The Bridge: Exhibition launch

Last night the official launch and reception for The Bridge, a ground-breaking interfaith exhibition of premier and emerging visual artists, was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Speakers included: The Hon Nasser Kamel, Ambassador of Egypt, Revd Canon Paul-Gordon Chandler, Founder & President of CARAVAN, Most Revd Dr Bishop Mouneer Anis, Bishop of Egypt and Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, and Most Revd and Rt Hon Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury. The St Martins Voices and Sami Yusuf sang.

The Bridge is an East-West travelling art exhibition organised and curated by CARAVAN, an interreligious and intercultural peacebuilding NGO. It showcases the work of 47 premier contemporary visual artists from 15 countries. Each artist has submitted one original work (created specifically for the exhibition) addressing the theme. The Bridge is an unparalleled gathering of international artists focusing on what they hold in common through their cultures and creeds: Christian, Muslim and Jewish.

The Bridge is at St Martin-in-the-Fields until 31 July.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sami Yusuf - The Gift Of Love. 

Baptism, Agape and chain reactions

Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3. 13 – end) started a chain reaction. It led directly to his ministry which was to bring good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, set free the oppressed, and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people. To do this he recruited disciples; a core group of 12 and a larger group of 72 or more.

These were themselves baptised and, after Jesus’ ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they followed Jesus’ commission to go to all peoples everywhere and make them disciples: baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost he said, “Each one of you must turn away from your sins and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins will be forgiven; and you will receive God's gift, the Holy Spirit.” Many believed his message and were baptized, and about three thousand people were added to the group that day.

The chain reaction that was started by the baptism of Jesus still continues and at St John's Seven Kings we have been a part of keeping that chain reaction going. Here is one story which demonstrates that to have been the case. Thirty years ago Judy Acheson was a Sunday School teacher here at St John's. While here, she felt called to serve God in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She went to the Congo in 1980 with the Church Mission Society (CMS) to be a nursery nurse, but, as the children she cared for grew, she carried on caring for them, eventually training and handing over responsibility to local leaders. “When I was first simply doing Sunday school work, I trained someone to take over … I always felt that we were there in a country to share the experience we had and enable people to carry it on."

The recent history of violence in the DRC is legendary. There is a legacy of  30 years of a both brutal and incompetent dictatorship, followed by one of the worst civil wars in post colonial Africa. Almost every participating force has been guilty of massacres and rapes. And the north-east region, where Judy was originally, was described by Human RightsWatch as "the bloodiest corner of Congo".

Judy could have left the country during the civil war but chose to stay and develop pioneering youth work. She says, “it was always my philosophy to empower the young people to do the work.” Bisoke Balikenga was one of her original youth team members. “You could see his leadership potential. People would listen to him and do what he asked. When we had visitors he looked after them.” Seeing his potential, CMS gave him and his wife a scholarship to study at Daystar University in Nairobi, then he took over the diocesan youth work Judy had begun, so she could start youth work nationally. Now that she has retired, he has taken over the national youth work as well.

The Youth Department Judy set for the Diocese of Bunia, called Jeunesse Chrétienne Agape (which means Agape Christian Youth), visited young men who joined the tribal militias during the civil war to persuade them to leave the militias, runs rehabilitation centres for young women raped and traumatised during the civil war, and, now the war is over, runs seminars to reconcile those who fought against each other during the war.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury visited in 2011, a group of about 50 former militia members spoke about how the Church, in the form of Agape, never forgot them. One by one, they gave their testimony. "We were taught to repay bad for bad," one said, "but the people from the church came to visit me." One after another they spoke about how, thanks to Agape's seminars and conferences on peace, they retuned to God and their families, rediscovering the love of Jesus. Many of them were then at college or university, slowly putting their trauma behind them.

Throughout these years Agape was been training young people to think for themselves, to have, give and express their own opinions, and make their own decisions. God began to show Judy, Bisoke and others that he is going to bring mighty changes within the country and has chosen to use children and young people as a means of doing so. This led them to write a manual for young people, Young people, with God let us rebuild our beautiful country! With Government support this book, and others they have written, are being used by thousands of teenagers and young adults in schools and in youth groups with the result that they are learning to make their own decisions and become aware of their role and their responsibility towards their own country.

Judy and Bisoke are examples of people who have put Jesus’ words into practice and by doing so having a massive impact on their country. Their story is particularly inspiring because they are clearly ordinary people just like us. If they can do it, so can we. Their story is doubly inspiring because it is about a chain reaction happening among young people who have been baptised and become leaders like Jesus; those who come not to be served but to serve, and to give their lives for others.

As an illustration of the continuing need for the work that Bisoke and his colleagues do, here are some stories from his recent prayer letters:  

While the majority of the DRC is peaceful, fighting continues in the East of the country. Bisoke has asked for prayer for people in Gety who have become refugees in Komanda , Nyankunde, Marabo and Bunia because of the insecurity caused by the war between the rebel and the government soldiers. These people have lost everything when they had to run from their homes without food, blankets or clothes in order to save their lives. Now the young people in these places have started providing assistance with clothes, food, and blankets.

