential role to play in faith. Doubt moves us beyond the known and creates the space within which we have a transforming encounter with Jesus.

Following Jesus’ death, the other disciples are hiding together in one place. Thomas is not with them: he doubts the wisdom of their decision, a decision that makes it possible for all of the key leaders of the Jesus-followers to be arrested in one raid. While they lock themselves away, Thomas trusts himself into God’s hands and steps out…

Unless we can doubt that we know all, or know for certain, or know better than others; unless we can doubt that the world ends at the horizon (which may be as near as four walls); unless we can doubt that we have done all that God has in mind for us … we cannot unlearn and learn anew; cannot go beyond the familiar and comforting; cannot present ourselves as available to Jesus, to be sent by him.

When Jesus says ‘Do not doubt but believe’ he is not saying Doubt is Wrong, but, this particular doubt has served its purpose, has found its goal, has become the place of encounter: you can let it go now, because I have responded to that doubt and opened up for you a new way of believing.

You can let it go now, and that will free you up to take on a new doubt.

If the demands of Thomas’ doubt were inappropriate, Jesus would not have met them – indeed, he not only meets them, he meets them exactly and fully. And the resurrection accounts make it clear that Thomas was not the only disciple who doubted, nor this the only encounter that doubt opened up.

Thomas will go all the way to the south of India, planting churches as he goes. I would suggest that he goes not because he has overcome his doubts, or in spite of his doubts, but led by his doubts. While the others – who will all receive the commission to go out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth – remain in Jerusalem, Thomas doubts that this is all that Jesus has in mind for him, doubts that this is the only or best place within which he might serve.

I would suggest that Thomas’ progression from Jerusalem to the south of India is a series of doubts which open up a new space and are then fulfilled, to be succeeded by a new doubt fulfilled in its turn.

Without doubt there is no possibility of repentance – a change of mind – and without repentance it is not possible to believe in a new way. There is only the self-imposed locked room.

The Epistle reading for today speaks of God building us – collectively - into a holy temple, a dwelling-place for God. Is it possible that doubt, transformed, is key in expanding those walls?

Today is the Feast Day of St Thomas. The patron saint of those who embrace the gift of doubt, the role of the Doubter.

What will you doubt today?

Family Business

This post is written with friends who are developing incarnational and missional principles within traditional church contexts in mind. If that is you, I hope the post is helpful. If that isn’t you, it might not make a lot of sense. As ever on this personal blog, I am expressing personal views and not necessarily speaking on behalf of any corporate identity.

In Acts chapter 16 we see the establishment of two Christian households in Philippi: the household of Lydia, and the household of the jailer. In each case, the household is an extended community of blood relations and employees, an economic unit (oikos) with a particular family business - a ‘fashion house’ (or perhaps a ‘sweat shop,’ waiting to be redeemed), and a ‘security firm’ (again, a context ripe for transformation). It is these households that experience salvation, and become ‘local churches’ - epicentres of a cultural earthquake that will transform the cultural landscape. This is a pattern that will be repeated across the Greco-Roman world.

My observation is that our family business at Sunderland Minster is heritage. We are custodians of a building that records 1200 years, not only of Christian worship in Sunderland but 1200 years of the settlement that is Sunderland.

For some of my friends, the idea that our primary business is heritage is problematic: the church is not a museum. But for me, this is to misunderstand the role of heritage, or the place and value of museums. Museums exist to help us make sense of who we are by understanding how we have come to where we are; to draw on our history in order to resource our present and shape our future.

Heritage can be incarnational, because it is grounded in the wider community; indeed, it grounds the community. And heritage can be missional, because it shapes the context for engagement with the wider community.

Our family business is heritage. The Minster is located within Sunderland as a place of meeting, learning, belonging, and celebrating.

Our family business is heritage. This means that our closest connections are with those who connect with heritage. School groups who are looking for help to deliver their curriculum, whether in relation to religious education or history or art. Artists who are looking for a venue in which to put on an exhibition. Musicians - from opera to rock - looking for a concert venue. Business people looking for a unique setting for a charity fundraiser or an event promoting the economy of the city. And, in particular over the next four years, an opportunity to engage with the centenary anniversaries of the First World War, alongside the city council, library, museum, local historians, and others.

Heritage is our fashion house, our security firm. And just as being in fashion afforded Lydia’s household opportunity to share their life, shaped by their faith, with her suppliers and clients, so being in heritage affords us opportunities to interact with education and art and commerce. An exhibition of photographs or sculpture breaks down the false sacred/secular dichotomy and opens up all kinds of conversation about life.

This means that a key question for here is, how can we equip our people to play a part in the heritage business? That part might be as an interpreter of the building; but there will be other roles too.

For some of the people who relate to us, the relationship will go no further than a business transaction. Surely there were those who simply bought cloth from Lydia - or tents from Paul. But some of those relationships become personal, become being there for one another in good times and bad. Some of those relationships become transformational - and in both directions.

Because we are a baptised household, we set aside certain times in the week to gather together for prayer and worship. But this is not our family business. Because we seek to follow Jesus we find ways to respond to the needs of the most marginalised. But this is not our family business, either. Because we seek to follow Jesus, we must take up the commission to make disciples. But making disciples is not our family business: making disciples takes place within the spheres of our family business. These are things that will find expression, one way or another, in any Christian household. But within this city there are several churches, each engaging with different communities within the life of the city, according to the calling to which they have been called. Heritage is (clearly) not the family business of a great many churches; but it is quite legitimately the family business of others.

Part of our call as the Dowsett family has been the call to movement from place to place. In each place we have become part of a local extended household, and in each place the family business has been different. In Sheffield the family business was an urban monastery. In Liverpool, it was helping people escape from debt, or rebuild lives broken down by addiction. In Southport, it was to offer a parish community centre and community garden.

