Monthly Archive for December, 2007

Breath of fresh air

Published
by
Graeme
on December 28, 2007
in Mission and My Pilgrimage
. 0 Comments

For the whole of December I’ve been reading a wonderful book by Maggi Dawn called Beginnings and Endings. A series of Advent readings that go from 1st December right though to Epiphany on 6th January, they have lit up the wonders of Advent in a way that hasn’t happened before. On 26 December she wrote the following when writing about the way Jesus was looked after after he was born; the way he was kept as safe as possible by being swaddled and kept in the cleanest available space.

“We expect Jesus to be where it’s clean, but he is born into the mess of human life. We think of Jesus as safe and calm and serence, but he grows up to be the kind of leader who has his sleeves rolled up, ready to face reality and connect the spiritual world to the material one. We try to restrain him and keep him clean, but he breaks out of those expectations. Our idea of ‘holy’ is to protect God from anything unpleasant and unmentionable, yet Jesus’ idea of ‘holy’ is to bring the fresh air of heaven into the dirtiest and messiest corners of our world. He will not remain restrained, swaddled, safe, warm and still for very long.”

I love that thought that idea of bringng “the fresh air of heaven into the dirtiest and messiest corners of our world.” This simple, yet profound statement, strikes to the heart of who we are as Christians. You see everything about our task as human beings is geared around trying to make our lives more comfortable.

Providing increased comforts has been one of the hidden driving forces of virtually every step forward in technology. This drive towards increased comfort has been either of the very practical sort, ie transport, or instead to provide increased wealth, which provides the money for us to buy the ‘home comforts’ so many measure success by.

However, comfort poses something of a problem to us. Jesus famously warns people that sought to follow him that whilst foxes have holes, the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. This makes the pathway of discipleship seem far from a comfortable lifestyle choice. Comfort does not easily go hand in hand with a gospel that seeks to reach into the dirty and messy places of the world. It doesn’t even matter whether these places are the physically dirty and messy places or those of our hearts and minds, either is an uncomfortable place to find ourselves in.

Recently, Phil Wall wrote an article on theRubicon that shows how comfort is something to be wary of because of its inherent ‘unrisky’ nature. He also made the powerful claim that,

“Taking faith filled risks within our comfort-oriented lives is a powerful antidote to spiritual impotency. … It is most often within the crucible of risk-induced challenge and hardship that God does his greatest work within us.”

Following Jesus’ lead in this is an inherently risky business. If Jesus was about reaching into the dirty and messy places of our world with the “fresh air of heaven” then surely, as his followers, we should be opening doors into these same areas so that the same fresh air reach those places too!

Have a blesséd Christmas!

Published
by
Graeme
on December 25, 2007
in My Pilgrimage
. 1 Comment

This is incredible and I hope it touches your heart this Christmas as it did mine! (Hat tip to Len)

[wp_youtube]SK2PX7hH6io[/wp_youtube]

united confessions

Published
by
Graeme
on December 19, 2007
in My Pilgrimage
. 3 Comments

The wonder of being in charge of a Salvation Army corps is that your role is extremely varied. One of these variations happened yesterday as I was writing an e-mail to the Baptist minister here in Godalming. He is in charge of putting together the United Service that is held annually on the last Sunday of the year. This year I have been asked to lead the confessional prayer before communion, which personally I feel very honoured to be doing. I actually wrote about corporate confession early on in my blogging experience and highlighted how it can be very useful thing.

Having said that I’m aware of how easy it is for anything that is done week in, week out to become something that becomes simply a habit rather than being done out of any real conviction. With this in mind I started to hunt down form of liturgical confession that was different to the norm and after a fair bit of searching I found one over at Jonny Baker’s blog amongst his 3rd set of worship tricks. Called the Grace confession it actually makes uncomfortable reading and speaks to both the corporate entity of the church as well as at an individual level. So after a very small amount of adaptation I’ve sent it off to be included in the Order of Service.

Whilst I am not one of the voices that is calling out for the sacraments to be brought into the Army’s repertoire of worship experience, I do think that there are some elements of liturgical worship that could be adapted into the Salvation Army experience. Some sort of occasional experience of corporate repentance could be a valuable experience in any corps that struggles to see any use of the mercy seat at all, which of course has been a traditional place of individual repentance.