Bisoke also wrote about the Venerable Move Karabutege, the first Archdeacon of Gety, and his wife. They stayed in Gety when everyone else ran away but his wife became ill and they couldn't leave because the road was not secure for them to travel. Eventually, their son got them out and brought them to Bunia but after two days the wife of the Archdeacon passed away.

Bisoke is committed to travelling to all dioceses to build capacity in the church for transformation. 'We twice visited the diocese of North Kivu to discover what we could do for the youth there and understand their needs,' Bisoke said. He says he found that many of the youth leaders badly needed training in peace and reconciliation as well as encouragement in their work in such a tough area.

In December Bisoke helped lead a four-day seminar for dozens of youth leaders in North Kivu. 'We truly saw the hand of God upon us,' said Bisoke, adding that a dozen leaders rededicated their lives to Jesus. 'Some of these youth leaders had been affected by the war and by insecurities around North Kivu, which had blocked the development of North Kivu Diocese. However we are building upon the faith of our youth with these much-needed seminars.'

A Prayer for the Democratic Republic of Congo: O God, loving parent of all, comfort your children displaced, wounded or orphaned by conflict in Congo; and give the people of that country courage to seek enduring peace with justice and freedom, that their children might grow up without fear; for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. (Adapted by Canon Ian Tarrant from a prayer in the 1998 Congo Swahili Prayer Book, written after the 1996-97 war).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mavis Staples - Sow Good Seeds.

A heart for people, the Arts and for God

“Disgusting!” That was Michal’s comment on King David’s dancing (2 Samuel 6. 1 - 20). If it had been Craig Revel Horwood critiquing my two left feet I would have understood but this was David’s wife criticising his contribution to the sacred dance.

“Disgusting!” That is how some Christians have responded to dance, and even the Arts generally, at certain times and places in Church history. For example, the Rev. Increase Mather, an influential Puritan leader in Boston in the 17^th century, wrote, in a book entitled An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing Drawn Out of the Quiver of the Scriptures (1684), that "A Dance is the Devils Procession. He that enters into a Dance, enters into his Possession. The Devil is the Guide, the middle and the end of the Dance."

Why was Michal disgusted? She thought that David had demeaned himself in front of their servants. She said that he had “exposed himself like a fool in the sight of the servant women of his officials” (v. 20). David had led all the Israelites in dancing and singing with all their might to honour God with their playing of harps, lyres, drums, rattles, and cymbals. Michal criticises both what David has done – exposing himself like a fool through his dancing – and his having crossed boundaries and taken on roles that were inappropriate for a King – having done it in all in front of the servant women of his officials.

If we were to translate what Michal says into today’s slang we might say that he by dancing he had looked a prat in front of the plebs. To put it that way brings out the inherent snobbery in Michal’s critique. As the daughter of King Saul, she is suggesting that there is an appropriate way for a King to behave in front of his people and that there are also appropriate roles which people play in society which should not be altered or varied. It is not the job of the King to lead the people in worship, as the King has priests and Levites a-plenty to do that for him.

David, though, has a heart for the people, a heart for the Arts, and, most importantly, a heart for God and so he both instinctively and deliberately crosses social and cultural boundaries to lead his people in worship and is clearly commended by God for doing so.

David didn’t forget his origins. He was not born into a royal family instead he was the one that his father left looking after the sheep because he considered him too young to meet the prophet who had come to anoint the next King of Israel (1 Samuel 16). David knows, therefore, that the place for a King is among the people even if that means he demeans himself in the eyes of some and acts in ways that are inappropriate. The fact that he has a heart for the people means that he is loved by the people.

David was also a musician before he was a King, playing his harp to soothe King Saul’s spirits. He is credited with writing many of the Psalms – songs which speak of praising God with trumpets, harps, lyres, drums, dancing, flutes and cymbals. So, David is a lyricist, musician and dancer who values the role that the Arts play in the worship of God and, not only appoints those who will use the Arts in that way, but actively uses his own God-given artistic abilities to lead worship himself.

Central to all this, however, is his heart for God. It was this that led to his being anointed by Samuel as the future King of Israel. It was on the occasion of his anointing that God said, “People look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.” In Sirach 47. 8, one of the books of the Apocrypha we read, “In everything David did, he gave thanks and praise to the Holy Lord, the Most High. He loved his Creator and sang praises to him with all his heart.” David’s heart was, as we say, in the right place and this can be clearly seen in this story through the way in which he risks ridicule in order to lead worship.

In this he is similar to the prophets who also cross cultural and social boundaries in order to speak and visualise God’s message, often attracting ridicule as they do so. “On one occasion, God told Ezekiel to shave his beard and to cut the hair of his head with a razor and a knife and divide the cut hair into three parts.” Then he was told to burn a third of it, chop a third up with his sword, and scatter the remaining third to the winds (Ezekiel 5:2). Ezekiel was also commanded to draw a picture of Jerusalem on a tile (Ezekiel 4:1–3); lie on his left and right side (4:4–8); bake bread that contained dung (4:9–17); tremble as he ate and drank (12:17–20); sigh, groan, and beat his breast (21:6–7); and make sweeping movements with a sword (21:8–17). All these actions prophesied impending doom, destruction, and hardship upon various groups in the region.

