New Kid on the Blog

Today, the Wednesday of Holy Week is, in my schedule, a bit of an odd day.  It is the 'calm before the storm' of the Triduum and the explosion of joy that is Easter.  We have a simple Eucharist at 7.45am every Wednesday with a thought suitable to the day, and although we have a Holy Wednesday service in the evening, we have kept to our usual Wednesday pattern. So here is my thinking for this Morning's service. For those of us of a professional religious bent, we like to have answers.  They might not be the best answer, they might not be the right answer (if I’m honest) but we like to have an answer.  Sometimes they seem a little bit too much like stock answers, the autopilot of ministry – and if we don’t really have any answer to give we end up with the wonderful ‘well, it’s a mystery’.  Not really an answer at all.  Which is why I take Holy Week so very seriously.  It’s a week that doesn’t allow us to give answers – not really, not if we rea...

I have been enjoying a Facebook game lately, where one is challenged to post a poem by a writer of someone else's choice - and whoever 'likes' that post is also challenged to provide a poem by an author of the poster's choice. Does that make sense? Probably not, anyway, the possibilities are endless and I have discovered some stuff by Mary Oliver and Brian Andreas (including a great Pinterest board )  that I might not have discovered otherwise.  Also on doing a search on Canadian Poets I found this below by Robert Priest - I publish with it's copyright attribution, but I don't have any ownership of it's copyright - I hope that in sharing I am not doing anything the poet would not want me to.  It's a challenging poem, and I found it here on the University of Toronto website along with lots of other great stuff. Christ Is the Kind of Guy Robert Priest From:   The Man Who Broke Out of the Letter X . Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984. C...

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been on a helpful day thinking about 'Moving On with your Mission Community' - a day of considering this new category of parish organisation in the Diocese of Exeter . Mission Communities are groups of parishes, as in our case, or even single parishes working with a focus on shared ministry, and in restating and reconsidering our Mission objectives in the context of the local church. For this group of parishes which I am privileged enough to lead that means reconsidering the way we work together, refocussing on our calling to reach out to those beyond the Church, pooling resources where appropriate whilst still working to maintain the particular context of each Church fellowship. In the case of these five Devon villages that means working with the unique makeup of each Church and community, not trying to subsume them into a homogenous lump, but using the shared identity of a Mission Community to support the individual characteristics...

I seem to be spending a lot of time musing at the moment and not a lot of time doing. I mean, I am doing all the things I normally do, but not really doing more than that. I think part of it is because of the huge amount of work i did in January and February, followed by a week in France, I don't feel as though I have quite reconnected with everything yet. In fact, things are eerily quiet in the parishes - I've done some visiting of the sick, I've had quite a lot of meetings, I've led a number of services, I've been out and about, I've had a day at Ely Cathedral finding out about what it means to be a 'Day Chaplain' (I will tell you more when I've done a day) and I've spent a lot of time with the family as wife and children have had very heavy colds which has meant no one has been completely healthy (except me) for a week or so. Even so, that bit of spare time that has cropped up hasn't really seen me doing stuff - I've not been writing...

apparently just read on another blog that due to agreeing with Jeffrey John I am a dodgy liberal... it's a new one on me, my nickname at theological college was 'the evangelical'. I may have a broader understanding of the nature and shape of scripture than some, but i do try to keep things biblical! Well, in times of persecution (tongue in cheek, I thought Andrew's words were a well expressed counter to my post and certainly wouldn't want to condemn them, it's a view I held for many years and one i am in the process of thinking through biblically, I may yet come back to the same place as him) I remember the words of Karl Barth (my favourite theologian) who, when asked to sum up all of his great works over many years in the Reformed Evangelical Church, said 'Jesus loves me this I know, 'cos the Bible tells me so'. Amen to that brother! Until God sorts me out, i will continue to 'preach Christ, and him crucified'.

That's a rhetorical question, so don't bother answering. Actually, looking back over the comments for the past few weeks, there's little danger of anyone saying anything anyway! Have I offended someone? So, Happy New Year and all that. Having had a few days off I am raring to go, but not for another day or two... Tomorrow is sorting out day, when i put all of the Christmas services, sermons and 'stuff' either a) in files, b)in the recycling or c)in the bin. It takes a day to get things back together, as in the last week or two leading up to Christmas things just get dumped as i dash between services and events and I then have all the joy of working out what needs keeping or throwing before getting back to work after Christmas. Over this past week or so i have made a real effort to read a book which threatens to melt my brain due to theological overload. The title 'Job and the distruption of identity: reading beyond Barth' doesn't seem like necessar...

