G(r)owing nowhere fast

There's a conversation going on at the moment within the Church of England, about growth (or in other words, how to halt decline), which is proceeding along depressingly predictable lines, as reported recently in the Church Times: 

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/17-april/news/uk/church-growth-bishop-broadbent-rounds-on-the-critics-of-reform-and-renewal

This week it was the turn of the evangelical group, Fulcrum, to address the criticism of Reform and Renewal, the Archbishop's vision for the renaissance of the C of E. It was the contention of the Rt Revd. Pete Broadbent, Bishop of Willesden, that now that the Church of England is finally looking hard at some really important things, asking awkward questions like 'what actually leads to growth? (or, if you like, how do we get out of the mess we're in?) those more used to managing decline suddenly don't like what they see, and are resorting to accusations that the Church is adopting un- thought through secular management techniques, seeking safety in numbers, and ignoring the fact that sometimes priests do struggle on bravely in the toughest ministry circumstances, whilst numbers drop inexorably away, sometimes to zero.

The narrative of this increasingly polarised debate goes like this: liberals are hopelessly happy to preside over decline, stressing prayerfulness and holiness above numbers, and relying on presence as an evangelistic strategy, while evangelicals unquestioningly adopt secular management techniques, flog their programmes, pinch other people's churchgoers and rely on a certain sort of leadership mystique for numerical growth (thought they're always quick to add, as an afterthought, that growth is about quality, not just quantity).

Bishop Broadbent declared himself to be 'allergic to Rev.', the gritty, award winning BBC series about an inner city priest who struggles on despite having, to all intents and purposes a 'failing' church, with no money, smug authoritarian overseers, and a handful of oddballs for worshippers.

Being allergic to Rev. is also a predictable part of the narrative. Rev. has a decided 'liberal catholic' flavour, and evangelicals got short shrift in series 1, episode 2: Jesus is Awesome, with the satirising of 'smoothie bar' Christianity. Okay, maybe a bit unfair, but excruciatingly funny precisely because there was more than a grain of truth in it.

If you're primarily geared up to growth and how to achieve it, watching the Rev. Adam Smallbone lurch from one crisis to another in a church which is teetering on the edge of closure (which is in fact what sadly happens at the end of series 3), will of course leave you feeling queasy. But from a dramatic, and even a theological point of view, anyone who's 'allergic to Rev', for me, is dangerously close to saying they're allergic to the underdog, therefore allergic to the Beatitudes, even allergic to the possibility of resurrection...?

It's a cloudy picture, this debate about decline/growth/leadership etc... In the mix is another unseemly argument around the word discipleship, a word I admit is beloved of evangelicals, but also a rather hard to ignore idea in the New Testament. I'm keen on the word and do not share other people's scruples about it. Anyone brought up on David Watson's 1981 seminal book of that name is likely to read a critique (see link below) of the concept as an attack on the very foundation of a serious lifelong commitment to following Jesus, which is how I interpret discipleship.

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/30-january/comment/columnists/dissing-the-d-word

So there you are - I love Rev. and I don't want to 'diss' discipleship. And I'm desperately hoping that instead of arguing about growth, we Christ followers could just get together and 'seek first his kingdom and his righteousness', then 'all these things' (numbers; or at least, the people God is calling, which are not always the same thing) would maybe be added to us as well....

Is it too much to hope for? Or in our little camps, promoting our own brand and dissing the others, are we just going to be going (growing) nowhere fast...?

A Resilient Life

How do you keep going as a Christian, let alone an ordained minister of the Church?

It's four years this  weekend since I got ordained in the Anglican Church and I feel like I'm just getting into my stride. 

But four years is a relatively short time. Will I still be enthusiastic in another four years, or fourteen years, or twenty?

Veteran pastor, Gordon MacDonald's 2004 book, A Resilient Life is full of wonderful, gentle insights into ways to build resilience into a long life of Christian obedience to God's call - water to a parched soul in my case, as I'd been struggling for a while to find anything to read that wasn't a) on a Masters Bibliography, b) quick on soundbites and short on wisdom and c) relevant to Christian ministry in particular. 

Two insights stand out: the need to explore the big questions for each decade of life and the need to do so in company.

He tells a great anecdote regarding the first. An experienced and wise pastor, he would often be invited to address groups of ministers or other leaders with some gems of godly wisdom about staying the course. On one occasion he was invited to speak to a room full of worship leaders, people who (in the style of many of the less liturgical churches) were charged with devising a programme of prayers and music that would lead others into the presence of God at the start of a service. 

