Encouragement

Well, I’m back from the USA and thrown right into my cell group’s “November Advent”. Basically, we thought it would be good to do something like Lent in preparation for Christmas (and because it would just be plain old good for us), but wanted to avoid Advent and Christmas because that’s when all the fun stuff happens. Thus November Advent was born, a month when we’d collectively try to give things up, pray and fast a little bit more and encourage each other a lot.

One of the things we’re doing is posting some brief spiritual thoughts each day on our group Facebook page, so hopefully we don’t just use the Internet to check football team message boards or worse. It’s my turn every Tuesday, and this week’s theme is Encouragement, followed by Praise, Doubt and Love. So look out for those updates in future weeks, and hopefully you’ll enjoy my musings on encouragement below.

"It's because we didn't bring any bread."

I have to admit, I’m not very good at encouraging people. I’m pretty good at making it sound critical. “Wow, you were amazing. Most of the time I think you’re awful, but tonight, wow, you really outdid yourself.” People don’t really take kindly to that sort of encouragement, but sadly I’m going to begin along those lines. But please, keep reading, it will get better! It will be encouraging, I promise!

All I ask is can we just admit that we all screw up? In fact, we all screw up on a regular basis. You might even say that we screw up professionally (except that we very rarely get paid for it). Or let’s take it further, that we are screw ups. But the thing I find encouraging about that fact is that God uses screw ups. I don’t have to be anyone special or possess some superhuman abilities, but I can just be me, a poor and broken human being, and God can still love me and use me.

Let’s take David, a man described as “after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22) who let’s just say would probably be very much enjoying the era of internet pornography. Or the rag tag band of fishermen, tax collectors and other misfits who Jesus chose as his disciples, who managed to get even simple answers to Jesus’ questions very, very wrong. You can imagine the huddle they formed after Jesus warned, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees.” (Matthew 16:6)

“What’s he on about now?”

“Something to do with yeast, I didn’t really get it.”

“He must have bread on his mind. Can’t have had his breakfast this morning.”

“Really? Doesn’t he know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?”

“Sorry, I’m afraid it’s my fault. I didn’t make him a packed lunch.”

“You didn’t? And you didn’t offer him yours instead?”

“Well, I did offer, but he doesn’t like marmite sandwiches.”

“Ah, so maybe that’s why he’s telling us to beware of the yeast…”

Then there’s the fringe characters like Zacchaeus, a fraudulent tax collector (maybe the first word is redundant) who Jesus saw something in and managed to change his life. Or Rahab, who was not only a prostitute but even worse a Canaanite, who God called and chose to serve him in helping to hand Jericho over to the Israelites.

What I love most though, is how many of these characters, good or bad, useful or useless, all make up the genealogy of Jesus. The flawed King David, the wise but led astray Solomon, the evil Rehoboam, the good Jehoshaphat, the utterly unknown Matthan and the prostitute who became an adopted outsider Rahab… they are all in there. So Jesus came from a family of broken people, just like you and me. And God can use broken people, just like you and me.

That’s what I find amazingly encouraging about Christianity.

P.S. I’d also highly recommend reading some Adrian Plass if you haven’t already. Those are books that describe a pathetic man somehow managing to be used by God in some small way. I always found them helpful as they made me realise that I didn’t need to be the superhero so many others around me seemed to be, at least on the outside.

Trip to the USA

Very early tomorrow morning, Dave and I are flying out for our trip to the USA. We seem to have been planning it for ages but finally we’re actually going!

It’s not exactly a holiday, but more of an opportunity for theological reflection, especially on Dave’s desire to plant a church in the near future. For that reason, we’re heading to Grand Rapids, Michigan to visit Mars Hill Bible Church, the church that Rob Bell founded.

Chicago & Grand Rapids

This is Dave’s choice, so you’d be better off asking him for the specific reasoning, but I think Dave feels that Mars Hill is a church that appears from the outside to have done things right. It seems to value and love people in the way that Jesus would, plus it has an outward-looking focus in their [XYZ] missions, where they look to make a big difference to communities both close at home and abroad. We’d really just like to see if it is as good as it sounds, whether the people on the pews really feel loved, changed and involved with the missions, or whether it’s just somewhere to go on a Sunday morning. (Not to mention, navigate our way around the totally different dynamics of an American mega-church).