In Hosea 12. 10 we read this, "I have also spoken to you by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions for you and have appealed to you through parables acted out by the prophets.” The Hebrew phrase translated as "acted out" means "a silent mime, an enactment, or judgment". The prophets used drama rather than the lyrics, music and dance used by David but their impulse was the same to point the people to God through the Arts even if they looked ridiculous in the process.

Today, St John’s Seven Kings has been visited by a prophet who uses the Arts with the same heart for God that we have seen in David and the prophets.

Bishop David, the Bishop of Barking, is well known for his visualisations of the Gospel message which remain in people’s memories and hearts long after his visits. Over the years in church at various confirmation services we have seen him release live doves, wash and iron clothes, pitch a tent and boil a kettle on a camping gaz stove, use a leaf blower to fill the sails of a full-size sailing dinghy, bake a cake, build a wall and burn straw. At my first training weekend as a curate he did a handstand to demonstrate the way in which Jesus, through his teaching in the beatitudes, turns our understanding of life upside down. Through these acted parables we remember not only the visual image but also the point that was being made. Yet there are some who feel that this is not an appropriate way for a Bishop to behave and who criticise, in private, his actions and approach.

Bishop David has said that he loves to use surprise, shock, mirth and amusement in order to make what are hopefully memorable spiritual and theological points because our insistence on using far too many words often goes right over people’s heads and a picture can say more than a thousand words. Jesus also used visuals in his very concrete teaching, so he feels he’s in good company in using everyday objects to make connections for others.

The relationship between Church life and music has sustained through the centuries but the connection been Church and theatre has suffered. There is also great scope for dance and drama in Church, as well as the visual arts. There is great scope for recovering those connections that have fallen into decline.

So, he agrees with Rowan Williams that the Church needs more artists and “that artists are not special people but every person is a special kind of artist.” He thinks that there is great scope in the Church encouraging creative expression in everyone as this is a way of helping us to be fully human. Where appropriate that flowering of artistic expression can be expressed - as we have seen King David, the prophets, and the Bishop himself doing - in Church as, for example, an outflow of worship. We are fellow-creators with God and need to remember that He is creator as well as redeemer.

What David shows us is that all this stems from having our heart in the right place - in everything we do, to give thanks and praise to the Holy Lord, the Most High loving our Creator and singing praises to him with all our heart.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

J. Moss - Psalm 150.

The litmus test for public leadership

Less than a week on from the Diamond Jubilee weekend, where we thanked God for the 60 years of our Queen’s reign, and the lectionary has us reading 1 Samuel 8 where God says, through Samuel, that in wanting to be ruled over by a King, the people of Israel were rejecting him and his rule over them. Did those who compiled the lectionary deliberately select this reading for the Sunday after the Diamond Jubilee weekend as a corrective to our celebrations and is this passage the definitive word on monarchy to be found in the Bible?

I don’t know the answer to the first of those questions, having no idea what goes through the minds of those who compile the lectionary year on year but the second question is well worth exploring more closely before looking at 1 Samuel 8 itself more closely.

The first thing to say is that, as Sam Norton (the Rector of Mersea) put it recently on his blog: “One of the most important things to understand about the Bible is that it is a library of Holy Scripture – that is, there are many different voices within the Bible (even within particular books of the Bible) – and this is of God. That is, it is in recognising both what different books have in common, and where they disagree, that an individual Christian is enabled to come to a mature understanding of the text.”

On some subjects, like the value or otherwise of monarchies, the Bible has a huge amount of comment (but often without there necessarily being any clear agreement on the subject), while on other subjects, like that of same sex relationships, the Bible has hardly anything to say. It is interesting to note that the issues on which the Bible has lots to say are often issues that we don’t view as controversial, while issues on which the Bible has little or nothing to say can sometimes assume huge importance in the life of the Church.

This is one illustration of the fact that we often assume we know what the Bible says when actually we haven’t really got to grips with what it says at all. Our Gospel reading (Mark 3. 20 - 35) is a case in point. Many Christians assume that the Bible supports what we now call ‘family values’ but, as our Gospel reading shows, the Bible often asks deep and searching questions of what it is that we value about family life. Because the Bible often does not actually say what we seem to want it to say and doesn’t always take a simple or consistent line on particular issues, it seems that we can actively shy away from wrestling with the challenges or complexities that it poses in favour of something simpler and more comforting.

So, having set all those hares running, as we come back to 1 Samuel 8 we need to come with an openness to hear what the Bible is actually saying to us, which on this occasion also means being open to the possibility that our celebrations of monarchy last weekend were entirely wrong.

A good guide, who I commend (because he takes the complexities of reading the Bible into account), when reading the Old Testament generally is a Bible scholar called Walter Brueggemann. Brueggemann writes that: “… in 1 Samuel 8, Samuel is in deep dispute with Israel over the function and nature of public leadership. Israel wants a king, in order to be “like the other nations.” Samuel, here the reliable voice of Yahweh, refuses them a king, on the grounds that human kingship is an act of distrust in Yahweh … This interpretive tradition, suspicious of concentrations of power, anticipates that the centralized government is in principle exploitative, usurpatious, and self-serving. We may say that this recognition is fundamental to a biblical critique of power.”

The people of Israel, in the course of the rest of their history, were going to endure many examples of monarchs who were self-serving and who exploited their position and power for their own ends. What God said, through Samuel, would occur did occur on many occasions in the subsequent history of the people of Israel.

