Monthly Archive for February, 2008

Being reassessed

Published
by
Graeme
on February 29, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 3 Comments

It’s now official! Yesterday Zoe & I received our official invitation for for the Assessment Conference that will be running from 28th - 30th March at Sunbury Court. Anyone who has been on one of these weekends will understand the nervousness we feel about it, but we also know its going to be a really good weekend. Last time I was there I enjoyed every single moment of it, despite the disappointment of the final result.

The main question for us now is what we should be doing about the future. There is a big part of us that would like to stay here in Godalming and continue what I’ve started. There is a great deal of potential here and I can see the possibilities for extending the ministry that we are involved in. Yet is this God’s will? Will we be better officers by going into training at the William Booth College for two years, or should we do distance learning?

Lots and lots of questions and as yet we don’t seem to have definite answers for them. However, its still 4 weeks before we have to answer them at Sunbury so plenty of time for God to show us His will before then!

Infectious holiness

Published
by
Graeme
on February 27, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 0 Comments

In the January/February 2008 issue of the Officer publication, which I seem to get despite not being a commissioned officer, the editorial issued a challenge for officers to write articles about:

…how to be holy when we get out of the house and ‘test our style and morality in the mire of the times’

I wouldn’t consider writing an article for the Officer, partly because I would fully expect a rejection slip but also because it wouldn’t be accepted as I’m not an officer. So instead I get to post my thoughts here instead!

Basically the challenge has been there in the back of my mind for the last few weeks ever since I read the article. This has probably been helped by the fact that I’ve been preaching on the subject for the last few months. One thing I’ve realised that if holiness isn’t practical and based firmly in our life outside the house in the ‘mire of the times’, then its not really holiness at all. You see holiness is a bit like the wind, you can only really see because of the effect it has.

Firstly, holiness is a gift from God. It is not something that can be attained through adhering to the rules, no not even to the Army’s Orders and Regulations. Holiness can only be given to us by the One that is Holy. Secondly, its about being fully human, being the human we were created to be, just as Jesus is.

Now having got this out of the way, I come to the real thought of the post. Back in 1995/96 I was on the Frontline course that was run by the Oasis Trust and The Salvation Army. During my year I was introduced to Celtic Christianity and it touched a real chord within me and I picked up a number of books. After reading them once most of these ended up on the shelves and during our time in Latvia gathered dust. However, this week I picked up one of them again because of where my mind is and as I was reading I found this gem of a comment,

He [Aidan] was a man who had an infectious holiness, which, far from making him remote and other worldly, enabled him to mix with all kinds of people and to understand their world. They could believe in his message because he was a person whose life-style was transparently attractive to all who were seeking God.
Mitton, M., Restoring the Woven Cord - pg 16

How’s that for a testimony of someone’s life. Holiness was so evident in Aidan that it came across as infectious. People could ‘catch’ holiness of him because of the way he lived his life. Of equal interest is that his holiness opened him up to other people, who wanted to spend time with him and helped him to understand their world. This in many ways mirrors the sort of life that Jesus led, and leads me to think that the test of someone’s holiness is how attractive they are to others and how that holiness rubs off on them.

Being fully human

Published
by
Graeme
on February 23, 2008
in Holiness and discipleship
. 4 Comments

In some ways this post is an extension of my previous one from Incarnate as it carries on our responsibility to live incarnational lives that whilst unremarkable in its events is noticably different in the way it is lived.

Both Stuart Murray-Williams and Gary Bishop (i’ve only really read their papers so far due to all the other stuff I’m reading) pick up on our need to live truly human lives. Murray-Williams says:

Maybe only God can live a fully authentic human life. But the incarnation of Jesus … demonstrates that God wants to live that fully human life through us…

and Gary writes that:

…very little has been offered which would encourage or equip the faithful in their humanity.

These two thoughts combined in my mind to create a couple of questions. Could it be that true holiness is found in becoming more like Jesus in his humanity? Is holiness really about becoming fully human in the way that God originally intended us to be when he created us?

One of the consequences of this sort of thinking would be that we would start to teach discipleship in terms of equipping people to live their lives. We could concentrate on making disciples who were sanctified in their attitude toward the world and were committed to bringing about the Kingdom, yet were fully immersed in living lives as God intends us to. It would stop us putting our efforts into what we shouldn’t be doing and instead free us up to do the things that we should be doing.

If we started to live in a way that reflected the full humanity that is our touchstone in living, then we would be taking our holiness out into the world, rather than separating ourselves from it. This is what Jesus did! He brought his holiness from heaven to earth and followed his Father’s will in all things. What better example can we ask for?

My Street

Published
by
Graeme
on February 22, 2008
in Community
. 3 Comments

Last night I watched a programme on Channel 4 called My Street which was a documentary in the Cutting It series. The narrator decided to knock on the door of every house in her street and, for those who were happy to, she interviewed them on camera.

The programme was absolutely fascinating! Firstly, it was a wonderful insight into the lives of various different people, ranging from millionaires through to a young Tourette’s sufferer on benefit, from 66 different children through to a 93 year old man. Secondly, it presents a real challenge to us all.