On entering the room he was shocked to register that everyone there was in their 20s or 30s; he describes them as a 'bevy of youthful, hyperenergetic and lovable people', but it occurred to MacDonald that the spiritual questions and aspirations of these young people was likely very different from the things that occupy people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. MacDonald wondered if they really would be able to know how best to lead a congregation of mixed ages into the presence of God: 'They had better know their audience', he thought; '...They had better know something about the big pictures that others brought into the sanctuary'.

Identifying the big questions for each stage of life is something that can help maturity. The things I struggled over and wanted to read about and discuss in my 20s, were not the same as those things I thought about in my 30s, or now (just about still) in my 40s...

He didn't pull any punches with those worship leaders. He told them of a group he and his wife belonged to, of like minded friends who would gather and tell each other the stories of their lives as they had unfolded in the last month. 'There is one subject that never fails to come up - sometimes by way of a joke, a story or a piece of information about someone', he told the young leaders. 'Know what that subject is?' There was a long and somewhat uncomfortable silence. The answer: 'Death! The subject of dying always gets to the table'. He asked them then, how are you going to make sure the songs and readings you choose, minister God to people in this stages of life beyond 65?

He then goes on in the book to ponder the questions that face us in different stages of life. It's all very accurate - I thought about myself going into Ordination training 'like a lamb to the slaughter', just at the beginning of my 40s, nearly seven years ago: in his words, 'the complexities of life further accelerate and - and this is worrisome - we begin to recognise that we can no longer fob off our flaws and failures as youthfulness and inexperience' (ouch, yes that sounded familiar).

So finding out how to navigate the life questions at each stage is a way of being resilient as life goes on. It's often said that to look at the bookcase of a Christian or minister whose books were all current five, ten or twenty years ago, is to look at a person who hasn't continued to grow.

And secondly, what really blessed me in the book was the vision of doing this journey, this questioning and growing, in the company of others. Friendship has just begun to come onto the horizon as something one needs to be more intentional about when the children are poised to leave home. 

MacDonald points to a time midlife when he was a busy pastor and father and had no time to nurture friendships. He regretted it deeply when a mid life crisis loomed. He talks about the 30s as being the first time when 'male loneliness' begins to be a real problem. This is an issue in church life. If it's true that men generally have few others with whom they allow themselves to be open and honest, as he suggests, it has implications for passing on the faith to each generation. And it's certainly true that in a number of Anglican churches, men in their 20s and 30s are the significantly missing demographic.

So it repays us to build friendships and give them time. Quality time. Who are the friends with whom you have fun? Who are the friends who will be honest and even notice if your spiritual life is slowly dying from lack of growth or challenge? And for couples, maybe particularly clergy couples, who are the other couples with whom you can have genuine social and spiritual interaction? 

And ultimately, who are the friends who will be at your graveside, who will be there even at the end, mourning your passing? This was probably the most sobering question in the book. But then he's asking it as someone in his 60s. I must admit, it had never occurred to me before...

Growing through each life stage, and doing it in company. I have a feeling this book will have repercussions.

Sensing Lent 24: Bud

Everything is in bud. 

I watched an adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood the other night, Dickens' dark unfinished novel about the brooding love/lust of Jasper the Choirmaster for Rosa Bud, innocent seventeen year old beauty, pledged to be married to someone else.

Dickens was probably making a point with her name (he normally did). She is young, about to flower. Who will pluck her? I must admit, the Victorians had just as murky a subconscious as anything swilling around in society in these so called 'secularised' times.

The more I think about science (and I sometimes have a year 9 science lesson on the way home in the car, on the school run, so I should know) the more incredulous I am that so much of it is so...miraculous. You cannot see that leaf, that flower, that fruit emerging. You can't even see the bud. Then all of a sudden, there it is. And a few more days sunshine and, hey, there's the leaf. And the flower. And the fruit. Where does it come from? It's growth - entirely natural and normal. And incredible. (But that is probably a romantic and entirely non factual response to nature, albeit very in character for me).

I wish we could get our heads around growth in the church. It often doesn't feel normal or natural, but inhibited. We have church growth conferences (a bit better than the crass event served up for Adam Smallbone, of Rev. last night on the TV) but perhaps none of it is any use if our church soil is poor. And nothing grows well without a good gardener putting in hours of effort. 

We had Mothering Sunday service here, to which double the usual number of people came. But, guess what? The amount of time it took to bring it all together was also double. So while growth is normal and natural, the soil definitely still needs thoughtful preparing.

