Vision & Seeing

At St John's over the next six months or so we will be exploring visions for our future as a 'community church', in partnership with a group from Greyfriars who, we hope, will be coming to join us. With a bit of luck we'll also be exploring in partnership with God ... there's not much point if not!

So this post is intended to be a quick (-ish) summary of where I'm at now, at the start of this shared process - obviously this is something we've been looking at ourselves for a while, so none of us are really starting from a blank sheet.

In the best church tradition, I'll do this as three points ... or maybe just three different angles.

The first part is simply the idea mentioned above: that St John's needs to be a community church. Not a church defined by it's walls, although they give a good local focus; nor by its churchgoers, although they are its lifeblood; but by the community it engages with, serves, and works with.

Churches just 'serving' their local community sometimes lose the plot, because that's not really how people work. It is in working in partnership with people that all grow and all can use their talents together in the most effective ways. I was listening to a lady from Greyfriars a couple of weeks ago who spoke of "a church without walls", which conveys the idea nicely.

The next point is about numbers. I think we need a decent sized core congregation to provide the foundation (in Jesus, of course), stability and direction for the work. I see that as being around 100 people over a couple of congregations. Any larger and the thing becomes an all-devouring monster, in my view. But we are within a community of over 9,000 people, so if we are to be really effective we will need to involve and include much more than that core congregation.

Currently we take part in a number of initiatives which are separate from the core of the church and are run in partnership with those who go to other churches or none: there's a 'cooking club' on the Amersham Road estate, which is intended to grow into a 'fresh expression' but needs resource to really progress; there is the 'community cafe' on Tuesdays, which could usefully run on other days of the week; there is a 'food for families' group using part of the church grounds. All of these involve us, are separate from the church organisation, and have great potential to grow and do much, much more if more people got involved.

I see this as the best model going forward: a kind of 'hub and satellites' picture. Something where people who 'don't go to church' can live and grow as enthusiastic followers of Jesus without getting bogged down in all the 'religious' stuff.

The final point is not about organisation or about models, but about who we are especially there for. Who we can work with to be life-giving and grace-transmitting. To my mind the priority should be those who are lonely and lost in our neighbourhoods; those who feel worthless and rejected; those with enormous creativity and love to bring to the table, but who don't feel they belong enough to have the right outlet. Those whom God especially loves because religious people have traditionally turned their backs on them.

The thought of partnering with people from Greyfriars to reach those in need of such life-giving inclusion and welcome is one I find concerning^*. But that is the nature of God's Kingdom: it moves forward through the most unexpected people.

To finish, the final verse and chorus from the Bad Pollyanna song above, which I think says a lot about what churches should be relaying to their communities:

Let me put my cards on the table
I've been where you are
I'll never see the stain of a label
Or a scar
You need to know that I won't reject you
Let's unbreak your heart
You are not the voices that shame you

When you are lost
I will find you
Through the dark
I can see you
And you are loved
You are worthy
You can't hide
All the beauty
I can see you

Because that's what Jesus says ... to you and to those around you.

* NB 'Concern' does not equal rejection, more an appreciation that God's way sometimes involves a degree of surprise. It seems likely that those considering moving to St John's will have concerns of their own, of course.

Eastern Caversham & The Kingdom Of God Ramble

I'm too tired at present to construct any sort of ordered post, so it'll have to be a general ramble.

I was at a wonderful church service last night where Rev Penny Cuthbert was licensed and installed as Transition Minister for St John's, serving Caversham as a whole but particularly the communities traditionally associated with St John's in Eastern Caversham (by which I mean roughly the area bounded by Westfield Road, Emmer Green & CPV and the river).

The service was inspiring, the bishop spoke well, and the large congregation - church-goers and non-churchgoers - responded with openness and welcome. The next three years are going to be difficult and challenging times, but I certainly felt strongly the presence of God with us as we set out on that journey.

A couple of discoveries have really set me back on my heels in recent months. The first is that Eastern Caversham has about 9,000 people living there, in about 4,200 households. That is a lot more than I had expected, and equates to a lot of individual stories. It also makes St John's average Sunday congregation over the past year a little less than half a percent of the community we are meant to serve.

The second is that there are apparently at least a couple of hundred churchgoers in Eastern Caversham who cross the river every Sunday to attend worship at town-centre churches, mostly Greyfriars.

