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Many moons ago (well, it seems like it anyway) I agreed to do three pulpit supply dates in August. My thinking was that by the end of July my dissertation would be progressing well and things might be easing off a little. Aye right!
Now, one of those churches uses the lectionary and the other two don’t so that sets the agenda for at least one of the Sundays. All three churches are geographically diverse and so there is virtually no risk of ‘being followed’ from one to the other. So, given that it’s unlikely that the lectionary passage is going to crop up in the two other churches any Sunday soon, why not make life easier and use the same sermon and order of service for each church?
It’s probably what I’ll end up doing (with variations to allow for the different length of sermon anticipated at each), but part of me still thinks that it’s ‘cheating’. Mind you, a few years ago we were on holiday and happened to catch a visiting preacher in the church we went to. Soon afterwards we heard that same person in another church and, surprise! surprise! heard the same sermon.
Maybe I should look on it as way of reflecting on how the same text/message is received differently in different contexts. Or maybe it’s an opportunity to present the same text in different ways and so experience the richness to be found in scripture. The next question though is whether I start with the short sermon and pad it out or do the long one and trim it down.
Anyway, as I was saying…
It’s been almost a month since I last blogged anything (and then, only briefly). I’m not on placement at the moment, so there are fewer things to reflect on in that regard; I took a break from the academic work to catch up on some house maintenance that has been sadly neglected over the last few years; I’ve been on holiday with the family (photos can be found here); I’ve even found the time to read some non-theological books.
I suppose I could have blogged on some of these things, but then I didn’t really feel any great urge to do so – a bit of a break from blogging as well, I guess. Stewart has been covering the issue of resting and priorities with recent posts on ‘always available‘ and ‘busyness‘ – a useful reminder that we need, and benefit from, taking time out from our routine and the demands that are placed upon us. It’s also not been an issue of having nothing to have a rant about (OK, I admit it, I love a good rant) – there have been numerous things which have got me grumping (mostly associated with misrepresenting the Church of Scotland, misunderstanding the Reformation(s), and generally being utterly contradictory (that’ll be church services then). But again, I haven’t felt the need to rush off and blog about it (well, I was tempted, but really couldn’t pluck up the enthusiasm).
But perhaps the main purpose and benefit from this blogging/academic/placement interlude has been to clear the decks somewhat in anticipation of a panicked and pressured dissertation-writing drive. I’ve put off the writing for as long as could get away with as ideas and thoughts and readings all bubbled around in my head. But now it’s time to get that lot down on paper and see where it all ends up. So, chances are, this is not really an end to the blogging interlude, but it’s certainly an end to the timeout from academic obligations.
In a stroke of good luck (sorry, blessing), Michael Patton published a list of rules all new Christians must follow. It is a very useful follow-up on my post on Christian clones. (And, yes, it is tongue-in-cheek – I think).
In that amazing way that only seems to come through a sense of God at work by the Spirit, there was a consistent theme running through much of the activity and challenge on the recent trip to Geneva. (Although I suspect that the lecturers who organised the trip would like to claim that that was its intention all along). That theme can probably best be described by paraphrasing (my excuse for poorly translating) the main sermon point from the French service in the Cathedral St Pierre on the Sunday morning:
Unity does not mean uniformity; diversity does not mean division.
Continue reading Christian clones
 From the 10th to the 14th of June, I had the pleasure of spending time in Geneva with other candidates and some staff from New College. The trip was part of a rolling series of visits which include Rome and Jerusalem. I skipped the Rome trip last year as I was in Brussels. The trips are intended to be educational as well as fun and help set both the academic work and general Christian understanding in a broader world context.
Geneva, of course, was one of the wellsprings of the Protestant Reformation, famous largely, but not exclusively, as the place where Calvin taught and preached. But Geneva is also home to major world organisations: the UN, World Health Organisation, the International Committee of the Red Cross, UNHCR and many others. The group had the pleasure of visiting the World Council of Churches to get a flavour of the work they do and their vision for world Christianity.
We also took the chance to visit the cathedral, including the Sunday morning service, and we were able to worship with the Church of Scotland congregation in the Auditoire de Calvin which sits just to one side of the square occupied by the cathedral. Nikki and I also had the privilege of leading our evening devotions in the Auditoire on Friday evening. She’s written about it here and I still can’t quite get over how some silly ideas came together in the way they did. I’m still not convinced that Calvin would have entirely approved, but it was so very appropriate for the occasion.
Add to that some sight-seeing time, an excellent art gallery and some great company and it was an excellent long weekend. I’ll post some more reflections on specific parts of the trip in due course. My photo album from the trip can be found here.