In many ways, we feel we’re going to be a little disappointed before we go, or at least, visiting them won’t be as much use as first hoped. One of the main dynamics for a church is the surrounding community, and to be honest, from reading about it, Grand Rapids and Western Michigan seem to be very affluent and comfortable areas of the world, very different from inner city communities in Liverpool. But I guess this trip isn’t just about Mars Hill, it’s also about the time of dialogue and discussion between us about the nature of church and hopefully seeing something in a whole new setting will really spark us off creatively.

The Irresistible Revolution

We’re also planning to read a couple of books together while we’re away. It’s something to do on the plane I guess, but it’ll be useful (and a different experience for me) to be able to read through a book and discuss it with someone at the same time. The first book is the The Irresistable Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne, which describes attempting to change the world through little acts of love and a radical call to social justice. Certainly seems to be good reading, very relevant to the potential church plant. The second is The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright, for no other reason that we both have copies sitting on our bookshelves at home, unread, and Tom Wright deserves far, far better than that. We probably won’t get through both books, but it’s good to be optimistic!

The Challenge of Jesus

Our current itinerary begins when we fly from Liverpool to Chicago via Amsterdam on Saturday, then hop in a rented car and make our way along the coast of Lake Michigan up to Grand Rapids, then somehow make our way through the rest of the day recovering from both jet lag and a ridiculously early start. Then we’ll attend both Mars Hill services on Sunday morning, hoping to meet lots of interesting people and find out where they believe they fit into the [XYZ] missions and other ways of serving at the church.

After that, and for the next few days in Grand Rapids, we don’t really have any specific plans. We’d like to go and tour the local aspects of the [XYZ] missions, such as the housing program, so will probably pop down to the Mars Hill office to ask for some information, but that could either take all day or an hour! I want to visit the Frederik Meijer Gardens (since that seems the only thing worth seeing in Grand Rapids… don’t get me wrong, it seems like a really nice place… just a little boring for tourists) and we have some ideas of driving up into what seems to be vast wilderness to the north of Grand Rapids, but nothing too concrete. All I know is that I’ll have to keep Dave away from the fishing…

Then on the Wednesday we’re driving back to Chicago, since I’m not flying into Chicago twice in one year (like with GDC in March) and not seeing any of it. We’ll take all day to do it though, and stop off and all the little towns on the coast along the way. Holland will be the first stop, which sounds very interesting with its Dutch heritage, plus the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore seems worth visiting, as does watching the sun set over Lake Michigan. It’ll be a properly American road trip.

Then in Chicago we ditch the car before spending Thursday and Friday touring the city. I get the feeling I’ll put on a lot of weight as apparently no other city on earth takes its fast food so seriously, but I’m mainly there to see the architecture, especially the skyscrapers. The first thing that struck me in San Francisco, the first city I visited in America, was the immense scale of it all and Chicago will just take things a step further. Plus I’m sure by this point we’ll have shopping lists from our families to plough through.

Then it’s the sad goodbye as we fly back on Saturday afternoon to arrive back in Liverpool very, very jet lagged early on Sunday morning. I’m sure we’ll have had an amazing time, and I’ll make sure I write down as much of it as possible here in this blog. So wait patiently, you’ll hear from me soon!

Talking the Talk #3

So, what’s the second distraction that stops us from walking the walk and living out the true miracle of Christianity? I’ll have to borrow a phrase from Pete Rollins: “changing something so that everything remains the same.” Just like the leaves change colour in the autumn so that the seasons change as in every other year, we also change things in order for everything to eventually remain the same. There are two major ways I think we do this, and they’re inescapably linked and hence both are illustrated in the following parable:

There was once a god-fearing man who worked for a large corporation in the centre of a large city. Every day he caught the crowded commuter train to work and then walked the short distance to his office alongside many other people. He never noticed the people he passed by, until one Sunday when the preacher gave a sermon extolling the congregation to do good deeds to those around them, reminding them they could see Jesus in the eyes of the hungry, the thirsty and the stranger.