I became a Christian at St Aldates in Oxford, in some ways similar to Greyfriars as a city-centre student-friendly church; except at St Aldates, back then at least, there was a strong vision that they discipled the people who came through their doors - like me - trained us up, and sent us out to serve God's Kingdom in our local churches. So I find Greyfriars' apparently more acquisitive approach somewhat disconcerting.

Even more disconcerting is that I have seen no evidence for their presence in Caversham. Granted, I actually live in a different corner of Caversham, but surely hundreds of people working for the Kingdom of God in their local community should show up on the radar, shouldn't they? How could God's people - his light on a hill, salt and yeast for their communities - possibly be invisible?

One reason I have been using the term 'Eastern Caversham' rather than the more usual 'Lower Caversham' is that the St John's district actually covers a lot more ground than just the flood plain area to the south.

As small churches, St John's and the neighbouring Methodist church have partnered in focussing their resources on a small part of the area, to the south-east. As a place to start this, one of the poorer areas of Caversham, makes sense as a beginning for the local work of the Kingdom. But the rest of the area needs to hear and see God's love too.

I was going to use this ramble to record a few half-ideas toward achieving that but it's already getting a bit long and my brain is fogging, so maybe next time.

Grace and peace.

Discernment

It was an odd feeling having been involved in the interview process, but not knowing who had been selected.

Last week CTM Parish was in the process of appointing a priest to fill the vacancy left when Jeremy Tear moved north.

I'm not quite sure where that process is officially as I write, so I'll leave our new Transitional Minister anonymous for the time being; I assume that when she is formally announced she will appear on the Parish website.

During the days when I knew which candidate I preferred but not who had been chosen, I had time to think about the discernment process. Partly wondering how I would feel if the candidate chosen was not the one I would have preferred; partly worrying about how badly wrong the discernment process had gone back when I was part of Caversham Baptist Church.

Actually, it is remarkable, I think, that the chosen candidate could easily have been someone other than my preference: not only were all four candidates strong in their different ways, but they were all very different in their style and approach.

Would I have been willing to work with someone other than my preferred choice? Of course. I may have reservations about discernment in general, but I am still inclined to trust the interview panel over one single person, even when that person is me. My judgement was that the other candidates would be less likely to make a go of achieving a change that's somewhere between miraculous and impossible, but that's no reason not to give it our best shot.

Although I would want to do so without compromising on my core beliefs about what following Jesus means, which could have caused issues. On the other hand, addressing such issues might have led to mutual growth, sometimes one has to trust God to sort such things out.

As it happens the official interview panel's discernment was the same as that of our unofficial 'stakeholder' panel. That doesn't necessarily mean we are right, but I think/hope it gives a better chance.

If it comes to that, it doesn't make the job we're asking her to do any less miraculous/impossible. But if we've got the discernment right then at least it gives God something to work with.

In the end, it's all about trusting Him.

Caversham Chiaroscuro

“chiaroscuro,” by Horatio (2010), dpnow.com

Chiaroscuro: the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, in painting, photography and cinema.

Strictly speaking the title of this post should be "Chiaroscuro at St John's", as it is a post about the results of the first discovery phase of PMC (Partnership for Missional Church, see my earlier post here) for St John's. Well ... St John's is in Caversham and I think the title used sounds better.

This first year of PMC is all about discovery, and phase 1 is discovery about ourselves as a church within a community. What has struck me most about the results so far has been the strong contrasts between darkness and light, hopeful features and unsustainable aspects of life here at St John's.

For example, finance. From the basic numbers it looks as though nearly everyone in the regular congregation at St John's takes part in the planned giving scheme. From the point of view of belonging and responsibility and things like that, this is great. But the bottom line is that we are not covering our costs, never mind putting money away for big bills and big projects in the future. This is simply not sustainable.

Similarly with people and jobs. One part of the PMC process involved identifying people who come to services but don't really take part beyond that. This proved surprisingly difficult: the vast majority of people are involved in something. It might be cleaning, or music, or working with children, or one of the outreach activities, or the church fair, or whatever.

People are involved; again this is great for belonging and taking responsibility. Yet, we cannot fill some of our key roles. We are missing a church warden, we don't have a treasurer, nor a planned giving officer, even the refreshments rota, for after-service tea and coffee, is struggling after the person organising it moved away. Again this is not sustainable.

