He who sings prays twice,” said St Augustine, and to my mind a good singer is a good singer, as Susan Boyle proved to be. Susan Boyle, of Irish immigrants, the youngest of 4 brothers and six sisters from Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland, and nicknamed “Susie Simple” at school came to international public attention this year after she appeared as a contestant in the television show Britain's got Talent. She sang I Dreamed a Dream from Les Misérables in the competition's first round, broadcast in April this year.
In the final of the show, Susan finished in second place, behind dance troupe Diversity. Within nine days of her televised debut, videos of her audition, subsequent interviews and her 1999 rendition of Cry Me a River had been viewed over a 100 million times on the Internet. Although in second place she is now estimated to make a personal fortune of over £6 million. She has gone from singing in her local catholic church and at karaoke to being the most downloaded woman, so far at least, in history.
Susan was an unlikely star. When she came on stage to sing, in a new dress, leather jacket and chunky necklace the judges and audience laughed at her awkward, dumpy appearance, and buried their faces in their hands. Was she going to squawk like a duck? But when she opened her mouth the mood changed. You could see a wave first of confusion, then guilt, then wild applause. Her performance was a victory for talent and artistry in a culture obsessed with physical attractiveness and presentation. Far from being a comedy loser, a freak show entertainer, a Shrek to a My Fair Lady, Susan’s performance was a triumph for "women of a certain age" over a youth culture that often dismisses middle-aged women.
Susan had a rare and beautiful gift – which overcame poverty and adversity - she could sing – and she sang from the core of her being. Millions testified to her special gift. Like Susan, we too are given gifts; called gifts of the spirit, special abilities provided by the Holy Spirit to Christians for the purpose of building up the body of Christ, for building up others in a life of faith. The gifts of the Spirit enable believers to do what God has called them to do, they are part of the "everything we need" to fulfill His purposes for our lives. He will equip us with whatever gifts of the Spirit we need to accomplish the task or tasks.
It is the experience of Christians over the years that the Spirit usually harnesses one's talents in the service of the purpose for which the gifts are given. Yet sometimes, the spiritual gifts seem to work against a person's natural endowment. This is, after all, the same God who led his people out of Egypt using a stammerer named Moses, made a shepherd boy/musician named David into a renowned warrior and king, and turned rural fishermen into leaders who left a mark on the course of history. There are examples everywhere of people who don't have training, aren't highly skilled, have no particular knack, aren’t particularly attractive or beautiful but when the time comes for them to benefit others, the gift is there. Just like Susan Boyle. The Spirit takes pleasure in surprises and on turning the tables on the expected. It is wise to leave ourselves open for such action!
As well as Susan’s singing gift, there is one other thing that can remind us of Susan - Susan – and that is her looks. She reminded me, or the press did, of the way the Gospels speak of Jesus, identified with the broken figure from the book of Isaiah. One “with no beauty that we should desire, despised and rejected of men, one from whom men hide their faces.” In spite of her her looks I hope Susan will keep her peculiarity, her mysteriousness, her vulnerability, her inner gift. We have these treasures, says, St Paul, in earthen vessels. As my parents and Sunday School teachers were often to say “It’s not what’s on the outside but what is on the inside that matters.” Either way I hope that Susan hangs on to her God given gift, and if she is changed by her celebrity status she in addition will changes us.
Ray Anglesea
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Friday, 23 October 2009
St Cuthbert's Locum
Sheila and I spent 15 days in October living in the Manse and holding the fort while Barry and Hazel were on holiday. It made us appreciate how much they do; not just in the things seen, but in the unseen, and how many people have been helped by what they do.
October is a ‘quiet’ time of the year (which is why Barry and Hazel felt they could go away). Never the less our fortnight included:
- Preparing and conducting morning prayers for ten days
- Changing and washing the Bothy bed linen etc on a change of occupant
- Housekeeping for the ‘Faith and Feathers 2’ weekend (such as arranging the Centre each morning and evening; ensuring a plentiful, permanent supply of tea/coffee/ biscuits; preparing lunch for 15 on the Friday; having three leaders staying in the manse over the weekend.
- Housekeeping for another morning conference for 15 people the next weekend.
In the 43 weeks to the end of October 2009, the Centre has been used for 115 half days for courses or conferences. In those 43 weeks the Bothy has been occupied for 214 nights – i.e. 5 days a week. All of this involves housekeeping on top of Barry’s work of preparing and conducting the daily and weekly worship, writing and updating prayer sheets, fact sheets and his excellent Worship Book, and chaplaincy to tourists and retreatants, as well as the administration involved.
