The not-so-pretty truth…

The Psalms are often brutally honest prayers, uttered by people who are at the end of their rope. They are sometimes violent (although whatever some people may say, God is not). Sometimes they are just plain self-centred and selfish.

But they are real…real people being unafraid to display their deepest feelings to a God with whom they have a real relationship. No sanitised religiosity for them.

I’m reading Ted Loder’s collection of prayers called “Guerillas of Grace”, and came across this prayer today. In the beginning, it may be a bit too honest for some people, but it gets better…

It pretty accurately describes how I feel most of the time when I’m honest enough to admit it.

There Are Things I Do Care About

Holy One,
most of the time
you don’t seem very close or real to me—
only a word, an ought,
a longing, maybe, a hope—
and, for the most part,
I don’t care much about you,
and that is the not-so-pretty truth of it.

But there are things I do care about:
myself mostly,
and some people I feel close to—
families, friends, children,
most of all children.
I do care what happens to them

So, I do care about love,
about being loved,
and about loving
(or trying to);
and I wonder about it,
how to do it,
and what makes me want to do it.

With those close to me,
I care about laughing,
and crying,
and learning,
and talking honestly (a little);
and fighting openly and fairly,
and forgiving (a bit more),
and admitting I want to be forgiven
and need to be (once in awhile.)

I care about things,
about getting them
and being gotten by them;
And I do care about money
and all the things I do for it,
and with it,
and what it does to me;
And I care about being a little freer
of all that, somehow,
because I care about being secure
core deep.

I care about my neighbors,
at least some of them,
sometimes;
and about all the things that would make it better,
and perhaps easier
for us to live together;
and the hard decisions and sacrifices
it would take for that to happen.

Which means I do care about justice,
though mostly from a distance,
because I care about what it might require of me;
and then I get testy or silent
but am haunted but it
because something in me
won’t let me stop caring about it,
even though I often wish I could.

So, I care about my enemies,
and am tired of being angry
and suspicious so much,
which is such a waste;
and I care about the least—
the hungry
and the sick
and the terrorized
and the exploited of the earth—
because I care about peace
and long for it inside and out,
and am weary of being afraid
for myself and my children.

I care about this tiny fragile blue planet,
this home, this mother earth and all her offsprings,
all the creatures who share the mystery of life.
And I really do care about beauty,
about the songs in me,
the poems, the stories;
I care deeply about
the wondrous, puzzling,
aching struggle
that I am;
I care about this joy I feel
flickering sometimes, flaring sometimes,
when I touch hands or eyes
or minds or sexes or souls,
and ache, then, for more.

I care about living—
living more fully,
abundantly—
and about my urgent longing for that;
I care about what makes me restless,
makes me reach
and stretch
and grope for words,
for dreams,
for other people
and…
for you.

Holy One, you,
I do care about you,
sometimes fiercely,
or I wouldn’t be stumbling along like this,
trying to pray,
trying to put myself in your way;
I care about you,
and such is my faith,
however faltering it is;
and I trust that, past words
you crea about all these things
that I care about,
care about them more,
infinitely more,
than I care about them;
and that you care for me,
even when I am careless
of the things I care about.

 

Whole week worship…

How do we connect the Sunday experience of whole-church worship with the Monday reality of each individuals working week? How can “our Sunday worship of the God and King of the universe not only express our wonder, praise and love for him but help us live our whole Monday-to Saturday lives differently?

Sara and Sam Hargreaves, of “engage worship” set out to show us ways we might begin to do this in their book “Whole Life Worship: Empowering disciples for the frontline”, published by IVP Books.

The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity has long been trying to encourage us to engage in whole life missional discipleship, encouraging Christians to prepare for life and mission out there, on our many and varied “frontlines”, rather than basing all our focus on church-based activity…after all, most of us spend only about 10 hours of our week in church, leaving us with around 110 hours when we are awake and living life at home, at work or in our wider communities.

“Whole Life Worship” suggests ways that our Sunday worship, part of the “10”, can help us live out the “110” as missional disciples. It also makes suggestions about the way that the experiences of life on our “frontlines” can inform our prayers and worship.

The book begins by setting out foundations and frameworks for a theology of Whole Life Worship, before moving on to a number of helpful practical examples of how it might be done. Coupled with the ‘engage worship’ website this provides a really useful resource. Sam and Sara also run helpful workshops to aid churches wanting to become proactive in equipping their members to live missional lifestyles in their everyday lives.

This is not just a book to read…it is an encouragement and help to a worshipping life.

Useful resources, including free small group films and discussion materials, can be found on the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity’s website.