When it came to getting people's views on what was going on in the church, we again found both light and dark. There is an immense amount of positivity concerning the successful outreach projects of the last five years. Yet there was also significant negativity concerning church 'internals' - the way things were working in terms of the congregation itself. I've deliberately left that last bit vague because it is an area which needs more digging than you can do in the simple interviews we carried out.

Actually, I think exploring this is an important opportunity for us as a church to look at how we grow together and how we continue to support and care for all our members, especially as, we hope, we start getting new people in who need to be included and who have their own, different, needs.

A final bit of chiaroscuro is about the church building. St John's is really lucky in having a building with a large flexible space, with good acoustics, on a main road which is in reasonable walking distance of much of 'our' district. But the building does need serious money spending on it: the roof needs redoing within the next few years, and we desperately need to extend the building to provide meeting rooms and more toilets.

All of this dark and light emphasises the importance of the choices facing St John's as we move into the future, preparing for, then journeying with, the Transition Minister we are hoping to recruit over the next few months.

Many of the challenges directly relate to numbers and to the age profile. Change those for the better and everything looks a whole lot more positive. But we won't do that by carrying on as before: that (in part, at least) is how we got into this position in the first place.

There are over 9,000 people live in 'our patch', most of them of working age. Whilst Lower Caversham is not nearly as wealthy an area as Caversham Heights, it is nevertheless quite well off compared to much of Reading. People, money and energy are out there. Indeed, a lot of them do actually go to church, just not here. People get in their cars and drive past our door (at least metaphorically) to go to church somewhere else!

Ultimately the future for St John's holds a stark choice: are we willing to change the ways we do things, and the expectations we place on those who come to visit us, or will we simply wait to die.

After that we hit questions about how we change, how we catch onto God's vision for Lower Caversham, and how we live out what it means to follow Jesus here and now. But genuine willingness to let go of our habits and step out in trust into an unknown future comes first.

I started off by suggesting that this post is just about PMC at St John's. Actually, that fundamental choice is also the issue at St Margaret's and St Peter's. The different churches have different challenges but we all show significant darkness and light, and face significant change to align ourselves with God's vision for Caversham.

I hope and pray we are in for interesting times here in Caversham.

Same Sex Couples In Church: Repentance Or Deepening?

The year of our Lord 2016: what are your hopes and plans? The comment section is at the bottom (hint).

St John's Church hopes to begin strengthening its core this year: the first half of this decade saw a focus on outreach; now, like a tree, we need to look to building up our internals.

Meanwhile, on this blog I hope to put a lot of focus on Paul's letter to the Galatians; just as last year I focussed on Mark's Gospel.

So consider a hypothetical situation arising in St John's at the end of 2016.

Suppose we find ourselves attracting several same-sex couples. Not by any special outreach from us, but simply by someone coming to Sunday morning worship one week and feeling a warmth and welcome - from the people present, but also from another Presence in the place and in the worship.

So she comes back, then - after a few weeks - she brings her girlfriend. People either don't notice or don't care about their relationship and both feel welcome, along with that sense of Presence. They tell their friends, at least the religiously-inclined among them, and St John's finds itself with unexpected growth.

I suspect some of the rest of the congregation would feel awkward - after all that sort of thing was illegal when they were brought up; a few others would be pleased that we were starting to engage with the 21st Century; but most, I'd guess, would go for the classic laissez-faire position that people's private lives are their own business.

But we're looking to partner with other local groups, including other churches; we're also looking to focus on discipleship and building up the faith of our members. So what if we partner with a local evangelical church - there are plenty in the area - who tell us that, whilst God welcomes all into the Kingdom of His Son as sinners, he doesn't want us to stay that way. Part of following Jesus is to repent of our sins and turn to Jesus' ways, as laid out in the Bible and in the Godly traditions of the Church.

Being keen and articulate our evangelical friends start convincing the wider congregation that it is necessary for those members in same-sex relationships to really start thinking about ending them ... in God's time, of course.

Maybe someone who was particularly instrumental in welcoming these couples in the first place takes exception to this and speaks up to denounce it. They insist that the congregation's place is neither to weaken people's relationships, nor even to just passively accept them, but to work to strengthen the couples, with the eventual aim of committed exclusive covenantal relationship: marriage.

What is the right thing for the congregation to do?

Welcome to the world of the Galatian Church in 48-49 AD (actually the analogy is probably closer to the church at Antioch, but the letter covers both).

May Jesus' grace and peace be yours throughout 2016.