Various thing surprised us:
- How quickly Barry’s A4 sheet ‘Prayers for Travellers’ disappeared from the Centre.
- How many people read, and even photographed, his 10 A3 sheet display of ‘The Story of the World’.
- The appreciative comments we heard about the literature and layout of the centre, as well as those written in the Visitors’ Book.
- The number of request appearing on the Prayer Tree.
- The number of appreciative comments about staying in the Bothy from those who had previously done so – or from their relatives or members of their congregations who came to the Centre.
- The number of people who rang or e-mailed for Barry, and Janet would say “Oh yes, Barry is giving them spiritual direction”.
If we had to nominate highlights for the fortnight, they would be the two imaginative Saturday evening services with twenty two + people at each.
We came away quite certain that this unique Holy Island Project is fulfilling a very real and valuable role in the witnessing and strengthening of Christian faith for the thousands of people who come through its doors each year. It is creative, modern ministry for the 21st Century.
Bill Flett
Monday, 19 October 2009
Is Vision 2020 fundamentally misconceived?
It seems to me, writes Rev. Professor Charles Cranfield that `Vision 2020' is fundamentally misconceived. (Vision 2020 planning for growth in the URC : hearing your views) On p.8 we read: `It challenges the whole church at local, synod and denominational level to think about what kind of church we want to be in ten years time'. But this `WE WANT TO BE' surely indicates that this is the wrong question for a Reformed church to be asking. Surely we should be asking what do we seriously believe to be the sort of church that Jesus Christ, the only Head and King of the church, wills us to be.
This seems to me to be the fundamental error of `Vision 2020'. And closely related is what struck me most forcibly when I first read these papers, the fact that there does not seem to be any clear indication in them that those who produced them realize that the church has a gospel to proclaim, good news from God of his love for us sinful human beings revealed in what he has done for us in Jesus Christ his Son, in his bitter death at the hands of human beings and in his resurrection from the dead to be our living Lord.
In view of these two closely related and (I believe) extremely serious deficiencies in `Vision 2020', I can only declare my whole-hearted conscientious objection to this project and plead with the URC to think again, more humbly, more prayerfully and with much greater attention to the witness of Holy Scripture.
This seems to me to be the fundamental error of `Vision 2020'. And closely related is what struck me most forcibly when I first read these papers, the fact that there does not seem to be any clear indication in them that those who produced them realize that the church has a gospel to proclaim, good news from God of his love for us sinful human beings revealed in what he has done for us in Jesus Christ his Son, in his bitter death at the hands of human beings and in his resurrection from the dead to be our living Lord.
In view of these two closely related and (I believe) extremely serious deficiencies in `Vision 2020', I can only declare my whole-hearted conscientious objection to this project and plead with the URC to think again, more humbly, more prayerfully and with much greater attention to the witness of Holy Scripture.
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Desperate Romantics?
In September I had the happy occasion of visiting St Paul’s Cathedral London to attend a special service. There in the nave of Christopher Wren’s great architectural masterpiece is Holman Hunt’s, Light of the World (1853-54), reputedly painted at night. I vividly remember a copy of the painting hanging on my Sunday school wall; a kingly robed Jesus with crown of thorns and comforting glow of a lantern stands on a footpath preparing to knock on a door covered in luxuriant overgrown plants, vines and passion flowers, whose door has no handle and can only be opened from the inside.
The original painting I later discovered is hung in a side room off the large pretentious chapel at Keble College, Oxford. Towards the end of his life, the Victorian painter painted a life-size version, which after a world tour “of the colonies” is the one hanging in St Paul’s. In 2001 the seven sided brass lantern designed by Hunt for use in the painting was found hanging in a stairwell of a London suburban house. It sold at auction for £30,000!
John Ruskin once wrote of this painting "It is, I believe, the most perfect instance of expressional purpose and technical power which has ever been produced." The painting has been copied in many a stained glass church window: Boldon URC has one in its sanctuary: a gold crown replaces the crown of thorns. The painting proved to be a turning point in Hunt’s artistic and spiritual life. It records his conversion to the Christian faith.
Hunt belonged to a brotherhood of painters called the Pre-Raphaelites, Victorian men who were to blow the art world apart. The private lives of the brotherhood were recently shown in a BBC six part drama called Desperate Romantics, a television tie-in of the published biography of the tangled lives of the pre-Raphaelites created by Franny Moyle. The costume drama was heavily criticised. I thought it was unfair and all too easy to snigger at poor old John Ruskin, the influential English art critic and social thinker; the three prominent members of the brotherhood were often depicted as a boy-style band with background jaunty music, Rossetti portrayed as a selfish irreligious creep, Holman Hunt an arrogant hulking freak, and John Millais (who is buried in St Paul’s Cathedral) a petulant wimp, whose bottom lip permanently quivered. And, of course, sex. A lot of sex, groupie and otherwise. But we all knew the pre Raphaelites liked to bed their models, Annie Miller in particular.
