Beatitudes

It shouldn't be a surprise that spiritually important people like bishops would struggle with a passage from Jesus which begins by saying that it is the spiritually poor to whom God's kingdom belongs. Nonetheless, I do find the Bishop of Oxford's booklet, Exploring The Beatitudes, which is promoting his 'Contemplative, Compassionate and Courageous' vision for Oxford Diocese, to be disappointingly detached from what Jesus said.

Even in the 21st century people forget that the 'Sermon on the Mount' - which the Beatitudes are the introduction to - was a Jewish preacher speaking to a mostly-Jewish audience about the Jewish scriptures (which we know as the Old Testament), as recorded by Matthew in a strongly Hebrew-influenced dialect of 1st century Greek.

Instead we look at Bible translations which emphasise the smooth elegance of Tyndale's 16th century English. The unfortunate way these very English versions  bury Jesus' radical announcements of God's concern for those who are at the bottom of the heap is presumably considered a price worth paying by those near the tops of their various heaps.

Here in Caversham we are in the third year of our Partnership for Missional Church initiative; one key focus of PMC is on seeing what God is already doing in the community around us and where we can join in. The Beatitudes give us a picture of which people and groups of people God is particularly focused on, which should help to guide us.

I plan to look at the Beatitudes individually over the coming weeks, so I won't jump into them here, but there are a number of things to notice about the Beatitudes as a whole:

• They are the introduction to a longer 'sermon', not a standalone passage. As such they are intended to catch people's attention, introduce later themes and topics, and to help listeners to see, personally and collectively, where they themselves fit in with Jesus' message.
• They are an announcement of hope, justice and affirmation for those who have been crushed and marginalised by the 'business as usual' of an unjust world, as well as for those who want to do something about it.
• They are succinct, even spikily terse, with every word carefully chosen to deeply and powerfully resonate with Jesus' listeners.
• They are deeply rooted in Old Testament Scripture.
• They are individually and collectively cohesive. In particular, each beatitude comes in two linked parts - "blessed are ... because ...". The inevitable multiple possible meanings which come from translating ancient languages can be narrowed down both by investigating their Old Testament roots and by seeing which potential meanings resonate with one another most powerfully. Collectively there is a clear pattern to the way they are organised and an obvious link-back from the last beatitude to the first.

As an example of the difference the above can make, consider the third beatitude, rendered by most English translations as "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth". Obvious questions are: what exactly does 'meek' mean here, how on earth does being meek relate to inheriting anything, and is Jesus telling us we ought to become meek or is he announcing something good to those who already are?

More detail on this in a later post, but for now I'll just say that 'meek' refers to those who are oppressed and crushed, with a specific application to the landless poor. Also the word Tyndale translated 'earth' really applies to 'earth' in the soil sense, rather than the whole world, and from there it extends to arable land and hence to useful land in general. In the Old Testament a family's land was their inheritance and could not be taken away for more than fifty years - not that rich landowners had ever taken any notice.

So that third beatitude can be rendered in English as: "Blessed are the landless poor, because they will inherit the land". Which surely makes more sense - although commentators today would need to fill in background which Jesus' original hearers would have known only too well.

This post is quite long enough, I reckon. So do have a happy and blessed 2018. (Blessed'? What does that mean?).

TED Talks & Preacher Training

I wonder if Bible Colleges and other theological training centres use TED talks as part of their training in preaching?

A talk with a serious message given by one person with minimal staging and taking less than 20 minutes - for churchgoers among you, does that sound familiar? If I add that the vast majority of TED talks closely engage both the immediate audience and, in many cases, millions of people worldwide then maybe the familiarity decreases.

I've been known to say that the traditional lecture-style sermon is way out-of-date and an appalling way of attempting to engage with modern people in the modern world. There is an elderly and declining population of churchgoers who often like them like that, of course, but I have long argued that a new approach is needed.

In many ways I still believe that: sitting passively consuming the words of a supposed expert is a lousy way to learn. Yet the global success of TED talks does suggest that there is life in the format yet, so I think it's worth looking at some of the typical characteristics of a TED talk.

Pretty much all TED talks are given by people with genuine and obvious enthusiasm and expertise who are speaking about something which they believe matters.

The vast majority have a speaker who moves around the stage, rather than being trapped behind a lectern.

Many TED talks involve some sort of projection/PowerPoint accompaniment, used as a visual backup and complement to the talk itself; whilst the talk remains the main focus.

Many of the talks involve humour - but rarely in the form of isolated jokes, more as ways of making or supporting a particular point.