I'm looking around the church for the buds. Whereabouts will there be a flowering and a harvest of fruit in the right season, a harvest that feeds the world?

Prize leeks

3rd Sunday before Lent.

1 Corinthians 3:6

'I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth.'

It was a relief this morning to find a perfect excuse not to preach from the gospel , but go for the Epistle instead. I left Jesus' teaching on adultery and divorce for another, less contentious day, to embrace the somewhat easier (though only by a slim margin) topic of church growth.

This was in the light of reading the Church Growth research project, From Anecdote to Evidence, just published, which looked at factors which affect growth in church congregations. 

For visual learners, I added in a chance to compare two leeks - one grown in optimum conditions on our local, GM free, organic estate (the fat, juicy one) and the other grown in our back garden (the thin weedy one). 

The main verse from the Epistle was even written on the front cover of the report, so I knew I was onto something during my sermon preparation (some weeks I'm just so grateful for divine inspiration, as the time left to write these things often has a habit of trickling away to nothing).

I mainly have a love/hate relationship with findings on church growth, I think, because,

a) I'm worried that people in a large 'successful' churches with massive paid staff teams will tell me the perfect way to grow the church, which will of course not work in this situation, and then I will feel inadequate. 

And:

b) I nonetheless remain hopeful that they'll come up with some unique finding such as, 'if you're nice to people and smile a lot, your church will grow', and then I'll think, 'great, how hard is that going to be?'

Is growth only about numbers? 

The report, quite rightly, says numbers aren't the whole story, but researching growth in numbers is obviously a lot easier than researching growth in, say, holiness or prayerfulness, or generosity of heart. The paradox in church growth is surely the same in all Christian endeavour, even something as basic as prayer: what is the relationship between our effort and God's activity?

St Paul was quick to point out that although he might sow, and someone else water the seed, it is God who gives the growth, yet this apostle was hardly one to sit back and do nothing. When it comes to growth it would seem that we are to labour as though it all depended upon us, and trust for 'results' as though it all depended on God.

Finally, returning to leeks fat and thin - the report found 7 main factors positively correlated with church growth:

1.  Good leadership

2.  A clear mission and purpose

3.  Willingness to self-reflect, to change and adapt        according to context

4.   Involvement of lay members

5.   Being intentional in prioritising growth

6.   Being intentional in chosen style of worship

7.   Being intentional in nurturing disciples

Recalling the verse above, then, like a good gardener, it looks like we have to be intentional if we want to grow, while leaving the actual mystery of growth to God.

Lent for Extroverts 18: Sunny encounters

The sun is out and all is apparently well with the world. Or that's how is seems when Spring is finally, obviously on the way (though it could be tomorrow that an icy front descends from Siberia and plunges us into snow again. I could check my Met Office App for that. Or I could look out the window in the morning).

Like the sun shining on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, today's theme was pastoral care, for all manner of people, inside and outside the church. The diary contained the following, by way of example: follow up a Care Home visit enquiry; answer a wedding enquiry; meet a range of people from the community at our coffee 'drop in' morning; prayerfully ponder their different situations with some welcome help; begin to think about Mothering Sunday service and all the implications of people's experience of being mothered, being no longer mothered or inadequately mothered, or not being able to be a mother; an afternoon visit in the sun filled garden of the local hospice; evening Synod meeting about encouraging local vocations to the priesthood. Busy and fulfilling. Life-giving.

According to which surveys or reports you read, there is either a crisis facing UK church life as congregation numbers plummet, people lose interest in God and fill their lives up with everything else; OR church life is growing, there's a new hunger for God; Messy Church and family services/fresh expressions are springing up and everyone has a building project on. The truth is probably a mixture of the two but with just this small snapshot of 'a day in the life of...' it would seem that people are just as much in need of a Being infinitely greater than themselves, within whom and from whom forgiveness, wholeness and reconciliation are endlessly offered outwards to the world.

Anecdotal evidence might suggest that it is those within the church who are sometimes least able to envisage what the church 'going out of its comfort zone and getting stuck in' might look like, or what the church will look like when it starts to be truly open to all (Hint: different to how it looks at the moment...)

It was the same in Jesus' time. He had to remind the Pharisees that the tax collectors, outcasts and sinners were going into the kingdom ahead of 'the righteous'. Bet they loved that. Once the good news is out, the loving kindness of God cannot be bottled up; it cannot be owned. Growth happens naturally where people encounter the real thing. You plant something in good soil and IT GROWS. You don't have to go out there and hope and pray it comes up. It will come up. Spring always comes. Growth is what happens when organisms are healthy. The future can be sunny.