Apart from bizarre lives what the Pre-Raphaelites had in abundance was imagination and vision - rare qualities at a time when society was thrusting forward with post-Industrial Revolution invention and fervour. The brotherhood spawned passionate young vibrant painters of Christian symbolism that was lifted from pre-reformation sources and applied to post-reformation piety.
In the 1850s Hunt travelled widely in Palestine. His researches there were aimed at finding accurate, historical detail with which to bring alive biblical images and present them devotionally to his admiring art lovers. One of the best examples of this is The Scapegoat, (1854/55, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool). Hunt had the idea for the painting whilst studying the Talmud. His research disclosed that on the Festival of the Day of Atonement, a goat was ejected from the temple with a scarlet piece of woollen cloth on its head. It was goaded and driven, either to death or into the wilderness, carrying with it the sins of the congregation. It was believed that if these sins were forgiven the scarlet cloth would turn white. Hunt regarded the Old Testament scapegoat (Leviticus 16 v22) as a pre-figurement of the New Testament Christ whose suffering and death similarly expunged man's sins. Hunt chose to set his goat in a landscape of quite hideous desolation - it was painted on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom with the mountains of Edom in the distance.
Like most of the pre-Raphaelite paintings they are a bit too neat for modern taste, but they certainly captured the religious imagination of the late 19th century, though not without scandalising some. And that is why this art matters. For a nation whose religious sensitivities had sanitised the imagination, these images were truly shocking. Charles Dickens wrote a fearsome letter denouncing Millais' painting of Christ in the house of his parents 1849/50 because it associated the Son of God with dirt, work and degradation. The half-naked image of Jesus, in cruciform shape in Hunt’s The Shadow of Death 1869-73 was no less troubling to people for whom the sight of a crucifix was alien and repugnant, too Catholic by far.
Years later, as Sunday Schools walls have revealed, Hunt’s painting of The Light of the World still has popular appeal, in large measure because it tells a story and invites the viewer on a sort of hide and seek of Biblical themes and allusions. But perhaps more important than this appeal is the legacy left by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of art as subversion and disturbance. Their art contributed to the challenging of a complaisant, comfortable Church. It awoke a generation to the force of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the imperative of his mission. We should be optimistic that in our day we can still find contemporary exciting artists with imagination and energy who will provoke us in to new visions of the unchanging God revealed in Christ, and the mission he entrusts to us.
Ray Anglesea
The original painting I later discovered is hung in a side room off the large pretentious chapel at Keble College, Oxford. Towards the end of his life, the Victorian painter painted a life-size version, which after a world tour “of the colonies” is the one hanging in St Paul’s. In 2001 the seven sided brass lantern designed by Hunt for use in the painting was found hanging in a stairwell of a London suburban house. It sold at auction for £30,000!
John Ruskin once wrote of this painting "It is, I believe, the most perfect instance of expressional purpose and technical power which has ever been produced." The painting has been copied in many a stained glass church window: Boldon URC has one in its sanctuary: a gold crown replaces the crown of thorns. The painting proved to be a turning point in Hunt’s artistic and spiritual life. It records his conversion to the Christian faith.
Hunt belonged to a brotherhood of painters called the Pre-Raphaelites, Victorian men who were to blow the art world apart. The private lives of the brotherhood were recently shown in a BBC six part drama called Desperate Romantics, a television tie-in of the published biography of the tangled lives of the pre-Raphaelites created by Franny Moyle. The costume drama was heavily criticised. I thought it was unfair and all too easy to snigger at poor old John Ruskin, the influential English art critic and social thinker; the three prominent members of the brotherhood were often depicted as a boy-style band with background jaunty music, Rossetti portrayed as a selfish irreligious creep, Holman Hunt an arrogant hulking freak, and John Millais (who is buried in St Paul’s Cathedral) a petulant wimp, whose bottom lip permanently quivered. And, of course, sex. A lot of sex, groupie and otherwise. But we all knew the pre Raphaelites liked to bed their models, Annie Miller in particular.