Some of the talks involve some degree of interaction with the audience, but this is nearly always limited. People want to listen to the speaker and there is a tight timescale.

So I would say it is time for preachers to rethink their methods, congregations to rethink what they ask of their preachers, and occasional visitors to church to give more feedback on how they experience the preaching in that church.

If a preacher doesn't have expertise and enthusiasm then why on earth are they there? If the preacher doesn't make the effort to engage with the congregation through movement, interaction, relevant visuals and/or humour then why should they expect the congregation to engage with them? And if a preacher isn't talking about something which has meaning and importance to listeners and to their neighbours then why is s/he wasting everyone's time?

What do you think?

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!

Grey Day Ramblings

Grey, gloomy, damp and chilly. I think I must be letting it get to me.

There is a story that has been floating round Facebook for a few days now about a Muslim family allegedly asking that a Romany Roman Catholic be exhumed because he had been buried in the grave next to one of their relatives.

The story was originally reported by The Hinckley Times, before being picked up by right-wing newspapers and Islamophobic groups around the world.

The Hinckley Times have now pulled the story from their website (it was here). When I looked at it earlier in the week it was a classic 'local news' unresearched story, basically reporting on someone feeling upset about what they thought they had been told, but not bothering to check the story out with any of the officials involved. The mainstream newspapers who had copied the story did their follow-up the next day and promptly printed stories saying that no there would not be an exhumation. It was a non-story.

The local parish council, the officials involved, later put out a statement saying:

"An inaccurate, divisive and inflammatory article printed in The Hinckley Times appeared to indicate that Burbage Parish Council has considered the exhumation of a person recently interred at Burbage Cemetery – this is totally untrue and without foundation."

The underlying fact is that in England parish councils cannot exhume anybody, that can only be done by a direct order from the Home Office, which there was never any prospect of in this case.

It looks as though there was a misunderstanding about the purpose of this particular area of the cemetery, the council tried talking to the people involved, the local press found out and misreported the situation, the bigots and racists picked up their report and ran with it, and people get indignant because they cannot be bothered to check things out for themselves.

On a more religious note, I have been trying to find a commentary on Mark's Gospel which mentions what was going on in the Roman Empire at the time (civil war and chaos, basically). None seem to. It is as if this Gospel just exists in a sort of religious bubble, unrelated to the concerns and fears of those it was written for.

Churches wonder why non-churchgoers find what we do irrelevant to their daily lives. If those who study the Bible - which we claim to be the foundation of our faith - cannot even be bothered to think about how what was written related to the daily lives of those who lived then, what chance is there of any of them bothering to look at how it relates to the real world now.

Mark's Gospel seems to have been written for busy, cosmopolitan, politically aware readers. There are a lot of people like that in Caversham, but nothing to communicate what it says to them/us. Traditional translations, even traditional preaching, are framed as churchey meaningless woffle, without contemporary meaning or content (except for the traditional 'moral' lessons, of course).

What I find most frustrating about this, though, is that I am not clever enough to do it myself. I can adapt and comment on other people's work, but actually clarifying what Mark was saying to people in the midst of civil war and political chaos, then restating that for people living through the economic and political chaos of the beginning of the 21st century, say, is beyond me.

Yet those who are clever enough, and who say they care about what the Bible has to say, seem unwilling to present it as something real, speaking to real people in a real society.

As I say, it's a grey day and I feel grey. Nevertheless, tomorrow is another day, and life is a gift, to be celebrated and enjoyed as best we can. Grace and peace to you, and all you care for.

How Fast Were The Magi?

I heard a preacher recently cross-examining children. Among other things, she asked them how old Jesus was when the magi came with their gifts. One young girl - eightish at a guess - suggested, hesitantly, that he could have been about one, to which the preacher replied that she was wrong. Jesus, the preacher reckoned, must have been far older because it would have taken the magi a long, long time to travel all that distance.

Three learning points - at least - from this. Firstly, don't ask questions where you don't know the answer yourself, unless you are properly prepared to listen. Secondly, children actually know a surprising amount, so don't discount what they say. Thirdly, double check your own assumptions. Fourthly - a bonus point - giving children the third degree is not the same as being interactive, and bluntly telling them that their answer is just wrong is poor teaching (not to mention that you risk making yourself look plain ignorant).

So, how old was Jesus when the wise men came? The Bible story, told in Matthew's Gospel, doesn't directly say, but it does tell us that Herod checked when the wise men first saw the star then sent his soldiers to kill all the children in the area under the age of two. So he certainly thought Jesus was not a babe in arms but no more than two years old. So 'about one' is a pretty fair estimate.