You’d think that starting probation in September would be enough to be going on with and that writing a dissertation on the Church of Scotland’s relationship with Emerging Church would keep things ticking over in the meantime. However, a tentative enquiry about the Mission Shaped Ministry courses has now resulted in the Candidates’ Task Group giving me the go-ahead to take the course starting in September. I’m a bit of a ‘test case’ (maybe that should read head-case) to see if it’s do-able. Strictly speaking you are not supposed to undertake additional training courses during probation, but this one is very much about where the CofS want to focus in the future, so they’re taking the opportunity to see if it fits with probation work as well. Useful as well to be able to compare the academic (dissertation) with the practical.
In the spirit of not making any public statements, but encouraging discussion and understanding of the subject which cannot be named (why do I feel like we’re in a Harry Potter story?) I would like to point to some good and thought-provoking articles which were themselves pointed to in JohnFH‘s blog which I sometimes dip into (except for his Hebrew stuff which goes whizzing over my head).
The first is an article by Richard B Hays which is an adaptation of a lengthier book section. It is a pretty comprehensive statement of the conservative position on homosexuality. I recall reading the full book section in 2nd year New Testament studies and found it to be useful then. That was not long before General Assembly discussed the issue of human sexuality. The Mission and Discipleship report (.doc file) and the congregation discussion resource document (1.5M pdf file, via OneKirk) they produced drew heavily on this work for the conservative perspective. It was also at the heart of a ‘refutation‘ at the time by Paul Middleton, but that work never fully engaged with Hays and so I was left feeling that it was a somewhat selective and not entirely convincing counter-argument.
The second referenced article is by Kim Fabricius (on Ben Myers blog) is a useful ‘in a nutshell’ view from the other side of the debate. The comments are extensive and worth a skim through. It is not a point-by-point argument and assumes a degree of ‘honest’ scholarship which recognises the ambiguity in many of the scriptural references to homosexual activity. If that’s not your ‘place’ then I would recommend doing some wider reading before decrying what Kim says. An ‘honest’ approach will/should leave Romans 1 as one of the few ‘unambiguous’ texts which need to be dealt with. Thereafter you may engage with his propositions and reach your own conclusion.
Finally, the third article referenced is not a theology one, but rather a media comment on a recent sex scandal in Australia. It makes some very valid moral/ethical observations which, I think, are quite pertinent to the whole discussion.
There are times when life seems to pass by so quickly. That seems never more true than when you are on a placement. Uni term times whizz past, but they’re only ten weeks. Holidays whizz past, but they’re only a couple of weeks tops. Placements though are 8 months and when that last Sunday rolls round, as it did for me today, then 8 months seems to disappear in a flash.
It never seems long enough to get to know all the people you would wish to. It’s never long enough to get to know those you did as well as you should. It never seems long enough to cram in all that you would want to do with the safety net of a supervisor to hand.
I’ve said it before, but finishing up a placement is a strange time. Although the time does seem to flash past, 8 months is still a long time. It’s plenty of time to begin to get to know people’s stories; it’s plenty time to begin to build up emotional bonds with people; it’s plenty of time to really start to care for folks. So when it’s time to move on, it’s a wrench. But behind it all is the knowledge that it is only a part of the journey. Knowing that the move is inevitable means, for me anyway, that towards the end of the placement you cannot help but begin to look forward, to a place beyond the current placement. It means that when you do hit that end point you are already a little bit disconnected. It all adds to the strangeness of the whole process of formation for ministry.
What I do need to do now though is begin to think through what I’ve done, not just in this placement, but in all the others, and begin to work out what I need to focus on for probation. On this placement in particular I have felt that inexorable march towards ministry. It has been an opportunity to tick a handful more boxes on the ‘should have done’ list. It has been an opportunity to refine skills and to keep working on the ones which are still very rough round the edges. It has been an opportunity to make mistakes knowing that, as a student, some allowances are made and that there is someone there to pick up the pieces if things went drastically wrong (which they never did, I think). It has also been an opportunity to experiment and test out ways of doing things, again knowing that an experienced voice is on hand to help analyse and critique in a positive way.
Of course, all of this means that a lovely bunch of people have to put up with a lot of the ups and downs as well. The congregation have been nothing if not supportive and understanding, gracious with feedback and encouraging in their comments. Many commented today that they too couldn’t believe 8 months had passed so quickly. (Perhaps that’s a blessed relief from their perspective.)