Here was a woman who had lived in her street for 14 years and had never got to know her neighbours. It was only when she started to knock on doors that she discovered there were some real problems that some people faced; that amongst these 116 houses in her street there were people suffering from deep depression, loneliness, cancer, mental illness, to name just some.

In my street there are around 30 houses and so far I’ve had regular contact with 4 of the people. Of those I haven’t talked to is the Asian man who in the warmer weather sits out on his wall, the new mother a few doors down, and others whose faces I don’t even know! What about yours?

Remarkably unremarkable

Published
by
Graeme
on February 20, 2008
in discipleship
. 0 Comments

Finally I’m getting round to posting about the Incarnate Conference held last month. I only managed to get to 1 1/2 sessions due to other commitments but, my friend and former boss, Henrik sent me the full set of conference papers so I have been making my way through them. Anyway, enough of the background stuff, on with my thoughts.

Incarnate started with a paper by Stuart Murray-Williams with the title “How is Jesus the focus of incarnational living?” At the conclusion of this paper Murray-Williams says:

Jesus was utterly unremarkable for 90% of his life. Only in the final three years of public ministry did he become extraordinary. Nobody in Nazareth, except Mary, knew that he was anyone special. The Gospels report that his family and neighbours were taken completely by surprise when he ‘came out’ as the Son of God.

Now I understand where he is coming from in writing this as he was trying to put across the point that much of real incarnational ministry is found in the mundane routine of daily living. In this I fully agree! However, whilst Jesus’ actual life may have been largely unremarkable in the day to day stuff the way he lived it certainly wasn’t. Luke tells us in his gospel that after the events of Jerusalem when Jesus was 12, he returned to Nazareth and:

…grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.

To me this suggests that Jesus’ life may have been unremarkable in that nothing much happened that wasn’t run-of-the-mill (unless of course you give credence to some of the non-canonical gospels that are around), his life was remarkable enough that it was noticed by those who lived with him in Nazareth. They might not have realised that he was the incarnate Son of God but they saw something special in him.

This means that if we as his people want to live like him, then we must live in such a way that even in the routine, run-of-the-mill existence that is human life that is visibly different to the norm.

So in reality Jesus was remarkably unremarkable and consequently we have to live in the same way. Living like this, being immersed in the community just like Jesus was in the community in Nazareth cannot help but have an effect on those around us. Then we are able to reveal to those around us the one whose example we follow.

What is Church?

Published
by
Graeme
on February 19, 2008
in Ramblings
. 2 Comments

During a meeting with some people the other day:

Me: So what do you see the church looking like in 5 years time?

Person: What do you mean by ‘church’? The building or the people?

Me: The people because that is what church is!

Person: Well I don’t see it like that. The church is the building!

For years I’ve heard this talk about people thinking that the church is the building rather than the fellowship of God’s people, but I had never met anyone who actually held this view. Can it be true that a member of the church doesn’t actually realise that the church is about the people, those who make up Christ’s body, but instead actually does see the church as the building they meet in?

Picking at scabs

Published
by
Graeme
on February 18, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 3 Comments

Yesterday I touched briefly on the events of the last year following my initial rejection for Officership. I mentioned in passing that I prepared myself to jump through any ‘hoops’ that The Salvation Army put in my way and jump through them I did.

One of these ‘hoops’ was the recommendation of undergoing some counselling in respect of some of the things that had happened in the past. None of these things were major incidents in and of themselves, but the cumulative effect had, in hindsight, clearly had an effect on how I responded to certain situations. The time I spent in these sessions was extremely valuable and has helped me see the truth of some situations that I had never really dealt with.

Something I read over the weekend is one of the reasons I wanted to mention this. For many years I had constantly picked at the scabs that were covering some of the hurts of my past and by doing so I was never really letting them heal. The problem is that this is a totally wrong attitude to have had. In my work I see people who are allowing the hurts of the past to control not only the present but the future as well. Some of them have been on the receiving end of some deep and grievous hurts; others have simply been on the receiving end of silly thoughtless comments or attitudes. Yet the thing they have in common is that aren’t claiming the healing that comes through Jesus in their spiritual lives.

Isaiah 53:5Open Link in New Window says:

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Whilst we know that this is true, all too often we act in such a way that we deny the truth of the situation. Instead of allowing God to heal us and restore us, we pick and pick at the scabs that cover the wounds of the past to a point that they to start to fester and the infection gradually seeps into the whole of our lives. Why?

I know human nature and the lies of Satan are the main reason! But the fact is that my own experience of the last year is that through Jesus our wounds can be healed. The crazy thing is that if we were to break our arm the pain it causes is obvious and we seek help to get it fixed, but when it comes to emotional or psychological wounds we deny the pain, even though it is so evident and painful, and don’t seek help. By opening the wounds one last time so that God’s healing power could clean out the poison from them, I experienced healing in a way I had never thought would be possible.

Oversimplification? I’m not sure it is! I do think we need to entrust ourselves to people who won’t abuse the situation as we seek this sort of healing, but I also believe that God is greater than the things that corrupt. God’s healing power is greater than any the world has and through the wounds Christ received in his last few hours; we are healed!