On the Monday a bedraggled tramp approached him as he got off the train, asking for money so he could have something to eat. The man, remembering the words of the preacher, dug into his pockets and dropped a few coins into the tramp’s hand. He then walked off to work, content that he had fed this particular manifestation of Jesus.

On the Tuesday he spotted a distressed teenager on the train station platform. “I’ve lost my ticket and I haven’t got any more money for the train fare,” she explained. Grateful to once again do a good deed, he paid the money for her ticket and smiled all day at the office at his new found good nature.

This continued all week, and the week after, and for the rest of the man’s working life. On his journeys to and from work, whenever he came across somebody in need he always strove to give them some money to help them out. Every now and then he even took food and blankets to give out to the homeless people sheltering in the doorways of the shops and offices that surrounded his office.

When the day of judgment came, this man stood before the heavenly throne as Jesus, shining in all his glory and with a shepherd’s crook in his hand, began to separate the sheep from the goats. He moved through the throngs of people, casting them either to his left or to his right, to eternal punishment or eternal life. When Jesus approached the man, to his surprise he was thrown amongst the goats. Shocked, he exclaimed,

“Lord, were you not hungry and I gave you food, were you not thirsty and I gave you something to drink, were you not a stranger and I welcomed you, were you not naked and I clothed you?”

Jesus turned back to face the man with a sad look upon his face. “I did not want your food, your drink, or your clothes,” he spoke softly. “I did not even want the money you gave me. All I wanted was you, all of you, and you never gave yourself to me.”

Did this man actually change anything about the world by giving money to homeless people (and others in distress)? The sad thing is that he probably didn’t. He merely fed one poor hungry soul, but the fact remains that the hunger would quickly return and there were and would be countless more left unfed. Nothing else changed in his lifestyle – nothing that would begin to get at the root causes of the situation and solve poverty and homelessness once and for all. And forgive me for sounding anti-capitalist, but the big company he continued to work for probably perpetuated these oppressive systems. In effect, he was changing something so that these systems could remain in place.

Also, did this man actually change anything about himself? In effect, he was simply paying a tax. A small tax of minuscule monetary value and time, played out in a small window in his daily life. Is Christianity simply about making small changes? Is Jesus meant to be confined to a few small minutes of your life? Jesus demands all of you, all of your time, all of your money and as such we cannot confine our actions to any one time and place. We have been born again, and that should affect all of who we are and everything that we do. This man had changed something about himself so that he could stay as the same person.

All this doesn’t mean that I don’t advocate social action! Of course I advocate giving food to the hungry, water to the thirsty and clothes to the naked. When we meet such people the only correct response is one of immense love and compassion, a call that we have no choice but to heed. But we need to be aware that Jesus demands all of our life, not just these small deeds, and that we need to cast our eyes much higher if we’re going to solve the root causes of these problems.

I certainly don’t have any easy answers. In fact, there’s very rarely an easy answer to any of the world’s problems. Even if there are answers, not all of us can do something about them. And although I’m rightly scared of just making changes so that everything remains the same, I can’t let this fear paralyse me into inaction, which I’m sure is an even bigger sin.

But please, remember that Christianity is about a fundamental transformation of existence, and that transformation should realise itself in a transformation of the entire world. Our new being should bubble out of us, overflowing with love and affecting all those we meet, and along with these encounters, it should be a catalyst for change in the wider world, influencing governments and nations. We have to aim big, we have to aim for what God aims for:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:1-4

Talking the Talk #2

Last time, I wrote about how as Christians we seem to get distracted away from the true miracle of Christianity, the miracle of transformation where you are never the same again. The first cause of this distraction that I’d like to talk about is our obsession with the spectacular.

The thing is, when we talk about miracles we immediately jump to thinking of something physical, something that we can see: the blind seeing, the lame walking, the food multiplied, the weather changing. But if we limit ourselves to this idea of the miracle, we miss what is truly amazing, like I see happening in the story below:

When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone? At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – he said to the paralytic – “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God; saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

Mark 2:1-12

These people seem to have been bedazzled by the spectacular. Amazed by this paralytic suddenly being able the walk, they forgot about the true miracle of this story, the miracle of forgiveness that Jesus was able to give to this man. (Funnily enough, the bad guys of this story, the scribes, do seem to spot it). For forgiveness is a miracle far beyond that of physical healing, which merely changes the present and the future – forgiveness is something that fundamentally changes the past as well, because once you are forgiven then you will never view those events in the same way ever again.