So now there is the small matter of a dissertation to write over the summer (now watch the time really disappear) with probation starting on the 1st of September. Given the speed with which time seems to fly by at the moment, maybe it’s time to start ringing those warning bells for when I get let loose on my own.
Oh yes, and there’s the ‘Not a licensing’ Service of Recognition organised by the presbytery on the 24th of June, 7pm, Larbert East Church, where Andy and I will be given a slap on the back in acknowledgement of putting up with it all thus far.
I’ve been catching up on some reading recently (I’ve not long finished The Mystery of Christ by Robert Farrar Capon and Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell) and currently working my way through The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann. When I’m not banging on about Emerging Church, one of my soapboxes is the need for Christians (especially Christian leaders) to be the ‘prophetic voice’ within society – pointing out its failings and pointing to a better way. This is at the heart of Brueggemann’s book and I came across a passage worth quoting:
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Thus I suggest that prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated.
The italics are Brueggemann’s and state the hypothesis for the book. The extract, I believe, succinctly states the mission and problem for the church. The church needs to be counter-cultural. And that doesn’t mean that it decries culture, rather it should always be asking if this is the ‘best’ we can achieve. And by ‘best’, I would suggest that that means being more ‘Christ-like’; being fully human and fully spiritual creatures, living life in its fullest measure without fear of discrimination, oppression and injustice.
But the extract also highlights the biggest danger the church faces – becoming ‘co-opted and domesticated’. (The phrase, “Aslan is not a tame lion” has just sprung to mind). My biggest fear of Emerging Church is that the Christian distinctives get subsumed by a desire to be ‘relevant’ – faith and worship are co-opted to suit a context, rather than that happening the other way round. Domestication comes when the church is no longer proactive but reactive and is ‘used’ to provide social services or a place where religious-types can go on a Sunday morning. Or perhaps domestication has come through the church becoming a useful branch of Historic Scotland responsible for the upkeep of a bunch of old buildings. I’m sure there are many ways in which we have become ‘co-opted and domesticated’.
How easy is it though to rediscover our revolutionary voice?
I recently heard a sermon that got me thinking, “So what?”
Well, it actually got me thinking a lot more than that, although it was primarily because I didn’t agree with a lot of it – or, at least, felt it was ‘lacking’ in certain areas. But it was the ‘So what?” question that got me going and I was wondering how often we don’t adequately deal with the ‘So what?’ of our faith and what we say about it.
Let me explain what my particular ‘So what?’ issue was in this instance.
The preacher took an opportunity to have a bit of a dig at the ‘God is love’ approach to Christian faith. This, they felt, was a limited understanding of God and threw away a significant part of the Bible which speaks of God’s justice, wrath and judgement. We got the ‘God loves us’ bit, but in the usual illustration of a loving parent who chastises (punishes) their child ‘for their own good’. I got the distinct impression that God didn’t do nearly enough of that these days and we would be well warned that he might just decide to smite us all for being miserable sinners one day.
Now, I don’t deny that the Bible speaks of a God of judgement, but surely that is the point of the cross. Jesus was judged in our place. All our iniquities were laid on him. He became sin for us. And whatever other verses you want to throw into the mix. Christ’s death on the cross brought about forgiveness for our sinfulness, did it not? God looks on Jesus and pardons us, does he not? Yes, God judges, but God has judged Jesus so that we won’t be.
Or am I missing something? Was Christ’s death on the cross not quite enough? Did Christ only die for some of our sins?
And if that’s not the case then, other than to illustrate (one of) the purposes of the cross, why keep banging on about God’s judgement and wrath? Is it because it simply goes against the grain to think that people are getting away with things we don’t like? But is this not the very point of God’s grace – we have ‘got away with it’, even the worst of ‘it’? It’s not grace otherwise! It’s our own efforts to self-improve to be ‘good enough’ to be accepted.
But what of texts which speak of a final judgement? We still have to go back to those questions about Christ’s atoning death. It either did it all or it didn’t. If it didn’t, we’re all stuffed. If it did then beating me down with how awful I am and God will judge me is a pointless exercise. What is more likely to get a response – a threat or a gift? If the ‘judgement’ of God only falls on those who reject his gift, then why offer only a threat and ignore the gift? And if it is the gift that matters, why dwell on the threat?
I get the need for a balanced picture of God. I’m just not sure that the correct balance is 50:50 and that whenever ‘God is love’ is preached it needs to be balanced with judgement. Otherwise, we risk, I think, diminishing the life, death and resurrection of Jesus with a whole series of ‘So what?’ questions.
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