Christ-Light At St John's

"God so loved the world that he gave his only son ...", which is why many churches celebrate the run-up to Christmas by holding services where we give Christingles, Christ-lights, to children (and adults, often), and take up a special collection to give to the Children's Society for their work helping children facing poverty, abuse and neglect - taking the light of Jesus into dark places.

I was thoroughly chuffed on Sunday when we got a congregation of 94 at the St John's Christingle service, pretty much all of whom seemed to be joining in with readings, music and prayers as we worshipped Jesus, the light of the world, together. It was really good to have a contingent there from the uniformed groups, not just joining us but helping out in all sorts of ways too. They really added to the occasion.

Obviously I was chuffed about that worship, but I was also pleased because St John's has been through a rough time over the last year or so, and the good turnout - the second highest Christingle congregation of the past ten years - is a sign that we may be coming out of it.

Last night's carol service, a very different style of service, also had a good turnout (although I don't have last year's figures for comparison, I suspect we were up here as well) and benefited from a choir which included a number of guests from groups we have worked with over the past year or two, including St Peter's of course.

Similarly, Sunday morning congregations over the Autumn have held steady in the mid-forties - not enough for the long term survival of St John's as a living church, it's true, but still a sign of recovery and consolidation. It is also well above the congregations back in the 2008/9 interregnum. Although I should add that the current vacancy  - where we have lost our priest in charge, Jeremy, but are still part of the CTM parish led by Mike as Rector - is a very different proposition from the interregnum after Philip left.

As the PMC process continues, and as we look for a new priest to join the parish team with particular responsibility for enabling transformation at St John's, it is, I believe, vital that St John's continues to build and prepare, ready to join in whatever God is up to here in this community of Lower Caversham.

Meanwhile, as the Christmas season continues, may you experience the light of Jesus in your own life, and may you continually find ways to reflect it into the lives of those around you.

Sacred Cows

Sacred cow: Something too highly regarded to be open to criticism or curtailment.

Lots of us find change in our lives to be an uncomfortable process for all sorts of reasons, both practical and abstract. Change is especially difficult when it challenges core assumptions which we may not even have realised were there.

The same discomfort, but magnified, tends to face churches as we recognise our need for change. St John's Church has been wrestling with it for a few years now, and we're coming to recognise that our pace of change needs to increase dramatically into the near future.

Our Rector, who specialises in interesting questions, asked a few weeks ago what the 'sacred cows' were here: what is there which is sacrosanct for us - not open to change at all.

The trouble with initial responses to a question like that, at least for me, is that I tend to think of other people's sacred cows: the pulpit which is never used - long made obsolete by a sound system and a change to the old patriarchal culture - but which we can't get rid of, or even move; or archaic language used in prayer - often taken to mean the exact opposite of what was meant originally. I'm happy to lose their sacred cows, but I wasn't even sure I had any.

Later I did some more thinking. We definitely need to change and grow, but what would be too high a price?

As a parish we say that our core values are being 'inclusive, generous and life-giving'. At St John's we try to focus those values around being welcoming: as a church community we aim to offer a welcome which is open, inclusive, generous and life-giving. Somewhere in that lie my sacred cows.

Over the river is a large Anglican church, one of whose senior members has a reputation for being very unwelcoming toward same-sex couples: they hit the front page of the local paper on the issue some years back. If that church offered us a group led by this senior member to help us grow, I would take a lot of convincing.

Similarly there are a number of religious groups around Reading, many following a charismatic tradition, who are virulently anti-Muslim. I don't see how partnership with such groups could possibly work.

Now, I need to be careful here. Being unwelcoming to those with reservations about same-sex relationships, say, is also neither inclusive nor open. But there is a difference between following one's conscience in one's own life and trying to use your values to exclude or to manipulate the behaviour of others. As the saying goes: "If you don't believe in gay marriage then don't marry a gay person."

There is a question of integrity, of being true to the Christian values we proclaim. There is also, for me, a fundamental question around what it is which is distinctive about the faith proclaimed in the pages of the New Testament, particularly by Jesus himself.

My reading is that Jesus offered openness and genuine welcome to those excluded by the religious groups of his day. I am in the middle of a little book by Rowan Williams on Paul, looking why what he said was so revolutionary, then and now. Again the answer lies around inclusion not exclusion, welcome not rejection, removing barriers not building them.