My 'Rural Theology Association' conference on Saturday was excellent, because it was all concerned with Mission... I know that 'Mission' is the in-word in British Christian circles at the moment, but there was a great reminder from the Bishop of Exeter who (quoting someone i can't remember, so anyone who can attribute this please let me know) said 'It's not that the Church of God has a mission, but that the God of Mission has a Church' Apologies if i got that wrong, but the gist of it is clear...

I didn't want to post a Remembrance Sunday sermon again this year - but thought i would post my thoughts which i wrote for our local parish magazines to offer a little food for thought... Remembering Some would say I have a brain like a sieve, but my memory is pretty good, I think. The problem is that I try to keep too much in it. Like the cartoon of the little boy at school who raises his hand and says ‘please may I be excused, my brain is full’. So I have discovered an excellent way of helping me to do the things I need to do – lists. That may seem obvious to most people, but my character has never been one which likes lists, and it is only in the past couple of years I have discovered the joy of crossing things I’ve done off a list, and knowing that I have come back from shopping with everything I set out to get. And it is important that we write things down, so that we remember. Those who wrote down and kept the stories and prophecies, hymns, histories and tea...

I spent the evening today in two meetings of 'Parochial Church Councils' (PCCs) which govern the running and maintainance of Churches in the C of E. This may sound vaguely pergatorial to most people (and note, i have never used the word pergartorial before, and besides the Anglican Church doesn't official subscribe to any doctrine of pergatory) but actually they were two good meetings, the first chaired by my friend, mentor and 'senior partner' in the Team, the Team Rector, and the second by myself. Now in these meetings there is usually a heavy emphasis on the buildings which the Parishes are responsible for, and in these rural parishes that is often a large, stone built, ancient (minimum 500 years old) building. For many ministers this obsession with 'plant' drives them mad, but i felt this evening' s discussions were very positive. We talked of our Church buildings not just as 'built heritage', which is an important but not exclusive aspect...

I have had the chance during my last few days of feeling not-so-great to get on with some thinkificating (as George W might say). Yet when i sit down to write something (as i'm doing now in order that i can escape clearing up my office for ten minutes) i don't seem to have anything to say - not that this has stopped me from blogging before! On Sunday evening, when i was actually feeling tired and generally urghhhh (it's a word). I led our informal worship & teaching service which was, in a certain ironic twist, based around the theme of 'Jesus and Healing'. It was a very good service, my cold remained all the way through but i didn't drip on my guitar 0r lose my voice. The bit that stood out, though, was the talk from our curate Alexandra - as she talked about healing she didn't go through any of the hackneyed stuff about what might have happened and how Jesus might have been able to heal through this method or consider whether the Gospel records of ...

Still not entirely up to spec, but no longer feel as if my brain has been removed and replaced with cotton wool. So here i am again! I've been amazed at the number of folk who've not just breezed through with the traffic programmes i've signed up with (Traffic Pods - yes I am a pod person - bionic hits, team hits and blogexplosion) but who've stayed, looked around a bit and left comments. Thanks. As I guess is obvious, there's a whole load of things that seem to be going around my mind at the moment and this blog is the place where some of my thoughts are uttered out loud. I will be back to talking about some of the issues which are particularly exercising my mental muscles sometime later, but for now i just wanted to say 'hi' and 'thanks'. Catch you later!

This thought is really in response to what Jeff said in a comment on yesterday's post, i was going to respond in a comment of my own but decided to post this instead as the comment was getting longer and longer... In saying that we need to be creative and relate to people's experience I'm not trying to put sermons and liturgy against worship, but to remember that they are a part of worship not the whole of it. I agree totally with what Jeff writes in his comment, that worship is not just about what happens in Church, and I believe that worship is about a pattern of life in which all that we do gives glory to God. I think, though, that the Church is making itself less and less relevant by continuing to buy into a word bound culture that is a product of post enlightenment thinking. People were astounded by Jesus teaching but were, it seems to me, drawn into faith by the way he lived, died and rose again as well as what he taught. It was the whole package. Likewise Jesus d...

...not a lot of writing going on at the moment, that's because i have been out again all day doing things that clergy do - prayers to start the day, visiting a colleague, visiting parishoners and finally the meeting i have just got back from, our worship leader training course run by Ely Diocese. Now there's not much i could (or rather should) write about the day itself, but the evening was refreshing, entertaining, thought provoking as we met for the first time this year to begin this training course for those who want to be more involved in the worshipping life of the church. It's exciting and positive that the Church at large is resourcing and supporting people in exploring the wider vocation to Christian ministry rather than narrowing it down to getting people ordained in order to do stuff in the Christian Community. One reflection to come out of the discussions tonight was how affective worship is. The main focus of the evening was to talk about experiences of wor...