I think Paul understood this concept of the miraculous. He focuses on Jesus’ death and resurrection, but never speaks about his miracles on earth, because I imagine he didn’t consider them important to the message. But he does continue to speak passionately about things like forgiveness:

…and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Ephesians 4:32

Moreover, given that Paul is someone who very visibly had his life transformed by Jesus, he speaks passionately about the radical difference that Jesus makes in his life:

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:7-11

Now, all this isn’t to say that we should reject physical healing and all such “spectacular” miracles. When confronted with the sick, all we can do is show them compassion, look after and care for them, and pray every day for God’s healing. Just as Jesus showed his abundant compassion to the sick and healed those who came to him. But let us remember that this is not the be all and end all of our faith, it is something so much more than this; it’s about changed lives.

And not even about the change of life brought about by physical healing, since in the story of the paralytic, Jesus clearly thought something else was even more important. This change of life is one brought about through Jesus’ death and resurrection, one of forgiveness, one of dying to sin and becoming alive in Christ. And it is for this miracle that we should be eternally thankful.

Talking the Talk #1

We’ve all heard the challenge, “You talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” But recently I’ve noticed a different problem. People who can walk the walk, and indeed more often than not do, but whose talk either individually or collectively tries its hardest to undermine that fact.

I first noticed this when at university. To be honest, I was never a big fan of the Christian Union, but one thing that annoyed me in particular was their treatment of international students. They’d put on events for them, such as a café and lunches, all with gospel talks and gospel messages. These were the most vulnerable people, who were simply being targeted as “easy prey” for conversion. (Of course, those higher on the social standing were conveniently ignored.) Why couldn’t we help these people as Jesus helped the poor and the oppressed, with no agenda and simply seeking to help them when they were at their weakest?

But despite my strong moral objections, there was another fact that I could never escape. The Christians I knew who helped actually knew international students, unlike myself. And when they were with the international students, they were the friendly, compassionate and loving people and that I knew they were. Far more so than I was, despite the fact that my theology was more correct, in my eyes at least. I was talking the talk and not walking the walk, but I still felt disturbed by those doing the opposite. Why were they doing their best to minimise the impact of their love?

For me, at the heart of Christianity is a transformation. A transformation where a miracle happens, something inside you changes and you are no longer the same person. This is why Jesus told Nicodemus,

No one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.

And Paul elaborates by describing the change that happens inside every believer, symbolised at baptism,

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

As I look around at those I know who follow Jesus, I see those who have had their lives transformed by God. In the case of the international students, I saw the Christians who worked with them demonstrating this transformed character. Yet we ignore, forget, downplay, are afraid of and simply try to talk ourselves out of this, the true miracle of Christianity. Two reasons for this immediately spring to mind, the first of which we’ll explore in the second part of this series.

New Books

Lots of new books have arrived for me over the past week, and hopefully not all of them will just sit on my shelf collecting dust. Or perhaps more accurately, sit on my floor and collect dust, since I think I’m now officially out of bookshelf space. These purchases are a mixture of post-Greenbelt fervour, The Book Depository giving me ten percent off all orders and a decision to investigate further into postmodern philosophy and its relation to Christianity, since this seems to be a major influence on those who are in turn influencing me. So, what did I get?