But that is not all that this passage or the Bible, as a whole, says on the subject because God and Samuel, despite their misgivings and predictions, all the people of Israel to have what they want. Why do they do this? In part, because there is another, more positive, strand of thinking in the Bible about monarchs. This is the strand which sees David and, initially, his son Solomon as great Kings under whose reign Israel was at the peak of its prosperity and influence.  

Brueggemann notes that the kind of kingship that we see David and initially Solomon exercise: “had the establishment and maintenance of justice as its primary obligation to Yahweh and to Israelite society. This justice, moreover, is distributive justice, congruent with Israel’s covenantal vision, intending the sharing of goods, power, and access with every member of the community, including the poor, powerless, and marginated.”

This is what Brueggemann thinks the Bible sees as key to any form of public leadership: “The claim made is that power – political, economic, military – cannot survive or give prosperity or security, unless public power is administered according to the requirement of justice, justice being understood as attention to the well-being of all members of the community.”

This, then, is the litmus test which, as those seeking to be faithful to what the Bible actually says about monarchy and all forms of public leadership, we should be applying to all those who have power and authority over us in some fashion – monarch, prime minister, cabinet, government, and local authority councillors and officials. The questions we should be putting to them and using to assess their value and legitimacy are questions of justice, particularly for those who are the poorest and least powerful.

It is interesting then to note that this is the very test that the Archbishop of Canterbury used in his sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral last Tuesday. In that sermon, he criticised “the traps of ludicrous financial greed, of environmental recklessness, of collective fear of strangers and collective contempt for the unsuccessful and marginal” and said that what will save us from those traps is a vision of dedicated service to others. One important aspect of discovering that vision is to have “stories and examples available to show it’s possible.” One of those stories over the past six decades, he said, has been that of the Queen who “has shown a quality of joy in the happiness of others” and who “has responded with just the generosity St Paul speaks of in showing honour to countless local communities and individuals of every background and class and race.”

He was saying that the Queen passes the litmus test set within the Bible for those in public leadership but at the same time making it clear, as the Bible also does, that those who lead us into “the traps of ludicrous financial greed, of environmental recklessness, of collective fear of strangers and collective contempt for the unsuccessful and marginal” are not worthy of the office which they hold.

As we follow the story of the monarchy through in Israel’s history, we see this worked out in practice. Brueggemann writes that: “… the royal system was not finally effective in sustaining Israel … at the centre of Israel’s self-awareness is the debacle of 587 B.C.E., when king, temple, and city all failed.”

What happens next is fascinating and central to the development of Christianity: “The dynastic promise … was turned to the future, so that Israel expected the good, faithful, effective king to come, even though all present and known incumbents had failed. Out of concrete political practice arose an expectation of the coming of messiah: a historical agent to be anointed, commissioned, and empowered out of the Davidic house to do the Davidic thing in time to come, to establish Yahweh’s justice and righteousness in the earth.”  

As Christians, we believe that Messiah to have already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and that through his life, death and resurrection the establishment of God’s justice and righteousness on earth, as in heaven, has begun to be established and is now awaiting his second coming for its full completion. This brings us back to the place where we began, the centralizing of power in the hands of one human being is always likely to lead to that power being used in ways that are self-serving and exploitative. It is only we acknowledge God as the ultimate and just ruler of all that our lives and society are placed in their proper perspective.

As we await that day, we can both hold our rulers to account on the Biblical basis of the issue of justice for all and, as the Archbishop emphasised in his Diamond Jubilee sermon, seek “the rebirth of an energetic, generous spirit of dedication to the common good and the public service, the rebirth of the recognition that we live less than human lives if we think just of our own individual good.”  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Madness - Our House.

One week in the Church: steps forward and back

Most of this week has, for me, been taken up with training. Part one of an excellent Training Incumbents course took place over three days at our Diocesan House of Retreat at Pleshey. In addition to the opportunity to share the experience of the other incumbents on the course it was great to find that the Church of England is finally applying good practice in assessment and supervision to the training of curates in a more rigorous and comprehensive way than was the case during my curacy rather less than ten years ago. There is still fine tuning to be done on the systems currently in use and we had some honest and straight debate on those issues but the developments which have been made are significant.

From Pleshey I went to City Temple for a seminar on Social Enterprise Leadership entitled Doing Business, Doing Good organised by Jubilee +. Once again, it was interesting and encouraging to see the Church understanding and applying good practice in ways which complement our mission and ministry.

Aspects of the Bible narrative which have economic implications were summarised by Martin Charlesworth from the Genesis commands for cultivation and development through understandings of land ownership among the people of Israel in the Promised Land to Jesus' disciples sharing a common purse and business support for mission in the Early Church. Two excellent Social Enterprise case studies were provided in Create and The Grow Organisation.

Lord Wei argued that Social Enterprises help build kingdom values by: creating the conditions for systemic change through serving those in need; enabling people of peace to come into the kingdom; and enabling God to call those who come to choose what they can do to change society. Collaborative capitalism involves reducing our obligations and the cost of living in order to generate a greater surplus to invest in the kingdom economy. He spoke about work with churches in Shoreditch, with which he is involved, as a kingdom colony where churches are taking it in turns to launch social enterprises and create incubator spaces for social enterprises.