In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, Patron Saint of searing-observations-on-daily-life-which-can-be-endlessly-mined-for-comment-on-life-love-loss-faith-hope-and-just-about-anything-else-because-she's-so-wonderful:

How do you stop a runaway train?
How do you stop the driving rain?
How do you stop the ripening corn?
How do you stop a baby being born?*

*(Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight, on Turbulent Indigo, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iU9ICnPfkI)

Mustard seed sermon

Ezekiel 17:22-24

Mark 4:26-34

So, we are finally in Ordinary Time.

I say ‘finally’, because there has been a lot of celebration recently: we’ve had Easter and the seven Sundays of Easter; Pentecost, Trinity (and The Queen's Diamond Jubilee).

Big one off celebrations and get togethers are great; celebration should never be too far from the life of the church, but we wouldn’t want to be having one off specials all the time.

It’s a bit tiring for a start!

So I for one, rather enjoy the long slow weeks of Ordinary Time, that period of the liturgical year when we’re neither celebrating Advent, nor Christmas, nor Epiphany, nor Lent, nor Easter, Pentecost or Trinity.

So what is Ordinary Time?

It sounds rather boring doesn’t it; rather banal?

Does nothing much happen in God’s kingdom during the long weeks of June to November, before the church year begins again at Advent?

I’ve been reading a very good book about Ordinary Time, that I heartily recommend, called Everyday God, by Paul Gooder.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=by+amazon&tag=mh0a9-21&index=aps&hvadid=41422761&ref=pd_sl_4kv8rzaeal_e#/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Everyday+God&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3AEveryday+God

In it she reflects on various bible passages that show God as deeply involved in our ordinary, everyday lives.

God became a human being, after all, and went through a normal human birth and life (in one sense) and you can’t get more ordinary than that.

You could say the whole of the Incarnation is a celebration of the ordinary.

And so God, through the Incarnation, ‘hallows’ all of life.

There’s no such thing as a divide between our religious life and the rest of life, and it doesn’t make sense to live as if there were.

So in ‘Ordinary Time’ it’s not that nothing happens, it’s that we remember every aspect of our lives is blessed by the God of the every day.

So today, at the start of Ordinary Time, we have two parables about ordinary things – seeds - which Jesus puts before his disciples to help them think about the kingdom.

Jesus told so many parables about the kingdom, we need to stop for a moment and ask: ‘What is the kingdom?’

This is such a vital question that perhaps we can turn to each other for a moment and share what we understand by the phrase, the kingdom, as used by Jesus in the parables.

                                               *

So the kingdom a BIG New Testament theme and we cannot hope to understand how God wants us to be church until we have mulled over ‘kingdom’.

The kingdom of heaven…

Is it a place to go to when you die?

Is it something still to come?

Is it here already?

It is the same thing as the church?

Is it separate from the church?

Theologians are generally agreed that the phrase ‘the kingdom of heaven’ or ‘the kingdom of God’ refers to the rule of God in our lives.

It is not a place; it’s more a state of existence where God is King.

The arrival of this kingdom was announced by Jesus as He began his own ministry of teaching, healing and deliverance.

So at the start of Mark’s gospel, we read: ‘Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying ‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe in the Good News.’ (Mark 1:14-15).

We hope and pray that the kingdom, the rule of God, is growing inside the church family, but we must not rule out its growing outside the church too, and often in the most unlikely of places.

I saw the kingdom alive and well when I visited Huntercombe Prison in Nuffield earlier in the week, where some of the local Clergy were privileged to take part in an act of worship alongside Christian prisoners.

These were men who, despite having done wrong things in the past, now wanted to put themselves under the rule of God as they continued to say yes to Christ’s forgiveness.

We need to pray that we may see the kingdom at work beyond the four walls of the church, and for the grace to join in.

So what we can reap from the reading; especially all you keen gardeners who will know a thing or two about seeds.

First of all, the kingdom of heaven is like someone planting a seed.

I love the brevity of this little parable – it fits perfectly with the subject matter – planting seed that will grow is a simple thing to do; kingdom growth is simple. It just happens.

‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.’

So the kingdom is like a seed which is (literally) ‘thrown down’ into the ground.

A clever use of the verb – ‘thrown down’ as it’s the same root as the word which gives us ‘parable,’ which is a thought ‘thrown down’ alongside another thought, so that one illuminates the other. That is the meaning of ‘parabalos’ (thrown down.)