• Drops Like Stars, Rob Bell: Although I was at the talk of this title at Greenbelt, I missed most of it from looking after Aidan, my friends’ five-year-old son. Then when it was unavailable for download because of copyright issues, I felt I had to buy the book. A large hardback designed as a coffee-table book, this contains thoughts on the link between suffering and creativity.
• What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, John Caputo: Who could refuse to buy a book with a title like this? For someone who’s going through the pain of deconstruction at the moment, this was a must read.
• The Song of the Bird, Anthony de Mello: A collection of short parables recommended by Pete Rollins. Stories are such a postmodern way of communication.
• Graven Ideologies, Bruce Ellis Benson: This looks at the views of Nietzsche, Derrida and Marion on modern idolatry, the act of putting something (which inevitably looks like yourself) in place of God, and how in modern times it is our ideologies, not stone carvings with which we replace God.
• Christ in Postmodern Philosophy, Frederiek Depoortere: A summary of how Christ is viewed by three postmodern philosophers, Vattimo, Girard and Zizek. Zizek is all the rage with Christians nowadays, so this summary of what he and other philosophers think about Christ seems very interesting.
• I Am the Truth, Michel Henry: Our notions of truth are something that I’ve been bothered with for a while now, and this book was mentioned by Pete Rollins in the Greenbelt Café Philosophique. Instead of examining what we mean by saying “Christianity is true”, Henry investigates what Christianity claims when it says it is true.
• The Monstrosity of Christ, Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank: Zizek is definitely in at the moment, and this debate between the materialist and radical orthodox Christian Milbank around the monstrous event of God becoming human seems too good to miss.
• New Testament Apocrypha, Volumes 1 & 2: The best thing about source material is that you don’t feel guilty about not reading it, since it’s for reference not for consumption.

No more room on the bookshelf...

I’ve begun by reading Graven Ideologies, which is excellent so far (I couldn’t wait to get home from work today to read it). I’m not a natural with philosophy so it’s been a bit of a struggle to come to terms with some of the ideas but it is still absolutely fascinating. I’ll post a summary up when I’m finished.

The Twisted World of Budleigh Salterton

“It’s too quiet. Far too quiet.”

Bren spoke what we were all thinking as we walked along the streets of Budleigh Salterton. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the horizon was beginning to gain a healthy orange glow as the sun moved ever closer towards setting. The houses were painted a white that hadn’t faded, and the quaint local shops could be seen in the distance. With a warm temperature and cool breeze, it was the kind of evening in which you’d expect to see children playing and hear their joyous voices echo through the streets above the general hustle and bustle of a thriving commnity, all out to enjoy the weather, the beach and the beauty of their town.

But it was quiet. Far too quiet.

And it was in that moment that you began to wonder if there was a reason. Perhaps every day at sunset, a terrifying monster roams the streets at night, devouring anyone foolish enough to venture outside. Or had the apocalypse occurred, and the residents been taken up to heaven in the rapture, leaving us alone to face the four horsemen. Or had a botched scientific experiment polluted the water supply with a disease that turned everyone into zombies, a huge horde of which would be awaiting us as we rounded the next corner. Or were we simply in a war zone, with this coastal town being used as the landing point for the French invasion and soon the sound of gunfire would pepper the air and we would have to flee for our eyes.

I voiced my fears before attempting to weigh up the scenarios. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked.

Bren answered with surprising insight. “Look at the faces of everyone we meet. Watch how they glare with a mixture of anger and fear. We are the worst thing that could happen.”

It was quiet. Far too quiet. And we were the reason.

Live from Sundown

The year just wouldn’t be the same without the annual pilgrimage to Budleigh Salterton, the home of Sundown, the United Kingdom’s biggest demo party. Even if it wasn’t for Sundown, I think I’d really miss visiting Budleigh. It’s on the south coast of Devon, near Exeter, which is excitingly entitled the Jurassic Coast. Which is kind of appropriate, since ancient creatures do indeed roam the streets of this town, but in the form of old age pensioners instead of giant lizards. And thankfully that means that it’s a lot safer for the demo sceners who descend upon the town, who only have to fear the glares of the locals and the sound of outrage being muttered at just below audible hearing, compared with the other sort of dinosaur which is more likely to eat you alive.

Maybe it’s the beautiful coastline and the opportunity to watch the waves crash upon the pebble beach. Or maybe it’s the fish and chip shop run by endearingly incompetent owners who are shocked when their usual quiet little shop is bombarded by younger-than-thirty-somethings one weekend each year. Or how about the quaint bakeries with fantastically cheap prices for pasties and cakes, and the ice creams shops that use real Devonshire clotted cream. Or the multitude of classic English pubs, full of rugged men with huge dogs lying by real fireplaces. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the fact that I get to hang out with a load of friends that I only see approximately two times a year.