In my view, these are examples of the Church gradually getting it right, both in the way we develop our own ministers and in the way we minister within our current culture. We are simultaneously surrounded too by examples of the Church continuing to get it wrong in both respects.

The decision of Rowan Williams to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of 2012 raises in several different respects the issue of how we work and treat each other as ministers within the Church. Several different commentators have noted that the tragedy of his time as Archbishop was that he "allowed himself to be bullied into asking Jeffrey John to withdraw his name as a candidate for the Bishop of Reading after a worldwide storm broke when the appointment of a gay man as a bishop was announced." This was the point from which, as Giles Fraser notes: 

"whilst his instincts may have been gay friendly, his increasing appreciation that the African church was dead against any accommodation with homosexuality made him side with the conservatives. He wanted a global Anglican community built around core values. And so, in effect, he became a split personality – with Williams the man at odds with Williams the archbishop."

What he has done, as the Church Mouse has written, is to demonstrate a "model of servant leadership, suppressing his own personal opinions to allow a consensus from the wider church to emerge" and has had, as a result, to endure "disgraceful behaviour from individuals and churches who have failed to show a fraction of the grace as members of the Church that Rowan has in leading it." Few Archbishops, Giles Fraser has written, "have had to face such sustained invective and vitriol."

Church Mouse sums it up well:

"Liberals felt let down that he didn't stand up for the views he expressed prior to his appointment. Conservatives felt that he allowed the church to drift in a liberal direction, further from their view of sound Biblical teaching. Both should now simply thank him for his undoubted humble service and total commitment during an utterly bruising ten years, and offering their prayers for the future."

As Rowan said, in the interview he gave following his announcement, the worst aspect of the job "is the sense that there are some conflicts that won't go away, however long you struggle with them." The gay issue which has bedevilled his time as Archbishop is, of course, centre stage once again through the Government's consultation on equal civil marriage and the significant Church campaign to oppose the Government's legislative plans. Jeffery John appears to have made some apposite comments on this campaign in an interview with The Times.

It seems to me, that the Biblical basis claimed for marriage by those opposing the legislation is based primarily on traditional assumptions made about the meaning of passages. The narratives in the Bible seem to me essentially to accept whatever model of marriage was common in society at the time as normative. So, when polygamy was normal and accepted in society, this was not critiqued by those writing what has since been understood as scripture and similarly when monogamy became the dominant model that was also accepted and not critiqued. On this basis, it seems to me, to be an entirely Biblical position to suggest that the definition of marriage is something which is socially determined and something which can and does change.

Genesis 2. 24, which is often cited as a divine warrent for the traditional definition of marriage in our culture and within the Church, makes no mention of marriage at all and thereby leaves completely open the nature of the relationship between the man and the woman beyond the man leaving his parents and having sex with the woman. When this verse is cited as giving the divine warrent to marriage being only between a man and a woman, that view is being read into the text by those who are assuming that that is what God thinks and wants. The text, as text, simply does not say that.

The result, as Jeffery John appears to have said, is that:

“In the Church of England we readily bless the second, and even third marriages of couples who never darken our doors, yet we reject hundreds of our own faithful clergy and lay people who long to bring their love and commitment before God and ask his blessing ... Many ... people of goodwill who instinctively expect the Church to uphold justice and truth are scandalised when it so obviously does not."

Do to others as you would have them do to you

Love your neighbour as you love yourself

Access for All

No ‘No Irish, Blacks or Dogs’

Food for need, not for greed

Marriage for gay, as for straight

Break the glass ceiling for women

Love your neighbour as you love yourself

Do to others as you would have them do to you

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Madness - One Step Beyond.

The Big Society and the small acts of individuals

Redbridge deanery synod tonight was on the topic of the Big Society. The main speaker was Daniel Singleton, National Executive Director of FaithAction, a network of Faith based and Community organisations serving their communities by delivering public services (such as childcare, health and social care, housing and welfare to work). Daniel has recently written a FaithAction booklet setting out a faith-based response to the Big Society called ‘How to eat an elephant’.Daniel said that the Big Society is not a policy but a philosophy. It is to do with the choices made by individuals and, therefore, is at the micro level of society. It will be shown by random acts of kindness and involves a move towards a more neighbourly society. The Big Society has to start and end with the small acts of individuals.

In our church clusters we then discussed what we could contribute to the Big Society in Redbridge in future, what will we want to question about the Big Society in Redbridge in future, and how will we do that.

In my introductory remarks I said the following:

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has said that "If we're searching for the big society, [religion] is where we will find it."

He had two reasons for making that statement. First, he quoted new research by the Harvard sociologist Robert Puttnam, showing that places of worship still bring people together in "mutual responsibility": “The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours.”

Second, he argued that: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.”

The truth of this can be demonstrated through research commissioned by the Cinnamon Network; a group of over 100 Chief Executive Officers of faith-based charities developing responses to the Government's Big Society agenda. Their research reveals that churches and their congregations contribute significant time as well as monies to their communities.

The 284 churches involved in the sample delivered a total of 439,000 hours of volunteer service in the last 12 months, which equates to 1,925 per church on average. These churches contributed £1,234,000 to finance social action work, or £7,568 per church, spent on an average of 3.3 projects.