Musical messages…

Because it’s a musical
A musical
And nothing’s as amazing as a musical
With song and dance
And sweet romance
And happy endings happening by happenstance
Bright lights, stage fights, and a dazzling chorus
You wanna be great?
Then you gotta create a musical

From: ‘Something Rotten’

My youngest daughter is into musicals in a big way. She watches them, preferably live, but failing that, DVDs or YouTube are just fine. The soundtracks are constantly playing in her room or in our car. She knows the words and sings along. I suspect that, in the privacy of her room, she probably performs one-girl shows with word-perfect dialogue. She’s currently rehearsing for a part in both ‘Bugsy Malone’ and ‘Oliver’. She has converted many of her friends into musical-lovers too.

As a consequence of her musical adoration, I too have become very familiar with the songs (but I’m never allowed to sing along…she is the equivalent of the Musical Secret Police). Some of them truly move me, and I’ve been mocked more than once for having eyes glistening with tears.

I have come to realise, however, that you can learn a lot from a good musical.

Family life, relationships, social history, politics, propaganda, intrigue and faith all have their place. Musicals have filled my head with ideas and experiences as I’ve watched the actors and absorbed the lyrics.

Take, for example, ‘Shrek’, for a long time one of her absolute favourites. We learned that even the most hideous ogre can be loved and lovable, which gives us all hope, and loyalty and friendship can be found in the most unlikely places and the most unlikely people.

“Hamilton”, which has proved to be a very popular musical gives us some glimpses of the founding of the USA through the story of a hitherto largely overlooked Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton. It shows us a country birthed in violence whose leaders cannot agree right from the outset. It also draws our attention to the vital role played by immigrants like Hamilton and Lafayette in the war to oust the British and the subsequent government of the nation (“Immigrants – we get the job done”).

‘Wicked’ turns the well-loved story of “The Wizard of Oz” into an example of how fake news and propaganda can make the good seem bad and the truly wicked appear to be the heroes…it is frighteningly contemporary.

“Les Miserables” shows us the underclass of French society in the 1700s. It is a classic tale of the struggle between ‘law’, personified in Javert and ‘grace’, first offered to Valjean by the Bishop but becoming the underlying theme of much of the story.

Billy Elliott shows us gender roles and the Miners’ Strike in the 1980s, while more recent musicals, like “Rent” and “Newsies” are about poverty, sexuality, exploitation friendship and hope. One of my personal favourites is “Dear Evan Hansen”, featuring two dysfunctional families brought together by the death of Connor Murphy. Themes of dreaming of a better life, lies that get out of control, grief and regret are woven together into a powerful story about what makes us significant and loveable. It has one of my favourite songs in “I will sing no requiem”, a true lament of Biblical proportions.

What is it about musicals (or the books, plays and movies that birth them) that makes them so powerful.

David Putnam, the Producer of “Chariots of Fire” (not yet a musical) remembered:

“Far more than any other influence, more than school, more even than home – my attitudes, dreams, preconceptions and pre-conditions for life had been irreversibly shaped five and a half thousand miles away in a place called Hollywood.”

Ken Gire, in “Windows of the Soul” (see blog post on 30.12.2016), describes movies as “a window through which God speaks”, which by extension, applies to musical theatre too. Some-how they show up our own experiences and help us to, perhaps, make more sense of them. They also enable us to lose ourselves in someone else’s story, and by losing ourselves, we find ourselves again (sounds like something Jesus said about losing our lives to find them!).

Like a movie, a musical is able to:

“…reflect at a very fundamental level, the longings of the soul: the longing that good triumphs over evil, that truth wins out, that the drama of life brings out the hero in us, that a good character in the course of the drama grows better, wiser, more understanding, and that a bad character, if not redeemed is at least brought to justice, and that in the end there is a happy ending, which is none other than a dim reflection, I think, of our longing for heaven.” Ken Gire

Like so many expressions of truth through art, musicals are deeply subversive They have the power to really get under your skin in a way that mere words and pictures ever can, with lyrics that are so memorable and sing-able that they take a lot of forgetting or ignoring, and break down our barriers of prejudice and pre-conception. And as we change our ideas, and see ourselves more clearly, we have the opportunity to become different people, and more important we may begin to behave differently.

And, perhaps, we may even become more capable of hearing the quiet whisper of the Spirit of God drawing us into an ever-deepening relationship with Jesus.

Because after all, if all truth is God’s truth, sometimes God uses unexpected people and unexpected ways to make sure we get it…

Success…or faithfulness?

When was at primary school, my best friend was called Dave. As there were at least six Dave’s in our class (including him and me), the odds were forever in his favour.

Dave was always that bit better than me…he was brighter academically, better at sport and, unlike me, came from a family where both parents were Christians. When we both learned guitar, his long fingers proved more suited to the quick riffs of lead guitar while I strummed out the rhythm (I was, however, the better singer, so later on it was me, not him, that got to ‘front’ the band). When we went off to grammar school, he ended up in the top stream whilst I remained an ‘other’. Our differences seemed irrelevant to our relationship, and I spent quite a bit of time at his home, where I got to know his parents, who were also leaders in our church, fairly well.