Each time we have moved, this has required us to learn new skills, and to find ways to bring our gifts and skills and experience to the service of something that might lie outside of our existing experience. I am not an expert on heritage - far from it! But I am learning. And I am asking the question, how might we make disciples within the context of heritage? Including, how might we nurture a particular ethos, and teach particular skills?

Are you (personally, collectively) clear as to what your extended family business is?

What constraints do you need to accept, in order to embrace that family business?

What training might you need, in order to invest in your family business?

Field, Northumbria

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Missionary Kid

I was a MK (Missionary Kid). My parents were missionaries, serving with the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF). OMF started out as the China Inland Mission, founded by James Hudson Taylor almost 150 years ago, in 1865. Hudson Taylor was not the first western missionary in China by any means, but his missionary society were pioneers in many ways.

They famously adopted Chinese dress, fully committing themselves to China, insisting that they must embrace Chinese culture wherever it was not incompatible with the gospel, and challenge it in those places where it was as those who spoke from within the community and not colonialists (though bringing to bear international relations, as campaigners do today). Today this principle is described as incarnational living.

Several members of Hudson Taylor’s family and extended family by marriage would hold key roles within the organisation. Viewed negatively, this might be considered controlling, or empire-building; but viewed more generously, it illustrates the principle of family on mission, a shared sense of purpose, and core values that were (for good or ill) lived out together.

In the early 1950s CIM missionaries made a “reluctant exodus” from China, going to the Chinese diaspora and other people groups across South East Asia; the name changing to OMF in 1964. My parents would go out to the Philippines, where they worked under and alongside Filipino church planters, and discipled university students.

The local church is a particular specialism. Local churches ought to know their locality, its particular needs, challenges and opportunities better than anyone else – with people in that place to love and serve those people. But the local church is not, and never has been, the only expression of the Church, the only specialism. CIM/OMF would be a good example of a different kind of specialism:

in this case, 150 years of experience of supporting those who have a particular sense of call to the people of Asia, and the diverse challenges of living in the world’s great mega-cities or remote jungle tribes.

I was born in the Philippines, but later my parents returned to the UK for health reasons, continuing to work with OMF but in a different capacity. I watched my mum train people for global mission. I watched my dad inspire others to become missionaries - and not necessarily with OMF.

But perhaps most of all I had a deep sense of growing up within a big family. Not simply the great big family that is the Church, most of whom I will never meet; but a shared identity within the OMF family. Whenever we met up with other OMF families, even if they had served on a different mission field, even if the parents knew each other but the kids had never met, there was a connection, a common MK bond. And then there were the stories: of Hudson Taylor and J.O. Fraser and others who had accrued legendary status, but also the exciting and faith-building adventures of people we had actually met.

Today OMF is a multi-national and cross-denominational family. As such, there are inevitable tensions. As a network of national organisations and as a global family its members are held together by common values, aims, and a particular statement of faith. I share some but not all of those. But I will be eternally grateful that this was my starting point.

I am still a son, but now I am also a husband and a father. We are a family on mission, and our call is to work with local churches here in England. But as a family we are part of a big family on mission, called The Order of Mission (TOM).

TOM grew out of the church we were part of in Sheffield (not so very far from Barnsley, where Hudson Taylor was from). Whereas CIM was part of a wave of evangelical missionary societies which were founded around the same time, TOM is an example of a contemporary movement of ‘new-monastic Orders,’ which draw on the patterns of the old religious Orders, both Celtic and Roman.

From its founding in 2003 TOM has been cross-denominational and multi-national. It is the big family that has supported us when everything else has been transitional, when my being ordained within the Church of England has meant that our family have moved from Sheffield to Nottingham to Liverpool to Southport and now to Sunderland (where we hope that we will be for many years).

We have shared values – expressed as a life of simplicity, purity and accountability – and a shared Rule of Life (missionary Societies tend to have doctrinal statements of faith, setting out what members believe; missionary Orders tend to have a Rule of Life, setting out how we live: it is not that Societies are only concerned with orthodoxy and Orders with orthopraxy, but it does reflect a different emphasis).

But most of all these things describe a family, called to help the Church fulfil the call to make disciples of all nations and in all generations, in a rapidly-changing Western context.

Like any family, it has grown and changed; new members have joined, and others have moved on, sometimes having fallen out with one another – this, too, is part of the imperfection of family, church, mission, mess that God still works through. For all its joys and sorrows, this is the big family my children are part of, growing up in; these are their non-biological cousins, their stories and heroes of faith.

Being part of TOM supports us as we work alongside the local church. There, we want to help people to make disciples who make disciples. OMF supported my dad to inspire people for mission, not simply recruit them for OMF; and TOM supports us in the same way.

We meet up with other members of TOM in the north east, to share and to pray for one another. Locally, we draw on that long-standing support. But just as there is not one way of being a missionary in Asia across 150 years and more than 10 nations, so we need to work out in our local context what it will look like to live a life of simplicity, purity and accountability;

to work under and alongside others in the local church (the staff team and wider congregation at Sunderland Minster is diverse in our theology and tradition, and finds support from different quarters);

and to see something flourish that is authentic to the north east and not imposed from a very different culture.

TOM is just over 10 years old. That is no time at all, in the history of mission, of Societies and Orders, of the Church. Ten years after founding the CIM, Hudson Taylor was a man in broken health, having lost children and his first wife to disease. And yet, and yet. I do not know how God will use TOM in the years ahead, but I do know that he will. And I am deeply thankful to have been part of these two adventures.

Liverpool Waterfront

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