Apart from bizarre lives what the Pre-Raphaelites had in abundance was imagination and vision - rare qualities at a time when society was thrusting forward with post-Industrial Revolution invention and fervour. The brotherhood spawned passionate young vibrant painters of Christian symbolism that was lifted from pre-reformation sources and applied to post-reformation piety.
In the 1850s Hunt travelled widely in Palestine. His researches there were aimed at finding accurate, historical detail with which to bring alive biblical images and present them devotionally to his admiring art lovers. One of the best examples of this is The Scapegoat, (1854/55, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool). Hunt had the idea for the painting whilst studying the Talmud. His research disclosed that on the Festival of the Day of Atonement, a goat was ejected from the temple with a scarlet piece of woollen cloth on its head. It was goaded and driven, either to death or into the wilderness, carrying with it the sins of the congregation. It was believed that if these sins were forgiven the scarlet cloth would turn white. Hunt regarded the Old Testament scapegoat (Leviticus 16 v22) as a pre-figurement of the New Testament Christ whose suffering and death similarly expunged man's sins. Hunt chose to set his goat in a landscape of quite hideous desolation - it was painted on the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom with the mountains of Edom in the distance.
Like most of the pre-Raphaelite paintings they are a bit too neat for modern taste, but they certainly captured the religious imagination of the late 19th century, though not without scandalising some. And that is why this art matters. For a nation whose religious sensitivities had sanitised the imagination, these images were truly shocking. Charles Dickens wrote a fearsome letter denouncing Millais' painting of Christ in the house of his parents 1849/50 because it associated the Son of God with dirt, work and degradation. The half-naked image of Jesus, in cruciform shape in Hunt’s The Shadow of Death 1869-73 was no less troubling to people for whom the sight of a crucifix was alien and repugnant, too Catholic by far.
Years later, as Sunday Schools walls have revealed, Hunt’s painting of The Light of the World still has popular appeal, in large measure because it tells a story and invites the viewer on a sort of hide and seek of Biblical themes and allusions. But perhaps more important than this appeal is the legacy left by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of art as subversion and disturbance. Their art contributed to the challenging of a complaisant, comfortable Church. It awoke a generation to the force of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the imperative of his mission. We should be optimistic that in our day we can still find contemporary exciting artists with imagination and energy who will provoke us in to new visions of the unchanging God revealed in Christ, and the mission he entrusts to us.
Ray Anglesea
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Junipers and (Re)generation
Last week I joined volunteers to pick Juniper Berries in the Autumn sunshine in Upper Teesdale, High Force, an annual event organised by Natural England. According to the field officer the Upper Teesdale National Nature Reserve has one of the largest and oldest Juniper woodlands in Britain (100 hectares), with some 15-20,000 trees; some are well over 300 years old. The Juniper is one of only 3 native British conifers (Scots Pine and Yew are the others); seeds grow on the female trees; the seeds take 2 years to ripen. Not all the seed from old trees are viable so wardens have to check a sample of the berries on each bush/tree before deciding whether to instruct the volunteers to harvest the berries from that particular tree. Over the years there has been much planting of young Juniper saplings grown on from the berries picked in the autumn months (they are planted in rabbit free guards). But what I didn’t realise and was quite surprised to find out was how small the juniper berries were – no bigger than peppercorns!
When I returned home I mused over a sermon I preached earlier in the year about Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed (Lectionary gospel reading June 14th) - like all parables its teaches the concept or “the big idea,” a broad brush approach, comparing the kingdom of God to a mustard seed: it’s such a small thing in itself, but like the swine flu virus, too small to see, it can have an enormous effect with global consequences.
But on re-reading the parable a couple of days ago I wasn’t so much struck about the smallness of the mustard seed and its familiar gospel implications, but the verse “Yet when planted it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants with such big branches that birds that can perch in its shade” (Mark 4: 32 TNIV).
I began to think whether this sentence was perhaps a standard Rabbinical way used by Mark to refer perhaps to the Gentile nations and peoples – people like the wise men - who stand outside the covenant of God and his chosen people. I might just be an optimistic post modern universalist – but I suspect there may be some interesting ideas at work in this sentence which I hadn’t appreciated before – is Mark suggesting that as God’s covenant people grow, like the bush, it will provide shelter for all the nations of the earth, just as birds will find shelter in the branches of the mustard bush? Is God’s kingdom then a broad inclusive place of many boughs and mansions, where all people can find a home and a welcome, where the birds of the air can nest and make a home, or is it a kingdom conceived as a place from which a small band of chosen people could rule the world? I suspect the former.