Everything began yesterday, with the long drive down from Liverpool all the way to Devon. Thankfully my part only involved getting to Ellesmere Port as Chris was taking me the rest of the way, via a stop off in Birmingham to pick up Greg and his wife. For some reason the roads were really busy, much busier than when we went to Greenbelt two weeks ago, and it wasn’t helped by a whole load of roadworks on the M5, especially the work that’s just started on the M4/M5 junction. But we eventually arrived at 5:30pm to see a whole host of friends already hear, with more continually arriving as the evening went on.

The highlight, if I can even call it that, of yesterday was visiting Budleigh’s Chinese Takeaway. I remember from last year that they had a pile of books you could read whilst waiting which included Bible’s and children’s Bible stories, plus maybe some Christian literature decorating the walls, but nothing prepared me for what was there this year. It was like in the movies, when the hero(ine) enters the killer’s house for the first time and finds the walls decorated with obsessive newspaper clippings of their victims. They had books about Nelson Mandela and Nostradamus where the front cover and every page had newspaper clippings stuck in about people being sent to jail for crimes, all annotated in the same red writing. The walls were covered with newspaper clippings about money, and letters from the tax man once again annotated, with key words such as “mistaken” and “incorrect” underlined (the Inland Revenue had obviously made some recent mistake), not to mention the angry message about someone committing the “criminal crime” of stealing money from their bank account (my suspicions are that these events kick-started these ramblings). Annotations including phrases like, “Down, down, money demons,” and “Cock-a-doodle-doo, wake up, peace is human right, peace is justice!” I’m not the world’s biggest fan of capitalism, and I certainly like peace, but somehow any positive side of the message was being lost as we collected our food and backed out very, very, carefully…

Nothing quite so eventful has happened today, as I write this in the aftermath of Giles’ quiz, always the highlight of any Sundown. I’m still not entirely sure if Andy has recovered from ingesting Pringles covered with Jersey Death Chilli Sauce. I’ve just returned from the fish and chip shop (a record fifteen minute serving time, way down on last night’s estimates of forty-five minutes!) and am patiently waiting for the compos. Then tomorrow, the long trip back to Liverpool and the hope that I manage to fully recover for Monday morning.

The serene outside of the party hall

Everyone hard at work at the party

A view from the beach

The writings of madmen on the wall of the Chinese Takeaway

Giles’ quiz, with contestants Bren, Rob, Andy and Stu

Pete and Bren

Boundaries

At the beginning of August we had the annual church barbecue, an event to kick off the summer break (yes, my church doesn’t meet in August!) but also a good opportunity to socialise with all your friends. And in some cases, with their children too.

This is where Aidan comes in. He reminds me a little bit of what I must have been like as a child, because he’s very intelligent and has a very active imagination. On this occasion he was convinced that there was treasure hidden somewhere in the garden, and after a few hours he grabbed me by the hand and led me over to a patch of gravel where he proudly announced this treasure was.

The first problem to overcome was the pirates on our trail. After sizing me up, he clearly felt that Joe was needed to bolster our numbers, at which point a plan began to form in my head. I took a pound coin out of my pocket, waited for Joe to arrive, exchanged a few knowing looks and winks, and once we had distracted Aidan we quickly bent down and lightly buried the coin amongst the pebbles.

Real pirates would have done a better job...

As adults, we in general clearly know the difference between fantasy and reality. In children, it’s a little more blurred. But after seeing the confusion in Aidan’s face after we encouraged him to search for treasure and he found a shiny gold coin, I realised one thing. The boundary is still very, very real.

Greenbelt All Over

I arrived back from Greenbelt yesterday and still haven’t fully recovered. Although reality has nearly come back into focus, the real world still seems surreal, almost like a dream. Probably because I had such a fantastic time, aided this year by the sheer amount of us from Vineyard that turned up. Seemed like a lot of new people came this year, not just from our church, since the queues were a lot longer and everything seemed a lot busier. Even my parents and my sister came along for the Saturday!