By the way the actual text of the Confessional Prayer is this:

When our thoughtless criticism stifles the creativity of others,
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy

When we keep a tight hold on power and deny others the chance to participate.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

When we prefer the safety of our holy huddle to the wideness of God’s world.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

When we decline to take risks for fear that we might fail.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

When we praise the gifts of others,
share the power that we are given,
engage with communities beyond the boundaries of our comfort,
and risk everything we have for the sake of others, then,
God rejoices in us.
God rejoice in us.

Almighty God,
who forgives all who truly repent,
Have mercy upon us,
pardon and deliver us from all our sins,
confirm and strengthen us in all goodness,
keep us in life eternal,
and may your Holy Spirit encourage us to a new way of living,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

More meaning at Christmas

Published
by
Graeme
on December 18, 2007
in Faith
. 0 Comments

In the last post I wrote about some of the things we’ve been up to this Christmas! The other thing was on Sunday evening which was our Carol Service. Our normal Sunday night congregation is around a dozen people, but for our carol service we had 33 in the hall. This was wonderful as that is most who have been there since I’ve been at the corps!

This year the Carol Service was quite a traditional affair, with contributions from the band and songsters plus carols and readings. As is normal I did a short talk and it’s that I’d like to share with you!

I’m pretty certain that if you were to ask the majority of adults whether Christmas is about giving or receiving, then the answer that would come back is that it’s about giving.

This is true, but it seems that even giving is becoming detrimental to the Christmas spirit. There are various reasons for this but two stand out. Firstly, for many, it seems that each year they need to out do what they did last year. So the presents they give have to be bigger and better and more expensive than they did last year. What’s worse is that in a generation that seems to have everything available to them a lot of what is bought is simply unnecessary.

The second problem is in many ways a direct result of the first. At a time when the inhabitants of this country spent more than half a billion pounds on credit card last year and when the Citizens Advice Bureau has dealt with 1.7 million debt problems in the last 12 months, the follow up to Christmas this year is not going to be a happy time for many people.

But maybe that’s because the focus has got all screwed up! Maybe Christmas is not actually about giving after all! Maybe Christmas is actually about receiving.

Tonight we’ve sung carols and read parts of the Bible that talk about the arrival of Jesus Christ, the person who Christmas is all about.

You see Christmas is really about receiving the gift that God gave to us just over 2000 years ago. In a secular world it seems that maybe Father Christmas is the central figure of the Christmas story, but it’s not true, because really he’s just another symptom of a consumer led society!

The reality is that Christians believe that we are celebrating that God gave us the greatest gift that could ever be given. The first Christmas present was the best Christmas present ever, God’s own son.

God gave us the gift of Jesus so that he could heal the relationship between himself and us. He gave us Jesus so that the world would become a better place as those who believe in him live a life that reflects the gift.

The real meaning of Christmas is receiving this gift and accepting everything that comes with it!

This Christmas, what will be your response to the gift of that first Christmas?

Finding meaning at Christmas

Published
by
Graeme
on December 18, 2007
in Community
. 0 Comments

Over the last couple of days the Christmas season has really kicked off here in Godalming. The size and age profile of the corps dictates that December is not the extremely busy season that some of my fellow corps leaders experience, but this changed this last weekend.

We kicked off on Sunday with a trip to a children’s care home for children with profound disabilities. The corps have been going there every Christmas for around 40 years and playing carols and giving out small presents. My task is to lead the singing and to get people to choose which carols they want to sing and then to encourage the children to shout for the Father Christmas who comes with us. To say that the place is noisy is an understatement and I was warned that it could be very difficult to cope with seeing children such as those who live there.

Anyway we spent about 30 minutes there and I would say that it has been my favourite moment of the Christmas so far. Seeing the excitement in some of the children’s responses to favourite carols was a joy to behold!

Were we full on evangelistic in our effort? Honestly, I can’t say we were. However, from the two or three conversations I had with the parent’s of the children I know how much they appreciated our efforts. Did we manage to put across something of the meaning of Christmas? I reckon we did! Did we bring some joy into the lives of those who were there? Without doubt!

For me this was about showing that we are around and that we are interested in everyone. It was an opportunity to say that we care! It was about being salt and light.

Then yesterday we went off to a women’s prison to play for their annual carol concert. Whilst the band’s role was to play for the carol’s, it was great to see the ministry that is going on there! One of the volunteers on the chaplaincy team did an unashamedly in your face talk and pointed out that Christmas was a chance to put the past behind and move on into the New Year with a new focus of following God’s true will for your life!