Taking the seed and tree analogy further St Paul in his letter to the Romans, and that difficult of all chapters – chapter 11 - moves this tree image in a different direction when he writes about the wild Gentiles being ‘grafted’ on to the tree of God’s family, as it were – could it be grafted on in place of an original branch which no longer bears fruit?
Are we too idealistic to suppose that for Jesus, a redeemed and faithful Israel working for the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom, is the place where the whole world can be and feel at home. The birds of the air don’t become the bush when they build their nest in it, but they do become a part of its life, and here in the shade of the tree there is not only room for, but a celebration of a diversity of bird types?
For those who work like me outside the church in the regeneration business, working for the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom, often with other people of different faiths or similar planning and community ideals I am increasingly aware of the possibility of God being at work in people outside the church, that are building his kingdom. Indeed it is true that some of my colleagues enjoy spiritual experiences outside the church or a faith setting.
My view would be that Jesus would appear to expect and particularly to value such people as these. More than once Jesus comments on how the faith he finds in Gentiles and Samaritans put the faith he finds in Israel to shame. In my re-reading of this parable Jesus appears to be saying there is a broad welcome to those who will live by the values of the kingdom. There are sheep of his who are not of his fold; there are many mansions in the heavenly home to which he goes; there is room in his view of God’s love for the birds of the air to nest in its branches.
Ray Anglesea
When I returned home I mused over a sermon I preached earlier in the year about Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed (Lectionary gospel reading June 14th) - like all parables its teaches the concept or “the big idea,” a broad brush approach, comparing the kingdom of God to a mustard seed: it’s such a small thing in itself, but like the swine flu virus, too small to see, it can have an enormous effect with global consequences.
But on re-reading the parable a couple of days ago I wasn’t so much struck about the smallness of the mustard seed and its familiar gospel implications, but the verse “Yet when planted it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants with such big branches that birds that can perch in its shade” (Mark 4: 32 TNIV).
I began to think whether this sentence was perhaps a standard Rabbinical way used by Mark to refer perhaps to the Gentile nations and peoples – people like the wise men - who stand outside the covenant of God and his chosen people. I might just be an optimistic post modern universalist – but I suspect there may be some interesting ideas at work in this sentence which I hadn’t appreciated before – is Mark suggesting that as God’s covenant people grow, like the bush, it will provide shelter for all the nations of the earth, just as birds will find shelter in the branches of the mustard bush? Is God’s kingdom then a broad inclusive place of many boughs and mansions, where all people can find a home and a welcome, where the birds of the air can nest and make a home, or is it a kingdom conceived as a place from which a small band of chosen people could rule the world? I suspect the former.
Taking the seed and tree analogy further St Paul in his letter to the Romans, and that difficult of all chapters – chapter 11 - moves this tree image in a different direction when he writes about the wild Gentiles being ‘grafted’ on to the tree of God’s family, as it were – could it be grafted on in place of an original branch which no longer bears fruit?
Are we too idealistic to suppose that for Jesus, a redeemed and faithful Israel working for the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom, is the place where the whole world can be and feel at home. The birds of the air don’t become the bush when they build their nest in it, but they do become a part of its life, and here in the shade of the tree there is not only room for, but a celebration of a diversity of bird types?
For those who work like me outside the church in the regeneration business, working for the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom, often with other people of different faiths or similar planning and community ideals I am increasingly aware of the possibility of God being at work in people outside the church, that are building his kingdom. Indeed it is true that some of my colleagues enjoy spiritual experiences outside the church or a faith setting.
My view would be that Jesus would appear to expect and particularly to value such people as these. More than once Jesus comments on how the faith he finds in Gentiles and Samaritans put the faith he finds in Israel to shame. In my re-reading of this parable Jesus appears to be saying there is a broad welcome to those who will live by the values of the kingdom. There are sheep of his who are not of his fold; there are many mansions in the heavenly home to which he goes; there is room in his view of God’s love for the birds of the air to nest in its branches.
Ray Anglesea
Friday, 18 September 2009
Are Mission Partnerships becoming mini circuits?
I may be married to a Methodist but have stayed firmly in the URC with its understanding of the local church being the locus of God's work, supported and enabled by the wider councils of the church. So when David Bedford asked at a meeting this week whether Mission Partnerships are morphing into circuits, without clear discussion and debate about whether this was desirable, I was brought up short. It has left me wondering if this is the case - are Mission Partnerships (Northern synod clusters) becoming circuits? Will they end up with a staff team and partnership leadership meeting managing the churches in a more top down way than we are comfortable with in the URC and will they end up with, woe betide it, a superintendent minister?