What about the distance the magi had to travel? Well, from modern Tehran in Persia to Bethlehem is around a thousand miles. The magi almost certainly would have come from west of there, so 1,000 miles is the maximum likely distance (Baghdad would have been about 550 miles). The Bible doesn't mention camels - it doesn't even mention how many 'wise men' there were - but if they were important people they would have been mounted on something, and camels are as likely as anything else.

On decent terrain - they would have been using ancient trade routes - a camel can comfortably travel 25 miles a day, for day after day. The humans involved may not have been so hardy, so a conservative estimate would be a hundred miles a week. That makes ten weeks maximum for the journey. On foot, people might travel at around half that speed, say fifty miles a week: a maximum of twenty weeks for the journey.

Long distance travel in the ancient world was not that unusual - there was a major trade route between China and the Mediterranean - and really not that slow.

So: ask questions, listen to answers, check assumptions, and always respect kids. That'll do for this post.

What Are Sermons For?

Okay, as an occasional preacher I might be expected to know this.

But it's not really a question 'ministers' and preachers commonly ask. There is a stock answer - preaching & teaching - but that doesn't stand up well to closer inspection.

I am currently leading a review of our Parish Communion service, and how it can be more meaningful to occasional visitors, so I am inspecting more closely. At the moment I have more questions than answers ... not always a bad place to be.

'Preaching', in the Bible, means proclaiming: telling people good news about Jesus, or God's Kingdom. It's not news if people already know about it, so what's the point of preaching to a church congregation? 'Preaching to the converted' seems a meaningless exercise.

'Teaching' implies you expect people to know or understand more at the end than before you started. So in a church context you would expect people who have been listening to sermons for years and years to have a really good overall knowledge and understanding of the Bible and of Christian doctrine. My experience is that this seems to only apply to those who also attend some form of Bible Study group; otherwise Bible knowledge amongst long-term churchgoers seems more or less at the old Sunday School level.

Oddly, the same questions apply to different church traditions. Baptists have a different style of sermon, and they have more people in study groups, but you still get preaching to the converted and you still get long term members with minimal Bible knowledge. You also get quite a lot of telling people what to do: it's a lever of control for the priest in charge.

As I say, I don't have much in the way of answers to this, but I do have a few thoughts.

The first is that whilst preaching to the converted seems meaningless, it can have a point if the object is to give 'the converted' tools for sharing their faith with others. Articulating what we believe can be difficult, so having it presented in a clear and meaningful way in a sermon can be helpful in clarifying our own thoughts and words.

Secondly, if teaching is a part of the purpose then we really need to update our communication methods. A formal monologue, without visual support, is widely recognised, at least by the rest of the world, to be an ineffective means of communicating and teaching. People learn by hearing and seeing and doing - different people weight these three differently but everyone needs a balance. Sitting passively while a preacher talks at you is no way to learn anything. So, if teaching is seen as important, the sermon slot needs to incorporate visuals and actions - not a monologue but a dialogue (polylogue? - apparently not).

Sermon slot as a lever? I'm not a priest in charge, so that isn't really my area. A common example is the sermon telling us we should be giving more money and/or time to the church; there is some point to these but the way they are done tends to leave me feeling cynical. We did have a subtler example this morning with the sermon slot given to a lady from an organisation who arrange visits for the housebound and lonely in the area. Our priest in charge is a great believer in church members engaging with the community, so this is him presenting us with an opportunity to do just that. Fair play to him.

At the end of the day, the purpose of a sermon slot is really not my call. Preachers are there to serve the congregation, not to impose on it.

So what do you think sermons should be for? If you are a churchgoer, what works for you? If not, what do you consider would be a positive experience during a 15-30 minute period following one or more Bible readings?

I genuinely would like to know.

Autumnal Ramblings

Autumn Rain by RayCrystal

It's classic British autumn outside: grey with heavy, but warm(-ish), drizzle; and it's far too long since I posted anything to this blog, so ...

It's not even as if there's been nothing I fancied blogging about. There've been reports about genes and free-will, all sorts of health-related issues in the news, and, of course, reports of various security perverts spying on us "for our own good". As if MI5 and GCHQ are at all trustworthy or even the least bit accountable to anyone, certainly not parliament.