All in all an excellent couple of days! I haven’t touched on our Carol Service yet, but I’ll do that in another post!

Institutionalised Christians

Published
by
Graeme
on December 10, 2007
in Ramblings
. 1 Comment

Near where I live is a residential home for people with a fairly common illness. It is one that can be extremely difficult to cope with, and many of the residents were put in the home in their youth and remain there today in their retirement years. Having interacted with quite a few of the residents, I can safely say that they have been well and truly institutionalised by their living arrangements. The one who I know who has been moved out into the community, is struggling to cope with the day to day demands of ‘normal life’.

As I thought about this the other day, I got to thinking about the institution of the Church. As I look around some people I know who go to church, I am very worried about them. It seems that they have become institutionalised by the Church. They seem to expect the ‘Church’ to provide them with all their spiritual needs, so much so that it has become their sole source of spiritual nourishment and they don’t know how to feed themselves. They expect it to provide them with protection from the world so consequently rarely step outside it’s comfortable safety. They expect the Church to provide their entertainment and rarely complain when the same old same old is churned out day after day, week after week because it is familiar and safe. I honestly not sure how they would cope spiritually if the safety net was taken away and they had to strike out into the real world!

Is it too late for them? Is it possible for them to make the transition from the institution into the real world? I’m honestly not sure, but I do know that I’m praying for a real release of the Holy Spirit’s power so that they can break out into a meaningful Christian life that is not solely about their own spiritual needs!

Persecution

Published
by
Graeme
on December 6, 2007
in Ramblings
. 0 Comments

A few months back I wrote an article about the perceived persecution of Christian’s in the west, particularly off the back of a series of incidents that were being put down to an anti-Christian bias in the UK. It was originally published at theRubicon and you can click here for the original article.

What prompted this post? Well the reason is simply that I went to the Army’s UK website this afternoon only to find a poll which posed the question:

Is there ‘widespread Christianophobia’ in the UK?

At the time of writing it seems that out of the 91 respondents so far 58% think there is! However, I’m convinced that this perceived ‘persecution’ of Christians is once more a clever ploy to detract us from the real radical nature of our faith. It is far easier for us to subscribe the loss of the traditional privilege that the Church has enjoyed in the UK and Europe and look upon it that as persecution. It means that the fault is everyone else’s and not the Church’s!

There is also an element in which it is almost totally over the top to point to situations like that of a teenager being unable to wear a ring denoting her commitment to sexual chastity or the policy of an airline to stop crosses being worn as jewellery and call them persecution. This is especially true when compared to the sort of persecution suffered by early Christians and far too high a number of Christians in some countries today.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe that the situation in Post-Christendom Europe is harder for Christianity than it has been at any point in the last maybe 1,500 years. I also believe that it is entirely possible that real persecution has begun to rear its head. I’m just not sure that Christianophobia exists in the West in any sort of widespread way, although it does in other areas of the world that have been the victims of aggression perpetuated in the name of God by people calling themselves Christians and who are supported by too many churches. One thing I do suspect though is that Churchophobia might exist in abundance in the West, but this is not the same thing.

Is there a fear or hatred of the Church? I think there might be, but seeing as it has for too long been an instrument of the state used for control and expansion, rather than a counter-cultural force seeking to bring in the Kingdom of Heaven, this is hardly surprising. Given the tacit approval of abusing priests and even officers (tacit in the fact that rather than defrocking or sacking authorities chose to move them and keep things quiet) and its inability at times to stand up for the right even when totalitarian regimes were destroying whole people groups, it is at least partly understandable that the church is seen at best as hypocritical and at worst as downright evil by some.

I’ve not even touched on the fact that the church seems to grow in accordance to the persecution it faces, so this may suggest that persecution is actually an important principle in church growth that few church growth specialists seem to factor into their material!

In conclusion it is clearly true that our influence is declining but is this all bad? My original article posed a number of questions and they bare repeating here.

So what are we to do? Are we to continue to lament the loss of the historic privilege and influence that the Church has enjoyed? Or are we to embrace the radical nature of the Christian way and forge ahead in the new found freedom to show Jesus’ culturally subversive message to a fallen world? If we choose the latter option I suspect that we will be more attractive to a world full of people searching for something deeper and more real than the world offers, even when we speak what at face value many would deem to be unpalatable by the world’s standards.