For those hoping for a blueprint for a pm church, I am going to have to disappoint you! Or for solutions to the malaise of the 'modern church' you will have to look elsewhere. I have recently been challenged and inspired by the book 'the out of bounds church' by Steve Taylor, which looks at the potential for creating living Christian communities in a changing world. Also, in a variety of reading over the last few years i have been equally inspired by the opportunities that societal change makes possible, and whilst not wanting to dump wholesale the 'old' ways of being church, i long to explore new ways of being Christ's followers in a pm age. My inspirations: church is relational, not rational - in fact that is the best way to think of Christian faith, it is not about accepting the right doctrines (though i believe doctrine is the anchor that holds faith secure - but i've warbled on about that before) but about knowing God through Jesus Christ and in ...

The audio adventures of a couple of bearded pseudo-theologians continues - still in trial phase so please do let me know if you would like to check out the website (too complicated to just post a link, you will need the password & identity) and give us some feedback. fracme[at]yahoo.co.uk

Of course, there is no one 'postmodern philosophy' or movement which people subscribe to. In fact the defining factor of our age is exactly that, we live in a society which contains a patchwork of belief, practice, understanding. When we consider what it is to say we live in a 'postmodern' (from now on i will say pm instead of typing 'postmodern' frequently!) world we are simply trying to examine the cultural situation, reflect on a changing world and put some shape to the results of that process. In 'who's afraid of postmodernism' there is a very good broad summary of the main thrusts of pm thinking as (to paraphrase the subtitle) - Foucalt, Derrida and Lyotard are taken to church (!). The three aspects are: suspicion of power & rejection of any attempt to proclaim one single unifying truth (metanarrative), examination of langauge and its power to oppress and imprison and an assertion that meaning and truth are relative and fragmented - there...

Have been trying to get my head around the whole concept of postmodernity/postmodernism, and admittedly not succeeded very well. What can't be denied (though i am sure there are plenty who will) is that Western culture is undergoing a radical shift in outlook - though there is some debate as to whether we are in the apex between two ways of understanding the world, at the end of one (modernity) or the beginning of another. Are we late modern, post modern, the malaise of the modern or what? Perhaps it would help to think a bit about what Modernity as a 'world view' is (very broadly speaking, i don't claim to be an expert). Modernity is a post-enlightenment, rational/reason based view of the world characterised by a belief in the constant progress of humanity through technology and reason, the growth of institutions, the elevation of reason and rationality and science and a sense of always moving forward towards ultimate truths. This is a woefully inadequate summary, b...

Have rediscovered my interest in 'postmodernity' - ie considering what cultural change our society is undergoing and wondering how the church should respond to it. Am reading a couple of books on the subject 'Who's afraid of Postmodernism' and 'the out of bounds church' as well as continuing to plough through my emerging church reading matter. I say this because having started reading and thinking on this all about 12 years ago i just left it and got caught up in the world of 'church' and 'ministry' - so often focussing on maintaining the church as it is and keeping things going (whilst on a pretty steep learning curve with regards to what it means to be a priest!) without, in many ways, engaging very much with the society around the church. Of course i constantly interact with people, and pastor those both inside and outside the church, but i wasn't necessarily doing the thinking and praying and engaging with things that perhaps i shoul...

Don't know if I mentioned that last week's conference was in Merville, France (Nord Pas-de-Calais) so the title might not make much sense - not that i am making any claims about making sense anyway! The title i chose for my last post on these things sums things up really 'random acts of theology'. The week seemed to be a week of small explosive bits of theological reflection and revelation. We had a series of Bible Studies/readings by the Rector of Guildford, Revd David Bracewell, which took the story of Jonah and verses from 2 Corinthians and, via lots of anecdotes and jokes and stories, used them to guide some reflection on the conference theme 'the hope of our calling'. Some (many?) didn't like David's style, but for me it was enjoyable and had both depth and levity in it. Sessions one and four were excellent, two was good, and three happened but didn't stand out quite as much as the others! The theological reflection by the Bishop of Huntingd...

So, I continue to think about the encounters of last week. It was a very helpful conference in lots of ways, not least because there was no compulsion to go to anything! I went to all of the Bible Studies, some of the 'worship', and just over half of the keynote speakers! Just over half because there were four - one i missed due to being over tired and one i had to leave because i felt nauseous and flushed. I'll probably say more about all the different sessions another time (then again, maybe not - i can just keep you all on tenterhooks then - whatever they are) but I had revelation this last week as to how I have changed in these last few years. Three years ago, when we had our last Clergy conference for the Diocese of Ely, I went to everything - mandatory or not. At that time I identified myself as a 'Myers-Briggs E - Extrovert' meaning that my energy came from being with people, and in case of tiredness i would head for the nearest group of people and feel...