In my view any attempt to build up St John's numbers by building walls, by scorning and excluding others, and by emphasising our own holiness and distinctiveness, may or may not help with numbers and dedication, but it would be building up something which is non-Christian, or at best sub-Christian.

Herod's Temple was characterised by its high walls and by its levels of exclusion: a building whose purpose was meant to be bringing people close to God in worship became a place dedicated to separating people from God. When Jesus died on the cross, we are told that the curtain in that Temple, the curtain which separated off the 'Holy of Holies', God's dwelling place, was torn in two, from top to bottom, opening the way to God for all.

Following Jesus is about enabling people to meet God for themselves - all sorts of people, irrespective of gender, social class, race, religious upbringing, relationships, scientific literacy, doubts and certainties. All are welcome to 'taste and see' in their own way; our job is to welcome them and to share what we have found to be life-affirming.

That's my sacred cow. What about you?

Partnership For Missional Church: Initial Impression

PMC kicked off this weekend, with representatives from churches across Reading and Berkshire meeting together for the first big session. Coming at the end of a long hard week, it took me much too far beyond overtired. So, was it worth it?

It'll be a while before I get my brain into gear well enough to really get to grips with it, but my early impressions are generally good.

Some of the publicity earlier in the year was concerning: they quoted statistics for "churches who completed the programme", which is a big no-no statistically, and some of the language was reminiscent of the many 'big-church' programmes which have come out of the US over the years.

One of the main speakers at this weekends launch was from the USA, where the programme was developed, but he was careful to point out that PCM was based, at least in part, on the work of Lesslie Newbigin, the British theologian who emphasised the need for mission within our own communities long before that became fashionable.

Over the past twenty or thirty years I have been involved in a lot of mission initiatives amidst the general decline in church congregations in Caversham and beyond. In all that the only serious church growth I have experienced came, not as a result of a mission programme but, it seems to me, as a direct result of one good minister following another in a church, who focused on serving God in our community as best we could. Even then it didn't really stick: after he left the church returned to slow decline.

Common features of such mission programmes have included them being centrally driven, process-led, with a general attitude of helping 'them' to see the truths that 'we' hold, and often focused on a big early push, typically without much follow-through.

One thing about PMC which impressed me early on is the idea that God is already at work outside the church congregations, in the surrounding communities. Part of the 'partnership' idea in PMC is that we can find 'partners for peace' amongst people who may have no direct contact with church at all. The hope is that we can find ways to work with them so that both parties gain.

The other big positive is the timescale. PMC basically runs over three years, but with the intention of creating permanent changes over those years, so that mission becomes an ongoing part of church life beyond that.

The first year is labelled as a 'listening', or 'discovery', phase, although the activities seem very much aimed at improving communications both within church congregations and between congregations and their neighbours.

Because PMC is a long-term thing, it obviously needs to run in parallel with our other mission work, although maybe encouraging us to a greater awareness of what we are trying to achieve and why.

Someone once told me that if you want to push a destroyer away from a dock wall, there is no point giving it a short hard shove, you'll just put your back out. The secret is to give a long steady push, which will slowly give the movement you want ... unless the wind is blowing the other way.

My first impression of PMC is that it is trying to be a long steady push, whilst helping us discern which way the wind is blowing so we can work with it not against it.

Time will tell if I'm correct.

All-Age Worship For All Ages? Ramble

Let's Dance Together

Who else would all-age worship be for? Ah, if only things were that simple!

These posts are all rambles, of course, but this one is even more than usual a setting down of initial thoughts on a subject. My views are very much subject to change. You could always use the comments section below to help with that ;)

The trouble with 'all-age worship' in the Church of England is that it's often used as a euphemism for 'family worship', which itself is often a euphemism for 'children's church'. Which is often ... childish.

On top of that, St Johns has had the problem of the CTM Parish losing clergy just as the all-age service started development, resulting in a loss of vision and coherence, along with a balance of ages at the service which has been highly variable. Some months we have been heaving with children, and the challenge is to involve them all, other months there were very few, and they didn't want to be involved anyway.

We now have a clear idea where we are for clergy over the next six months or so, after Jeremy has moved up north: decidedly lacking. Therefore there is a lay team who will be responsible for the monthly all-age service, from next month. I am part of that team, hence my desire to explore a vision for a reboot.

I think we should start by going back to the basics of gathered worship: praising God together and listening to God together - praise and prayer.