There are some good things that I would want for our Mission Partnerships that I think Methodist circuits, when they function well, provide. These are the capacity to draw together individuals over a number of churches with a passion for a particular ministry or form of outreach, for example the healing ministry or cafe church, holiday clubs and retreats and be able to develop those things in an area. The ability to be involved in discussions and decisions about ministry and other resources at a much more local level than synod or even districts. I would also want our churches to have the support of other churches to share good stories, practice and expertise with and who they have good relationships with and so can pray for one another in informed ways.
It might also be good for our Mission Partnerships now that we do not have a Training and Education Officer to handle some finances (an annual grant) and be responsible for agreeing training needs and arranging for its provision in the churches in a more direct way. This maybe more empowering of the people of God in their localities than the synod deciding, even with consultation, what training is needed for everything. The Ministries and Training committee are currently considering this and views would be welcome before a paper is brought to March 2010 synod.
It may be that we do need 'mini circuits' to enable churches to have the expertise of treasurers, and people able to manage lay staff or work up their roles, where they are absent in some smaller churches or those in more difficult mission areas. Then one treasurer may do the accounts for several churches. Or there may be a management group drawn from several churches for a CRCW, as in Grindon, or an administrator deals with newsletters and communications for a group of churches.
But I have yet to be convinced that we are inventing circuits in an insidious way. I think we, as in Ashton under Lyme and as we are moving towards in Sunderland, are creating a local church that might meet in several locations. But how that evolves needs attending too so that it is the church meeting whether in one or more locations, and not a ministry team or group council doing its own thing, that agrees the policy and discerns what God is asking of the church.
In Mission Partnerships as loose formations each church meeting has to make the decision or delegate the authority to do so to the leadership meeting. When a joint pastorate or group is constituted then it is the joint church meeting that calls a minister and decides what God is asking of the churches. When several churches decide to come together as one church meeting in several locations their church meeting is the council of the church.
This direction is very different to a Methodist understanding of being a connexional church where ministers are ordained into the connexion and stationed to circuits, with only a nod of consultation to the local church. A view of church in which the local church council with circuit stewards on it make the decisions about local matters but the circuit meeting makes decisions about wider ones and where the superintendent minister can in theory move ministers in the circuit where s/he will.
Therefore I would argue Mission Partnerships are not becoming circuits as the role of the church meeting is enshrined in our understanding of what it means to be church and the basis of union. However there are gifts from the Methodist understanding of circuit that we might want to receive as good, providing that the essence of the URC identity in the people of God in church meeting together discerning God's will, is not lost.
So in answer to David Bedford's question I would say that Northern Synod's Mission Partnerships are not becoming circuits by default becasue of the significant role of church meeting.
However the issue of ministers serving across multiple churches and communities is one that needs wrestling with. How that changing role of ministry to groups and joint pastorates rather than single churches is shaped from a URC understanding of church is a prioir question that we need to be wrestling with as a priority? Answers on a post card please.
Rowena
There are some good things that I would want for our Mission Partnerships that I think Methodist circuits, when they function well, provide. These are the capacity to draw together individuals over a number of churches with a passion for a particular ministry or form of outreach, for example the healing ministry or cafe church, holiday clubs and retreats and be able to develop those things in an area. The ability to be involved in discussions and decisions about ministry and other resources at a much more local level than synod or even districts. I would also want our churches to have the support of other churches to share good stories, practice and expertise with and who they have good relationships with and so can pray for one another in informed ways.
It might also be good for our Mission Partnerships now that we do not have a Training and Education Officer to handle some finances (an annual grant) and be responsible for agreeing training needs and arranging for its provision in the churches in a more direct way. This maybe more empowering of the people of God in their localities than the synod deciding, even with consultation, what training is needed for everything. The Ministries and Training committee are currently considering this and views would be welcome before a paper is brought to March 2010 synod.
It may be that we do need 'mini circuits' to enable churches to have the expertise of treasurers, and people able to manage lay staff or work up their roles, where they are absent in some smaller churches or those in more difficult mission areas. Then one treasurer may do the accounts for several churches. Or there may be a management group drawn from several churches for a CRCW, as in Grindon, or an administrator deals with newsletters and communications for a group of churches.
But I have yet to be convinced that we are inventing circuits in an insidious way. I think we, as in Ashton under Lyme and as we are moving towards in Sunderland, are creating a local church that might meet in several locations. But how that evolves needs attending too so that it is the church meeting whether in one or more locations, and not a ministry team or group council doing its own thing, that agrees the policy and discerns what God is asking of the church.