Consider the SpyCatcher affair, when the British government sent its Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, to lie to the Australian courts, to cover up a faction inside MI5 working against Harold Wilson in the 70's, when he was prime minister. Then there's paedophile traitor Geoffrey Prime, whose day job was working at GCHQ, but whose hobby was using surveillance to identify young girls most likely to be home alone so he could attack them (in spite of being positively vetted six times, it wasn't GCHQ or MI5 who finally caught him, but the local police using traditional policing methods). There's a really good article on Adam Curtis's BBC blog about the history of MI5 here. Maybe US readers can reassure me that their NSA is more trustworthy and accountable?

In terms of my own church life, I am in the process of getting re-licensed as a lay reader, at St John's Church here in Caversham. Considering that we used to belong to St Johns several years ago, this seems like a bad idea - like a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. Also, St John's remains the far side of Caversham from me, which is hardly helpful when it comes to local involvement. Nevertheless, I spent lots of time last year visiting local churches and St John's was where the wind of the spirit seemed to be blowing me, so that's where I've ended up.

As a part of the re-licensing process I've been doing some supervised preaching. This is quite challenging as Anglican sermons are VERY short compared to Baptist ones, but also an opportunity to be as creative as I can in presenting truth in a different way. For harvest, last Sunday, I took in Biblical-style flatbread - made that morning - so people got sight and smell and touch and taste, as well as the words.

Meanwhile we have a son who's in his final year at university - so he needs to work on job-hunting - and a daughter who is planning to go to uni next year, so we've been taking her on visits to open days in various parts of the country.

Life goes on, and remains a gift - even in soggy autumn.

Out With The Old

It's a rather sad end to 2012, as I have resigned my membership of Caversham Baptist Church, where I have been a member for almost seventeen years.

The new(-ish) pastor at CBC, who is a little inclined to say strange things without thinking them through, reckons that being a member of a local church is like being in a marriage. As a pastor he must have been a member of some four or five churches over the past twenty years - I wonder if his wife realises how casually he views marriage? I view being a church member more like living in a house: moving house is a painful experience, but sometimes the old house is just not suitable. It is following Jesus which is the lifelong commitment, like marriage; where one is based can help or hinder, but it is not the main thing.

Why have I resigned from CBC after all these years? Basically because seventeen years ago Caversham Baptist was a church I admired and was proud to become a member of; and because back then I found it a really good place to worship God with my fellow Christians and to seek to work together for God's Kingdom here in Caversham. Neither of these things is now the case: there are some lovely people at CBC, but as a church it has lost its way; and as a place to worship it no longer does anything at all for me.

There is a classic alternative approach, which is to hunker down and outlast a lousy 'minister': "I've been here x years/all my life, I'm not going to allow some johnny-come-lately to drive me out." This is a fair enough approach, especially for those who have grown up in a church, or who are getting on in years, but it does ignore the question of what sort of state the church will be in by the time the duff 'minister' leaves. It also treats a church as more of a club to belong to, rather than a working organisation which is tasked with actually achieving something. Better would be to work together to actually change things, but passive deference is a hard habit to break.

Really, though, CBC has been moving away from its roots for longer than the new pastor has been here; indeed the whole process of 'calling' him (the procedure a Baptist church goes through to - in theory - seek God's will for its new minister) was severely tainted. The church direction and organisation have been becoming more top-down and centralised, and less member-driven (the Baptist theory is that Jesus' will is best discerned through his many followers within a church rather than just a single individual 'minister' or small group of 'leaders'), for many years. Focussing out, into the local community, has long been a talked-about aspiration: lots of preparation, not much action. To be fair, during the 'interregnum' - between pastors - there were some encouraging steps made towards this, but these were quickly killed off by the new boss.

For me, preaching is at the heart of Baptist worship; it used to be the one thing they did really well. But even this has, for several years, been drifting further and further away from teaching Scripture and proclaiming Jesus, to be more and more about highlighting the preacher and his traditions and opinions. Granted the new guy has taken this to a new low, but the CBC congregation has happily accepted substandard fare for far too long (remembering that Baptists, in theory, are very Bible-centred).

So, where now? Another disillusioned ex-churchgoer worshipping Jesus in daily life, but without an established Christian community behind me? I hope not: many, many people take that approach, but I am too aware of my own limitations to think that is an effective way for me to live and serve. Obviously there are no perfect churches, in Caversham or elsewhere; for now I'll worship freely and see where I find a calling.

Footnote: I can't help feeling that my final post of 2012 (not my favourite year, in truth), and my only post for December, ought to have more shape and more point than this. But I guess that's where I am at the moment: lacking in shape and clear point. Nevertheless, 2013 is another year, and God always has something new to say; the trick is to be in a place where one can hear Him and respond.

A happy and blessed New Year to any and all who read this.