So I think we start by finding out the favourite hymns and songs of the congregation and using them: we are a small congregation so we need everyone to really put some oomph into their singing. People have got used to action songs at all-age worship and all ages seem to enjoy them - if not overdone - so that is an addition to help create  a sense of movement and involvement. Given a foundation of good singing, we can gradually introduce some good newer songs, in order to stop things getting stale and to find new favourites.

The intercessory prayer slot in the basic Anglican service outline is a suitable place to build something a bit different from the usual fare. Because all-age services don't include a Eucharist there is time and space for being a bit more adventurous here. Although prayertime is probably something we will need to prepare variations for, depending on who comes that morning. If there are lots of young children then prolonged silence is going to be tricky to achieve, if there are almost none then lots of running around will find few takers.

Initial thoughts include Taizé chants, Celtic prayers - even healing prayers - and using icons. We have quite a few icons scattered around St John's and moving the congregation around a few of them (vaguely after the manner of stations of the cross) may be engaging.

One piece of feedback that has come through clearly is that people like movement and they like involvement, whatever their age.

One basic I haven't mentioned yet is the Bible: sharing together in the word of God. This isn't because I don't think it is important - far from it - but because I am currently short of ideas. In general lay people don't have permission to preach in Anglican services, unless they are LLMs. As I'm the only LLM in the parish that is limiting in one sense, although liberating in another.

Traditional preaching, even with visuals and a bit of question-and-answer interaction, is not the only way to engage with God's word. It's probably not even the best way. The challenge is to somehow combine giving the context of a passage with helping people draw out for themselves, maybe in small groups, the meaning in their lives. But it's not just about words: talking about the Bible is one thing, responding to it, creatively and actively, is another.

So, developing all-age worship, for all ages, around the basics of praise, prayer and the word seems to me to be the way to go.

The next step, I think, is clear: hymns and songs 'by request'. The step after that is slightly hazier, but is to do with a more interactive, engaged approach to praying together. The third step is downright fuzzy: engaging together with God's word. That's okay, fuzziness is where faith comes in. So long as the first step is clear we trust that the steps after will be ready once we have actually stepped out in faith.

I am working to a mental timescale of 6 months to get these three steps, or something a bit like them, up and running. That is roughly how long we expect it to take to recruit a new priest into the parish, bringing us up to our clergy complement. Having all-age worship which works by then opens up opportunities and challenges for the future.

Postscript: When looking on Google for a suitable picture for this post, I found the above which I thought looked good. When I followed up on its link I was surprised to find it led me to a church in West Warrington, the place Jeremy Tear, our previous community priest, has just moved to. The wonder of coincidence!

Jeremy Goes North

Jeremy Tear and family have now left Caversham to head up north to West Warrington, sadly for us but, I anticipate, a blessing for Warrington.

Jeremy and his family were with us in Caversham for five years; looking back it is remarkable what has been achieved in that time.

The photo above shows the opening of the Caversham Community Cafe - based in St John's but run by the Lower Caversham Community Partnership - which typifies Jeremy's focus on outward looking projects and on working in partnership with other organisations.

If you click on the photo it will take you to a very brief summary of other things that the Tear family (not just Jeremy) have achieved in their time here.

I arrived at St John's about 2-3 years ago, so I have only seen part of this change. A couple of things do strike me though, in terms of Jeremy's legacy.

The first is that St John's, in particular, is now a lot more ready for, and accepting of, change than it was five years ago. You could say that Jeremy's has been a ground-breaking role, preparing St John's, and to some extent the parish as a whole, for further necessary change under his successor.

The second is that I am not sure five years was long enough to 'bed in' a lot of the work done. A great deal has been achieved, but it seems to me that lasting change is a long-term thing, rather than something which can be done quickly. Especially as Jeremy's time here was very disrupted, particularly by an interregnum after our Rector was poached to Bristol.

Looking to the future, in many ways the vacancy here is an opportunity to try new things out and to keep moving on in God's Kingdom. St John's and the CTM Parish as a whole need to come together to face issues and engage with opportunities; early signs are that the will to progress this is present.

Meanwhile every blessing to the Tears in their new home and ministry.

Barclays: Jekyll & Hyde

I'm really rather conflicted over Barclay's Bank. At the giant multi-national corporate level I remember it as the 'apartheid bank' of the seventies and eighties; now, in the 21st Century, it keeps hitting the headlines for highly dodgy wheeler-dealing and dubious financial ethics.