Projecting these figures against population and church going for the UK gives an estimate of 72 million hours of volunteering for Church-led initiatives over 12 months.
We don’t have equivalent figures for Redbridge but we do know on the basis of the Big Society Mapping Event that was organised last year with Redbridge Council that a wide range of services are currently delivered by faith groups including:

·   Services/facilities for children – toddler groups and crèche facilities; uniformed organisations; support for parents;

·   Services/facilities for young people – detatched youth work; football clubs; drug and alcohol projects;

·   Service/facilities for adults – ESOL classes; healthy living classes;

·   Services/facilities for elderly – day centres; nursing homes; inter-generational projects;

·   Other services/facilities – counselling and bereavement services; confidence building; book and art classes; fitness classes; and Neighbourhood Watch.

We also have an agreed database where a fuller and more detailed picture of faith-based contributions to the Big Society can be gathered – that is the database maintained by Redbridge CVS – and you have all been given a copy of the form to use for entering details of your voluntary and community services.
Once we have this better map of the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough then, as well as our contribution to the Big Society being better recognised, two further possibilities can come into play. First, our buildings could be considered for the delivery of Council services and/or the services of other Government agencies. It makes no sense for precious local authority finances to be used on new builds when existing community buildings may have spare capacity? Use of existing community buildings, such as those we own, locates Council services firmly in the local community and provides support to the voluntary and community sector through rental income. That is a win win situation.
Second, faith groups, the wider voluntary and community sector and the local authority can then together take an informed look at the range of existing provision in the borough, signpost to existing services more effectively, identify gaps in provision, and work together to develop new services which meet real local needs.

An example of that occurring has already happened in the borough since the meeting as the increased numbers of homeless people in the borough was a major topic of discussion at the Mapping Event and since then the churches in the borough has started the new Night Shelter based at the Salvation Army in Ilford.
Our response to the Big Society should be that of a critical friend able to ask many questions about the direction of travel both here in the borough and nationally. The Archbishop of Canterbury articulated some of these issues last year in the edition of the New Statesman which he edited.

He wrote that:

“If civil society organisations are going to have to pick up
responsibilities shed by government, the crucial questions are these. First, what services must have cast-iron guarantees of nationwide standards, parity and continuity? (Look at what is happening to youth services, surely a strategic priority.)

Second, how, therefore, does national government underwrite these strategic "absolutes" so as to make sure that, even in a straitened financial climate, there is a continuing investment in the long term, a continuing response to what most would see as root issues: child poverty, poor literacy, the deficit in access to educational excellence, sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities (rural as well as urban), and so on? What is too important to be left to even the most resourceful localism?”

Our role as faith groups is, I believe, to ask these questions at the same time as we play our part in expanding the Big Society within Redbridge.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Harbour Lights - Last Port Of Call.

Dialoguing with Isaiah

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has said that the Bible is the record of the dialogue in which God and humanity find one another. The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has said that “… the Bible is not a closed object but a dialogue partner whom we must address but who also takes us seriously. We may analyze, but we must also listen and expect to be addressed. We listen to have our identity given to us, our present way called into question, and our future promised to us.”

Isaiah 40. 21 - 31 takes us into that kind of dialogue because it presents us with a paradox. On the one hand, this passage says that God “sits enthroned above the circle of the earth” making us, its people, like grasshoppers to him. On this basis, we are as nothing to God and he can do with us as he pleases – we are pawns that he moves on a celestial chessboard, puppets manipulated by the divine puppetmaster - and so, we read:

“He brings princes to naught
   and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted,
   no sooner are they sown,
   no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
   and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.”

On the other hand, the passage also says that God calls each star into existence and that it is by his power and strength that they continue to exist. By implication the same is true of human beings – that God calls us into existence and sustains our existence too – as the passage says, he “gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” In this part of the passage, God is not remote or distant, nor is he the chess or puppetmaster, instead he is alongside us as the creator and sustainer of life itself.

The passage is a dialogue and invites us to discussion and debate because the two pictures of God cannot be reconciled. God cannot be both the one who controls all things and the one who sustains all things in freedom. If God controls our every move then we have no free will but if we genuinely have free will then God must be limited in his power to control what occurs. This is a key part of the debate and dialogue – the conversation - which occurs in the Bible. It is a debate about the nature of God and it is a dialogue because these two different and ultimately irreconcilable pictures of God are presented.

Brueggemann has called these two pictures, the core testimony and the counter testimony. The core testimony is structure legitimating; that is to say it is about order and control – everything in its rightful place and a rightful place for everything. The counter testimony is pain embracing; that is to say it is about hearing and responding to the pain and suffering which is found in existence. The core testimony is “above the fray” while the counter testimony is “in the fray”.

The wonderful thing, it seems to me, about the Christian scriptures is that this debate and dialogue is resolved in favour of the counter testimony. René Girard writes that, in the Gospels, “God himself, the Word become flesh in Jesus, becomes the victim … The New Testament Gospels are the starting point for a new science or knowledge of humanity. This new knowledge begins with faith in Christ the innocent victim, and it becomes the leaven that will work itself out and expand to the point that the concern for victims becomes the absolute value in all societies molded or affected by the spread of Christianity.”