In Mission Partnerships as loose formations each church meeting has to make the decision or delegate the authority to do so to the leadership meeting. When a joint pastorate or group is constituted then it is the joint church meeting that calls a minister and decides what God is asking of the churches. When several churches decide to come together as one church meeting in several locations their church meeting is the council of the church.
This direction is very different to a Methodist understanding of being a connexional church where ministers are ordained into the connexion and stationed to circuits, with only a nod of consultation to the local church. A view of church in which the local church council with circuit stewards on it make the decisions about local matters but the circuit meeting makes decisions about wider ones and where the superintendent minister can in theory move ministers in the circuit where s/he will.
Therefore I would argue Mission Partnerships are not becoming circuits as the role of the church meeting is enshrined in our understanding of what it means to be church and the basis of union. However there are gifts from the Methodist understanding of circuit that we might want to receive as good, providing that the essence of the URC identity in the people of God in church meeting together discerning God's will, is not lost.
So in answer to David Bedford's question I would say that Northern Synod's Mission Partnerships are not becoming circuits by default becasue of the significant role of church meeting.
However the issue of ministers serving across multiple churches and communities is one that needs wrestling with. How that changing role of ministry to groups and joint pastorates rather than single churches is shaped from a URC understanding of church is a prioir question that we need to be wrestling with as a priority? Answers on a post card please.
Rowena
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
What are we preaching?
There were two good synod-related services this past weekend – but somehow they’ve left me feeling a bit like Spitting Images’ boy David and the Lib Dems, wanting things to be neither this nor that, but something in between.
David Peel’s induction on Saturday afternoon was the kind of occasion you might have expected – and not the place for theological slouches. With a former college principal being inducted and another principal preaching the charge, it was pretty meaty stuff. Certainly it had its lighter moments – Trevor’s quotes from (we hope a well outdated) elders’ manual from the Church of Scotland urging someone to speak to the visiting minister, even though he has been useless, might be blue-tacked to some of our vestry walls. And David’s statement that the job of a minister in a pastorate was the top job in the URC came well from a former Moderator of Assembly – though perhaps was spoiled for some of us who were wondering, Who was the “leading figure” who had voiced the opinion that he was wasted in a local church? And aren’t we all capable of the well-meaning but ill-thought-out compliment that backfires?
But the challenge to the Church in Trevor’s sermon and David’s statement did not make for easy listening. I’m sure our church culture shouldn’t be bound by the tyranny of sound-bites, but the truth of the matter is that we’re not used to listening with the intensity that’s needed on such an occasion. Not that I’d have wanted the service to be any longer (in fact I wish we could cut these inductions down a bit) – but we could have done with some pauses to reflect on what we’d heard and see where the arguments were leading. Certainly it would be good to have a script to read afterwards. Otherwise – and perhaps this is just me, but I doubt it – so much good stuff that’s been carefully thought out is just going to be wasted.
And then on Sunday afternoon some of us were at Brinkburn Abbey for the annual Holy Island service – the first time I’ve managed to get there. Barry Hutchinson led a reflective service, in the style that we would expect from the St Cuthbert’s Centre. It was as different from Saturday as chalk from cheese: is that the difference between theology and spirituality? The focus on feelings (including feeling the chair supporting you and all the rest) made worship less challenging, more embracing – and perhaps none the worse for that.
But then came the reflective reading – from the Shack! Now I’m waiting to see how many letters will be in the next Reform in response to the outburst from Kim Fabricius in July/August. “Forget about the Shack – it’s awful –” he tells us “but you must read, for the sheer grace and truth of it, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (2004).” I’d have thought someone might by now have told the sainted Kim that Marilynne Robinson’s Home (2008) is a yet finer novel: but much as I agree with the thrust of his letter, that novels, including many modern novels, can speak to us powerfully about the things of God and of our human condition, Marilynne Robinson is not necessarily the right voice for many of the people who’ve read and relished the Shack.
I wouldn’t choose to write to Reform to air my prejudices, but Barry’s reading on Sunday reminded me that yes, the Shack is pretty bad. Some of my colleagues have defended it on the grounds that it has encouraged their people to think and talk about the Trinity – but it seems to me that if you do that on the basis of such gross sentimentality (and what we heard on Sunday told us that if you walk on water you need to take your shoes and socks off: it didn’t seem to have much of a faith content) you haven’t really grown in theological understanding. Where’s the Reformed insight into the sovereignty of God in this off-beat trio of individuals hosting an all-American weekend in the woods?
So, after two sessions in the pew, I’m left wondering how we can put some theological content into our preaching and our leading of worship, but do so in ways that are accessible – and even enjoyable. I’m desperate to know how: any suggestions out there?