A few months before I was due to take my GCE ‘O’ levels (yes it was a long time ago) I had a fairly serious sporting accident which resulted in at least four month’s absence from school. Despite the best efforts of my teachers, and some hard work on my part, I failed, or got disastrously low grades in all my exams. I was pretty devastated, especially as Dave passed with a string of ‘A’ grades.

Shortly after the results came through, I received a card from Dave’s parents with a simple message. The cover bore the words:

In any year…

“God asks not for success, but faithfulness.

Not for great skill, but that we do his will. “

They will never know how much their encouragement meant to me. By this time I had been a Christian for about six years, and had some inkling of what God’s plans for my future might involve. It mattered to me that despite failing at this early stage, God was still pleased with my effort and intent.

So, I stuck out the stigma of joining the general sixth form (for a year of doing it all again) before studying for my ‘A’ levels.

Any cursory read of my CV will amply demonstrate how apt were the words given me all those years ago. Choice and circumstance have given me many changes of job or career over the years (alongside a sense of constant vocation), but my sense of God’s approval for my efforts to live true to his calling remain undiminished. A while ago a friend from Manchester commented that I seemed to have a real ability to re-invent myself…I truly believe that the encouragement given me all those years ago was a vital part of this.

I was recently reading a pre-publication copy of a book written by a friend so that I could review it. It’s a book that reflects on a different way of being an ‘all of life missional disciple’. People always seem to need to know how it’s possible to measure the effectiveness and success of such an endeavour. It reads,

“As Christians, are we called to be obedient or successful (however that is to be defined”

Paul Keeble, “Mission With” page 121

It took me back to the message on the card I was given all those years ago, and I started to wonder where the original quote came from.

A bit of research turned up two similar quotations, although neither were quite the same. One was from Oswald Chambers, the other from Mother Theresa.

Mother Theresa says:

“God has not called me to be successful.

He called me to be faithful.”

The Oswald Chambers quote is from “My Utmost for His Highest”, and reads,

“The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is. We will set up success in Christian work as the aim; the aim is to manifest the glory of God in human life, to live the life hid with Christ in God in human conditions.”

I also came across the identical quotation, with two extra lines, on the website of an Irish Presbyterian church, but still without attribution.

God asks not for success, but faithfulness,

Not for great skill, but that we do his will.

Live so as to be missed,

Live with eternities values in view.

So, the fact is that I am still no closer to finding the source of my life-changing quotation.

Any offers?

An exercise in theological backfill…

A review of Mission-With: Something Out of the Ordinary, by Paul Keeble

• Choosing to live in a deprived, inner-city community
• Raising three children there
• Sending them to local schools
• Staying there long-term
• Joining with others in the community to tackle community issues
• Responding to gang violence through the Carisma initiative.
• Getting the lift mended in a block of flats.
• Improving a run-down local park.
• Being part of a campaign for Residents’ Parking.
• Helping to make a Community garden.

How can any of these be described as ‘Gospel’ activity?

Paul Keeble has written “Mission With: Something Out of the Ordinary” to make the case that they most certainly are…

Because I know Paul, have lived nearby and worked with him and have pastored a church in the Ardwick area of Manchester I am acutely aware of the authenticity and lived experience that undergirds the ‘way of life’ mission that he shares in this book.

I am also aware of the struggles and the cost of living this way, and of the reasons that many Christians prefer not to take the incarnational step of ‘moving into the neighbourhood. Church-based evangelism and social action are so much safer, but, I believe, will be much less significant in spreading Good News in the future than in Christians choosing to live in places…especially the difficult places… as part of the Kingdom of God, sharing community life, being concerned for the things God is concerned about, loving God and neighbour, provoking questions by their lifestyle and earning the right to speak into long-term relationships.

These are some of the things I have carried away from this book, and some of the things that make it vitally timely. I believe that it is not only a book for Christians; others who have a concern for the day-to-day wellbeing and quality of life of a local community, whether they have a faith or not, will learn valuable lessons from the experiences and approach outlined in the book.

The book begins by setting the scene, focusing on the ‘where’ and ‘what’ and explores the challenges of being ‘Christian incomers’ before moving on to define certain terms which ‘explain’ the ‘mission with’ model and it’s underpinning missiology. He examines two contrasting missiologies and locates ‘mission-with within a broad definition of mission, perhaps expressed best as ‘Christians participating in, and continuing the work of God as practiced by Jesus.’

All of this is the result of what Paul calls ‘theological backfill’, where experience is reviewed in the light of scripture and reflection leads to refined and modified action (a process not unlike the Hermeneutical circle of Liberation Theology). He introduces ‘mission-with’ as a complementary way of being and sharing good news alongside the more traditional kinds of church based evangelism (‘mission-to’) and social action (‘mission-for).