Similarly, Gerd Theissen writes that in the life, teaching and death of Jesus of Nazareth:

“religion takes an unprecedented turn, and becomes instead an agency of healing for the wounded. In the religion of the prophets, and in the religious commitment for which Jesus lived and died, we see the distillation of faith in a God who is on the side of the downtrodden rather than their oppressors, and who seeks to bring a new, supernatural order of justice and peace out of the natural laws of selection and mutation which spell death for the weak and powerless.”

Rowan Williams says that:

“All human identity is constructed through conversations, in one way or another. The gospel adds the news that, in order to find the pivot of our identity as human beings, there is one inescapable encounter, one all-important conversation into which we must be drawn. This is not just the encounter with God, in a general sense, but the encounter with God made vulnerable, God confronting the systems and exclusions of the human world within that world – so that, among other things, we can connect the encounter with God to those human encounters where we are challenged to listen to the outsider and the victim.”

All this means that we can and should pray for God to be alongside us to give us strength in our weariness and his power in our weakness so that we can soar on wings like eagles, run and not grow weary, walk and not be faint. In other words, that he will enter into our pain and enable us to live fully human lives; lives of responsible freedom, in contrast to the pawns and puppets who understand God to control their every move. Lives of responsible freedom lived for the benefit of others; lives lived listening and responding to the pain of those who are victims and outsiders.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joan Osborne - One Of Us.

Servant leadership

This was my sermon for St Edward's Day at St Edward's Church of England School and Sixth Form College on Tuesday:

Thirty years ago Judy Acheson was a Sunday School teacher at St John’s Seven Kings, the church where I work now. While at St John’s, she felt called to serve God in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She went to the Congo in 1980 with the Church Mission Society (CMS) to be a nursery nurse, but, as the children she cared for grew, she carried on caring for them, eventually training and handing over responsibility to local leaders. “When I was first simply doing Sunday school work, I trained someone to take over … I always felt that we were there in a country to share the experience we had and enable people to carry it on."

The recent history of violence in the DRC is legendary. There is a legacy of 30 years of a both brutal and incompetent dictatorship, followed by one of the worst civil wars in post colonial Africa. Almost every participating force has been guilty of massacres and rapes. And the north-east region, where Judy was originally, was described by Human Rights Watch as "the bloodiest corner of Congo".

Judy could have left the country during the civil war but chose to stay and develop pioneering youth work. She says, “it was always my philosophy to empower the young people to do the work.” Bisoke Balikenga was one of her original youth team members. “You could see his leadership potential. People would listen to him and do what he asked. When we had visitors he looked after them.” Seeing his potential, CMS gave him and his wife a scholarship to study at Daystar University in Nairobi, then he took over the diocesan youth work Judy had begun, so she could start youth work nationally. Now that she is about to retire, he has taken over the national youth work as well.

The youth department they set up, called Agape Mahagi, visited young men who joined the tribal militias during the civil war to persuade them to leave the militias, runs rehabilitation centres for young women raped and traumatised during the civil war, and, now the war is over, runs seminars to reconcile those who fought against each other during the war. When the Archbishop of Canterbury visited in July of this year, a group of about 50 former militia members spoke about how the Church, in the form of Agape, never forgot them. One by one, they gave their testimony. "We were taught to repay bad for bad," one said, "but the people from the church came to visit me." One after another they spoke about how, thanks to Agape's seminars and con­ferences on peace, they retuned to God and their families, rediscover­ing the love of Jesus. Many of them were now at college or university, slowly putting their trauma behind them.

Throughout these years Agape was been training young people to think for themselves, to have, give and express their own opinions, and make their own decisions. God began to show Judy, Bisoke and others that he is going to bring mighty changes within the country and has chosen to use children and young people as a means of doing so. This led them to write a manual for young people, Young people, with God, let us rebuild our beautiful country. With Government support this book is being used by thousands of teenagers and young adults in schools and in youth groups with the result that they are learning to make their own decisions and become aware of their role and their responsibility towards their own country.

In our Gospel reading we heard Jesus say to his disciples, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

St Edward the Confessor is an example of that kind of leader. When Pope Benedict spoke about St Edward at Westminster Abbey last year, he described him as 'a model of Christian witness, of fidelity, of humility and obedience, grounded in the example of our Saviour'. There was something in the life of Edward, as King of England, that was regarded as out of the ordinary. He was a man who exercised gentleness and prudence in high office, whose reign between 1042 and 1066 was one of almost unbroken peace. He had a great devotion to the Church, including having Westminster Abbey built. He was humble, and opted for a certain simplicity of life, manifested by his manner of dress we're told, and who was generous, having a special love and care for the poor and afflicted.

One story told about him comes from his particular devotion to the Apostles Saint Peter and Saint John the Evangelist. He had made a promise never to refuse alms asked in the name of the latter. One day when he had no money with him, a poor man reached out his hand in the name of St John the Evangelist and the king gave him a valuable ring. Some time later, Saint John appeared to two pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. He gave them a ring and said: “Take it to the king. He gave it to me one day when I asked for alms in the habit of a pilgrim. Tell him that in six months I will visit him and take him with me, to follow the unblemished Lamb.” The King received it from them after hearing their relation of this incident, and broke into tears. According to the story this was six months before Edward died on January 5, 1066.