Although I enjoyed every single moment, for me, the following were this year’s highlights:

• Ikon: Describing themselves as “heretical, emerging and failing” I was intrigued to see what worship led by Ikon would actually look like. I guess I’d describe Pyro-Theology as a meditation, aided by the spoken word, imagery and song performed on stage, inviting us to not only set ourselves on fire, but also the institutions that chain us, that need a rebirth from the ashes. What impressed me the most though was that they got the stewards to play along with the image, asking us to not take any bottled water inside and to do anything to ensure our “own personal flammability.” Oh, and Pete Rollins’ Rapture tract handed out afterward was absolutely inspired!
• Rob Bell: His talks made up for the ridiculously long queues to see him (almost two hours for Two Kinds of New). Unfortunately I didn’t pay enough attention to Drops Like Stars since I was attempting to entertain Aidan, Dave and Lorna’s five-year-old son, but Two Kinds of New was really good, although sometimes it feels like he’s stringing out a twenty minute sermon. What was really noticeable was his dynamic presence on stage, with his movement and actions really enhancing the stories he had to tell. I could definitely learn a lot from his presentation skills.
• Alex Horne: I made a pledge to see more comedy this year… well, actually, just some comedy, as I missed it all last year. Unfortunately Alex Horne’s Birdwatching was all I made it to, but it was well worth seeing from someone I hadn’t heard of before the festival. His first joke confused Sweden and Swindon, which even I do occasionally, so he was off to a good start and it continued with a Dave Gorman style routine detailed his project to spot more birds than his birdwatching father during the course of the year. I’ll look out for him in the future.
• Friends: Last year it was just James, Dave and myself, but this year Richard and Sarah, Dave, Lorna, Aidan and Callum and Tim all joined us, not to mention John who came with his own friends. Having all of us there, spending time together was fantastic.
• Talks: I won’t go into detail about all the talks I enjoyed aside from Rob Bell, but I should give mentions to Pete Rollins, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Kester Brewin and Margaret Robertson who all excited me at various points throughout the festival.

Our view; Rob Bell; our campsite; Athlete

What I love about the style of Greenbelt compared with other Christian events such as Spring Harvest is that rather than being encouraged to change on the spur of the moment in response to a sermon, I feel invited to be slowly transformed throughout the following months as I think upon and digest what I learned. A few things have stuck out already though, which will give me more causes for thought over the coming months:

• The temporary: With our landscape still dominated by the grandiose architecture of churches built many centuries ago, it’s easy to think that our modern churches should have the same lasting appeal, which is especially scary if you’re thinking of planting a church. But the problem with permanence is that to maintain the purity of what was founded, you either have to isolate yourselves or attack what’s outside. Instead, we should celebrate the short-lived, the temporary, the powerless, the fluid and welcome the transformation that they bring. This was mostly discussed by Kester Brewin in A Plea for Christian Piracy, but what I love about Greenbelt is that other people seem to “confirm” the message by making the same point. I can’t remember who now, but I definitely heard this from a few places!
• The reverse: Recently I’ve been heavily influenced by Bauckham’s essay on God’s Self-Identification with the Godforsaken in the Gospel of Mark, which I wrote about recently. To summarise, in crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” on the cross, Jesus was self-identifying with all those who feel left alone and abandoned by God. Yet in his talk on The Birth of Christianity and the Death of Meaning, Pete Rollins turned this around. Christianity is the only faith in which this doubt and feeling of God’s abandonment is at the very heart of God himself – the fact that God himself is an atheist. Thus it is when we suffer and feel abandoned that we can self-identify with God, that we are very closest to the one who made us. I feel a sermon brewing on this.
• The story: I can’t really remember what made me think this, but in the concept of what a church should look like, I began thinking that a church should at very least tell the story. And that doesn’t always involve words, but involves a community of people acting out the story of God’s love and redemption in their actions.

I don’t think this year’s Greenbelt will change me as much as last year. After all, the first experience is often what changes you the most. But once again there’s a lot to digest and think about over the coming months, especially about the nature of what a church should look like, which for a variety of reasons is fairly near the forefront of my thoughts. But I’ll have to reveal that a little more in the future…