Parts two and three are more detailed theological reflections on the ‘where’ and ‘what’, arising out of the component parts of ‘mission-with’: ’presence-among’ (where) and opportunities for what he calls ‘project-praxis’ (what).

He tells the story of how he and his wife, Judith came to settle and raise their children in the community, and how the experience of staying, settling in and being one of the neighbours led to opportunities to work alongside others in the community, on a more equal footing and to respond to situations that were of common concern. Examples are given of the kind of ‘projects’ that arose and relationships that were built.

Part four, which for me is a major reason to own the book, is one of the clearest expositions of an incarnational method of sharing Good News and being agents of the Kingdom of God bringing the shalom (another vital term in Paul’s theological understanding) of God for all people, that I have read. He suggests that this happens by ‘communicating gospel-infused values and lifestyle, through attitude, demeanour and responses.’

He also asks if it’s even right to speak of the ‘success’ of such a way of living, in a church culture that is often results-driven (I might write another post on this, from a different angle).

There is a very helpful section where a number of other projects and methods are compared and contrasted with ‘Mission-With’. The book offers non-judgemental appraisals…many of the approaches have been fruitful. Paul simply uses them to clarify the model that he is writing about.

Finally he writes a helpful conclusion, drawing together the various strands and suggesting why ‘mission-with’ might be effective. He looks at potential strengths, weaknesses and pitfalls of the approach as a model that others may choose to adopt. He also suggests how mission-with principles might be adopted in areas that are very different to the deprived inner-city community where he has lived and worked them out.

Paul’s experience may have challenged his ‘middle-class evangelicalism, with its methodology, cultural assumptions and clear-cut definitions’, but he took the trouble to reflect, learn and change as a result, rather than fleeing back into what was comfortable and familiar.

Hopefully the book will motivate us to do the same, and to consider carefully our calling to be committed long-term to the place of God’s choosing before making choices relating to employment, education and lifestyle…and before I happily wrote that last sentence I had to ask myself if that was true for me at this stage in my life!

A brief review like this cannot possibly do justice to the many layers of practice and principle in a book like this. You really do need to read it for yourself!

“Mission With: Something Out of the Ordinary”, by Paul Keeble, published by Instant Apostle.

Get your copy straight from the author , or from any good bookseller.

 

My friend wrote a book…

Quite a few people I know and have worked with have written books about their experience of living life as a Christian in a variety of situations, and the difference it makes, but this is the first time any of them have asked me to review their book.

I mean, why would they? I’m not a ‘famous’ Christian, or a blogger with thousands of followers, so who would read what I’ve written, let alone go out and buy the book as a result.

But…this is so typical of Paul, and, I suspect undergirds his experience of living and working in an inner-city area of Manchester which forms the backdrop to his book. Ordinary people and foresaken places matter. They matter to God, and so they matter to Paul and his family.

Unlike Paul, and in part due to the circumstances of life, I moved away, and now live in the Scottish Borders (an area with its own unique set of challenges for living as a Christian too). He has stayed, and I’m sure that the book will share some of his hard-won experience over most of his life so far

So…of course I said “Yes”, with a sense that this was a privilege, perhaps even a sacred trust…Now the pdf copy of the book has arrived and I will spend the next few days reading it before I try to do it justice in a review on my blog. Having flicked through the first few pages I am already certain that this will, for me, be an emotional journey. For a few years I lived close to Paul. We worked together, shared some family life together, went to the same church and watched our children grow up together and study at the same school. I think I will identify with much of the book.

Watch this space for my review. The book, “Mission with: Something Out of the Ordinary”, by Paul Keeble, published by Instant Apostle , is due for publication on 17th March 2017, and can be ordered in advance.

Please contact me if you’d like to order directly from Paul.

Intimacy in a life of action…

Luke 10: 38-42

“What is so important about my kitchen full of preparations that draws me away from you? How can they seem so trivial now and yet so urgent when I’m caught up in them?

Forgive me for being so much distracted by my preparations and so little attracted by your presence. For being so diligent in my service and so negligent in my devotion. For being so quick to my feet and so slow to yours.

Help me to understand that it is an intimate moment you seek from me, not an elaborate meal.

Guard my heart this day from the many distractions that vie for my attention. And help me to fix my eyes on you. Not on my rank in the kingdom, as did the disciples. Not on the finer points of theology, as did the scribes. Not on the sins of others, as did the Pharisees. Not on the place of worship, as did the woman at the well. Not on the budget, as did Judas. But on you.

Bring me out of the kitchen, Lord. Bid me to come to your feet. And there may I thrill to sit and adore you…”

Ken Gire, “Moments with the Saviour Devotional” p227-228 (emphasis mine)