In the late nineties, after apartheid was over, it was the only bank with a branch in Caversham which met my small business needs, so I opened a business account there. I find the local branch brings a very different set of associations from the central institution. I have, over many years, found the staff there to be helpful and professional. I've had the odd dubious communication from Barclay's over the years, all apparently from either head office or their marketing department, but no problem at all with the branch itself.

St John's had its Christmas Fair today, which is what got me thinking about Barclay's. Two of their branch staff came over to help us out on the two busiest stalls, did a great job, then matched the takings on those stalls from their branch funds. A small amount for Barclay's, no doubt, but immensely helpful to us. More importantly, though, it was done in the context of involvement: giving up their time and commitment to get involved and make a difference within the local community.

So bravo to Barclay's Caversham branch, to the staff who came and helped out today, and to the other branch staff who doubtless help other community endeavours over the year.

Every now and again there are rumours that Barclay's head office might close their Caversham branch. If that happens I will move my account in a shot (not that they'll miss its small turnover). Until then, though, I will appreciate the positives and be grateful for bank staff who want to give something to their local community.

Indigo Requiem

St. John's Church in Caversham held a special requiem service last night, marking remembrance weekend on the hundredth anniversary of the start of the Great War. Len David conducted his Indigo Requiem, with a combined choir from the Hurst Singers and from St John's. Liturgical sections were led by Revd. Colin Bass, and there was accompaniment from piano, saxophone, bass, percussion and trumpet (as well as the organ for the hymns).

Len has composed Indigo Requiem in a style of jazz which I associate with Gershwin - the respectable end of jazz you might say, but it still raises a smile to hear 'the devil's music' used in a context of formal Christian worship. Jazz has a flexibility of tone and mood which allowed it to move between the sadness of  loss and remembrance and the sure hope of resurrection without jarring ... in Len's hands, at least.

It was a fairly grim night weatherwise - and apparently there had been some firework throwing going on - so the congregation was disappointing; far less than the event deserved. Nevertheless musicians and choir (who were a soloist down through illness, I heard afterwards) did a marvellous job. St John's has wonderful acoustics when the singing is strong, and it was great to hear them ringing out. The sound of fireworks banging outside during the reading of the names of those from St. John's lost in the war was slightly surreal, but possibly appropriate, I guess.

From the programme notes:

The music of the requiem seeks to reflect something of the journey that we make as individuals through distress and dread in facing up to death, ending with a quiet acceptance of hope based on the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. As we reflect on our own mortality and remember our loved ones who have died, we are invited to offer our feelings to God and pray that after the service we go away knowing something of the saving power of Christ.

The requiem was being recorded, so I am hoping it will end up on YouTube or somewhere similar, in which case I will add a link to the top of this post.

A Short History Of (My) Blogging

Two posts in the last six months - not really the way to build a blog.

I was looking back recently at some of my earliest blog posts from Christmas 2005. Back then the plan was to post weekly, at least, and to link topics of general interest across to questions of faith. Easy for Christmas, of course, but there were also posts about films and music - I even had a post (written by someone else) about a Coronation Street storyline. Back then I was website editor for a church website, and the hope was that such a blog - running in parallel with the church magazine - would attract visitors and interest from a wider range of people than simply those searching for "baptist church in Caversham". Which it did.

Unfortunately, what it didn't attract was posts from other church members - the one linked above was the only one I got. Also, we lost the church magazine: mostly because the new pastor - although, IMO, definitely a good guy - tended to preach very legalistically and obsess about sex, which drove away our magazine editor. So when said pastor - who was also very pro-Israeli - tried to censor the blog for not being sufficiently pro-Israel (the offending article is here), I decided I was getting nowhere and resigned as website editor, so the blog became standalone. You can see my thoughts at the time in the series of three posts from here.

So "Webitorial Ramblings" became "BlackPhi's Website Ramblings", and the posts carried on - still more than weekly, and still based around news, culture, and Caversham life, plus a bit of what was going on in church. A month or two later, a great guy named Jonathan Jones kindly invited me over to Blog City, which (back then) was a blogging community - with interaction and feedback, and real live comments! So I started blogging there in parallel, see here for my first Blog-City post, complete with kindly words from JJ.