Just how much effort is needed to throw down seed?

Hardly any.

How much effort does it take to get the seed to grow?

Absolutely none on our part.

The seed is hidden from sight for a while; we don’t know exactly what’s happening, and we cannot effect the growth ourselves.

All we can do is wait and hope.

We've tried to get some things to grow in the garden here.

I would say that my husband is an ever hopeful, and much more patient gardener than I am.

He’s put some wild flower seeds down in the front garden.

I think he’s forgotten they’re there.

But I look each day and wonder why they haven’t come up.

(I think the packet might have been rather old).

There are green bits in the flowerbed but I think they might be weeds.

The point is, no one can make them come any quicker; they will come of their own accord (or we’ll have to plant some better ones).

How does this relate to the kingdom?

I guess a lot depends on personality here.

I’m a doer and I like to see results; the quicker the better!

This is not always a good attitude inside the kingdom.

God’s timing is not ours; he is never in a hurry.

We can make sure the soil is fed and watered but God makes the fruit grow.

We had a fascinating reading from Ezekiel.

A rare Old Testament parable about the fruitfulness of God’s chosen people.

In it the prophet reminds us that the growth of the kingdom belongs to God alone.

‘I bring low the high tree,
   I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
   and make the dry tree flourish.’

And then the mustard seed.

Going back to Everyday God, Paula Gooder offers a very interesting reflection on this parable.

She suggests the mustard plant was a bit like a weed.

It is a tiny seed but soon catches on and spreads like wildfire.

A bit like ground elder perhaps.

My Dad, who’s an experienced gardener, claims that people will actually move house in order to escape the ground elder that is spreading over their garden and colonizing every inch of space.

I’ve seen it growing through the cracks in our patio here.

I’ve no idea how it got there.

I think the seeds followed us all the way from our previous home inside one of the patio tubs.

Now it’s growing all along the side where we put our bins.

Anyway, it’s started its takeover bid, and I expect there’s not much we can do to get rid of it completely.

The kingdom is tenacious like this.

Mustard starts small but grows to be a bush in which birds can build their nests.

I always thought of the reference to birds was a positive reference; it’s nice to have birds nesting in your bush, isn’t it?

According to Paula Gooder, they could be seen as a bit of a nuisance.

The birds are people who we don’t normally associate with the kingdom, being attracted to it, and wanting a piece of it.

Do we really want to share our lives with these other people who want a bit of Jesus too?

It’s easy for us to think we ‘own’ God because we are the believers.

But God is not owned. He is Spirit and He is free.

He blows where he wills.

If we are living kingdom lives, others will be attracted, but they may not be PLU (people like us).

They may be different from the person we normally associate with church attendance.

They may be of a different class.

They may be a different age.

They may have complicated problems; they may be more righteous than us.

They may have some different ideas about how to worship God in the 21^st Century.

But they are attracted to the bush nonetheless.

Jesus attracted all sorted of undesirables and generally the religious elite didn’t want them included in the family of faith.

Not prostitutes, tax collectors and lepers, please.

The crowds that followed Jesus and took up his energy in their desire for healing and forgiveness; they are perhaps the birds of this parable.

If we are living lives centered on the king, others will be attracted and we will need to respond to them and maybe to say ‘help us be God’s people here in this day in this place’.

As we ponder these parables of growth, what is the good news and what do we need to wake up to afresh?

It is good news that the growth of the kingdom is God’s work.

It is good news that we can be involved too.

It is good news that the fields are ‘white unto harvest’.

But we need more workers.

So we need to pray.

The other workers may be people who are not yet part of the church.

Let’s pray for grace to spot them and nurture them.

And let’s give to God afresh the places where we desire growth.

Our community coffee morning; this is a place where church people can meet and mingle with those who don’t necessarily go to church, but for whom Christ died and for whom God has a plan.

Come and join in!

You could be a listening ear.

You might know someone who would enjoy the company – invite them!

You could be the only Christian you neighbour knows.

Pray for our services at St John’s and St Mary’s; for a spirit of invitation so that others feel included.

Pray for our work amongst families who come and bring their children for baptism at the All Age Worship service.

Pray for me as I go into the Primary school, and for Christian parents who are being salt and light there.

Perhaps we need a nurture group or a prayer group…perhaps you have ideas for starting one…?

Perhaps you sense new growth in your own life – God bringing to fruitfulness the plans he has for you…

Be encouraged that in all these things, the kingdom is growing.

It may look small at first, but just you wait!