And in case anyone thinks I only go trolling round to other people’s services, I was in my own pastorate on Sunday morning. For the second time in not many weeks I had a full church – nothing to do with me, but the occasion of an infant baptism, which our moderator has wisely described as “the new weddings”. Who do we speak to and how, in a service like this, when most of our guests have no idea what any of it is all about? And is there any way in which such a service can feed the host congregation?
I think I heard Trevor on Saturday afternoon saying that the business of the Church was not to get more people into church, but to share in God’s mission to transform the world. By 10.15 the next morning, as I was telling Ruby that she is a child of God and member of the Church, I might have been asking myself, Just what does this sharing in God’s mission mean here and now?
David Peel’s induction on Saturday afternoon was the kind of occasion you might have expected – and not the place for theological slouches. With a former college principal being inducted and another principal preaching the charge, it was pretty meaty stuff. Certainly it had its lighter moments – Trevor’s quotes from (we hope a well outdated) elders’ manual from the Church of Scotland urging someone to speak to the visiting minister, even though he has been useless, might be blue-tacked to some of our vestry walls. And David’s statement that the job of a minister in a pastorate was the top job in the URC came well from a former Moderator of Assembly – though perhaps was spoiled for some of us who were wondering, Who was the “leading figure” who had voiced the opinion that he was wasted in a local church? And aren’t we all capable of the well-meaning but ill-thought-out compliment that backfires?
But the challenge to the Church in Trevor’s sermon and David’s statement did not make for easy listening. I’m sure our church culture shouldn’t be bound by the tyranny of sound-bites, but the truth of the matter is that we’re not used to listening with the intensity that’s needed on such an occasion. Not that I’d have wanted the service to be any longer (in fact I wish we could cut these inductions down a bit) – but we could have done with some pauses to reflect on what we’d heard and see where the arguments were leading. Certainly it would be good to have a script to read afterwards. Otherwise – and perhaps this is just me, but I doubt it – so much good stuff that’s been carefully thought out is just going to be wasted.
And then on Sunday afternoon some of us were at Brinkburn Abbey for the annual Holy Island service – the first time I’ve managed to get there. Barry Hutchinson led a reflective service, in the style that we would expect from the St Cuthbert’s Centre. It was as different from Saturday as chalk from cheese: is that the difference between theology and spirituality? The focus on feelings (including feeling the chair supporting you and all the rest) made worship less challenging, more embracing – and perhaps none the worse for that.
But then came the reflective reading – from the Shack! Now I’m waiting to see how many letters will be in the next Reform in response to the outburst from Kim Fabricius in July/August. “Forget about the Shack – it’s awful –” he tells us “but you must read, for the sheer grace and truth of it, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (2004).” I’d have thought someone might by now have told the sainted Kim that Marilynne Robinson’s Home (2008) is a yet finer novel: but much as I agree with the thrust of his letter, that novels, including many modern novels, can speak to us powerfully about the things of God and of our human condition, Marilynne Robinson is not necessarily the right voice for many of the people who’ve read and relished the Shack.
I wouldn’t choose to write to Reform to air my prejudices, but Barry’s reading on Sunday reminded me that yes, the Shack is pretty bad. Some of my colleagues have defended it on the grounds that it has encouraged their people to think and talk about the Trinity – but it seems to me that if you do that on the basis of such gross sentimentality (and what we heard on Sunday told us that if you walk on water you need to take your shoes and socks off: it didn’t seem to have much of a faith content) you haven’t really grown in theological understanding. Where’s the Reformed insight into the sovereignty of God in this off-beat trio of individuals hosting an all-American weekend in the woods?
So, after two sessions in the pew, I’m left wondering how we can put some theological content into our preaching and our leading of worship, but do so in ways that are accessible – and even enjoyable. I’m desperate to know how: any suggestions out there?
And in case anyone thinks I only go trolling round to other people’s services, I was in my own pastorate on Sunday morning. For the second time in not many weeks I had a full church – nothing to do with me, but the occasion of an infant baptism, which our moderator has wisely described as “the new weddings”. Who do we speak to and how, in a service like this, when most of our guests have no idea what any of it is all about? And is there any way in which such a service can feed the host congregation?
I think I heard Trevor on Saturday afternoon saying that the business of the Church was not to get more people into church, but to share in God’s mission to transform the world. By 10.15 the next morning, as I was telling Ruby that she is a child of God and member of the Church, I might have been asking myself, Just what does this sharing in God’s mission mean here and now?
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