Both blogs seemed to have their own readership, and transferring posts between them helped with proof-reading, so I ran them in parallel for more than two years - I can't easily count the number of posts in that time, but I'm sure it was comfortably over weekly. One of the final few posts on my standalone blog was one I found amusing about the dangers of DHMO - a widely used industrial chemical which is reported to cause over 400 deaths a year in the UK alone. Late in 2008 we moved house, and I retired the PC I had been using as a web server, so I decided it was time to retire the standalone blog also.

Blog City continued; during 2009 posts thinned out a bit but remained not too far off the weekly post average (although much more erratic in distribution, eg 7 posts in Sept 2009, 2 in October). Looking back there seem to be a lot of music-themed posts in this period, eg here and here. Posts picked up during 2010, although the feel of them seems heavier to me now, having just reread the earlier 2005/6 ones. Maybe I was just older and wearier, or maybe there wasn't so much to say. Certainly Caversham Baptist Church was becoming more of a drag and a drain, which can't have helped. There were great people there, but as a church it was (IMHO of course) losing the plot.

Then Blog City closed down. We had plenty of notice, but it was still really sad - like an established neighbourhood being demolished. I started up a new blog here on BlogSpot, but it really isn't the same: if there is a BlogSpot community I still haven't managed to tap into it. The first post got several comments, but only from BC friends, otherwise it seems to be only techie posts that get much response here, most notably one on Trusteer Rapport problems.

Posts dropped to fortnightly on average in 2011, slightly better in 2012, then less than monthly in 2013. Post lengths have crept up, and content seems to me to be getting more religious. At the end of 2012 I left Caversham Baptist Church - a painful decision but necessary, I felt. Maybe post frequency has dropped off because I'm not so angry? Or, more likely, because the final few years at CBC left me feeling very jaded and disillusioned - it's one thing to hear about churches which turn away from God, quite another to be in the middle of that. It's especially bewildering to see that the individuals involved remain Godly, whilst the 'church' community loses its direction, and stops following Jesus.

So here I am in 2014, with another post which is too long. I think it's time for another rethink, before I give up on the blog. Maybe it's time to reverse direction: the old theory was to start from the news, culture, Caversham life and seek Jesus there; maybe it is time to try working from the inside out, to start from religion and see if I can find some way to relate that to the real world. It'll certainly be a challenge!

"Christ The King" - So What?

Very pretty, but so what?

"My name is BlackPhi, and I am a pedant".

Sorry, but I am: I care (too much, probably) about word meanings and accuracy. 'Christ the King' is like 'Cobbler the Shoemaker' or 'Butcher the Purveyor of Meat', or even 'Pope the Catholic'.

'Christ' is a literal Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew 'Messiah' - both mean 'anointed one', ie 'king'. Yes, there is more to being the Christ/Messiah than just being an ordinary king, but not less. That is where the concept starts.

The trigger for this little rant is that in three Sundays time (some) Anglican churches celebrate the feast of 'Christ the King' and I'm supposed to be giving a talk on the subject. It doesn't help that when I look on Google/Bing images for 'Christ the King', I find pages of bland images showing a North European 'Jesus' looking highly pious ... and generally pretty pointless.

It also doesn't help that I'm of a generation that isn't terribly impressed by titles and the toadying and self-importance that goes with them. Kings, queens, presidents, CEOs, unrestrained Prime Ministers ... so what? Corruption, abuse and injustice seem to me to be the inevitable companions of such power structures. The histories of major church organisations back that up all too well. Here's an alternative picture (from an album cover):

The point of remembering that Jesus is 'King of Kings' and 'Lord of Lords' is that it tells us that he has the power to make a difference. He was the one through whom the whole world was made, so when it comes to making a difference to the mess it's in - to remaking it, in part now, more extensively in due course - he knows what he is about.

When Jesus was on the cross between two other convicts, one of them wanted Jesus to use his power as Messiah/King to free them all from their suffering. The other convict accepts the situation and just asks Jesus to remember him. As it turns out, the suffering of both is cut short (crucifixion commonly took days), and the second convict is promised that Jesus will go with him: taking him through the crucifixion to paradise.

It's an odd story when you think about it, but my take is that sometimes (not always: healings do happen) Jesus, rather than keeping us from pain and suffering, walks through it with us, shortening it to what we can bear, and making it transformative: taking what is inherently evil and purposeless and transforming it to an agent of good change and redemption.

Because Jesus is the King: he can do that.

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