Edward is a past example of a leader who put Jesus’ words into practice. Judy and Bisoke give us contemporary examples of leaders doing just the same and by doing so having a massive impact on their country. Their story is particularly inspiring because they are clearly ordinary people just like us. If they can do it, so can we. Their story is doubly inspiring because it is about encouraging, equipping and enabling young people to become the kind of leaders about which Jesus spoke; those who come not to be served but to serve, and to give their lives for others.


******************************************************


Interestingly, after the Service, one of the teachers at the School told me that, as a child, she had been in Judy's Sunday School class at St John's Seven Kings. Judy will be speaking at St John's on 27th November at 10.00am.

The latest news we have comes from both Bisoke and Judy. Bisoke wrote to say, "We greet all of you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are well in Congo but we are approaching the election in our country please pray for it, we will start voting from 28th of November. Also pray for Judy Acheson because for the moment she is in the Diocese of Boga where she has started her work, and we are going to visit all the Archdeaconry to say goodbye before the 16th of October when she will say goodbye to many people here in Bunia.”

“We are doing well but have a lot to do, please continue to pray for our work because we have a lot of needs for our work to be done. We were in Goma for a workshop and Judy Acheson was with us. While there she said goodbye to our staff. In June we had a ladies workshop in Butembo which helped those who lead the ladies in the parishes and dioceses to manage their groups well. Also in June the Archbishop of Canterbury visited our country and he went up to Boga. The British Ambassador was also here in Bunia to welcome the Archbishop. The Archbishop had his first meeting with the youth which encouraged our young people. Praise the Lord.”

“I would like to inform you that I will be ordained full priest on 9 October. It is amazing because most of us who will be ordained on this date are from the Youth Ministry. It also makes us proud to know that most of us including the Bishop of Boga diocese are the fruits of the work of CMS mission partner Judy Acheson. Praise the Lord! Keep praying for that day and for us who are so eager for this to happen. Pray also for the upcoming general elections in Congo. We need Jehovah Shalom to dwell amongst us during this period.”

He then wrote saying, "Thanks alot for your prayers because my ordination went so well , and many people came to celebrate it with us. It is the first ordination where we had many of the people who become Pastors are from the Youth Ministry Agape. Praise the Lord. Judy was so happy to see her people become Priest and among us one of us is a lady, and that lady is the first lady to be ordained in the Diocese of Boga, and the lady is from the Youth Ministry. Praise the Lord.

Tomorrow Judy with some people is visiting the Parish of Mafifi , Komanda , Sota , Tekele , and Nyankunde . We will come in Bunia on thursday and friday we will go to Kasenyi. The purpose of her visit is to say bye to the people who she worked together for 31 years in Congo."

Judy has also written to say she has now finished her work at Mahagi and has moved to Bunia. She reported that the handover at Mahagi went really well. There is much to be thankful for at Mahagi, including guttering for rainwater harvesting and a new generator. “But the best thing has been our morning bible studies which God has used to talk to each person. We have seen such changes, a growth in faith, love for each other and understanding of what it means to be the Body of Christ. Please pray that these studies continue.” Please join with Judy in this prayer.

Judy also writes, “Only just over two weeks before I leave so much to be done and visits made.  But praise God everything is going smoothly.  We are looking forward to the Thanksgiving/farewell service on 16th October.  Please pray for Bisoke and Bishop Willy as they arrange this and that it will bring much glory to the Lord.”


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Neal Morse - The Land Of Beginning Again.

Big Society mapping event

Today I spoke on the Big Society in Redbridge from a faith perspective at the Big Society Mapping Event which I have been involved in organising together with the local authority. The event has developed out of meetings between the ecumenical borough deans and the local authority and was held at Holy Trinity Barkingside.
In my presentation I said:

The ideas that underpin the Government’s vision of a ‘Big Society’ – strong families, strong communities, strong relationships through the encouragement of social responsibility – are familiar to all faith groups. "If we're searching for the big society, [religion] is where we will find it," wrote Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, in his recent article in the edition of the New Statesman guest edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He had two reasons for making that statement. First, he quoted new research by the Harvard sociologist Robert Puttnam, showing that places of worship still bring people together in "mutual responsibility": “The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours.”

Second, he argued that: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.”

The truth of this can be demonstrated through research commissioned by the Cinnamon Network; a group of over 40 Chief Executive Officers of faith-based charities developing responses to the Government's Big Society agenda. Their research reveals that churches and their congregations contribute significant time as well as monies to their communities.

The 284 churches involved in the sample delivered a total of 439,000 hours of volunteer service in the last 12 months, which equates to 1,925 per church on average. These churches contributed £1,234,000 to finance social action work, or £7,568 per church, spent on an average of 3.3 projects. Projecting these figures against population and church going for the UK gives an estimate of 72 million hours of volunteering for Church-led initiatives over 12 months. When you add in other faith groups too that figure would be substantially more.

Equivalent figures could no doubt be replicated in Redbridge yet we do not have such figures to hand specifically for this borough. This event provides an opportunity to begin mapping the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough and that will be the main focus of our discussion groups today. We know, however, that if properly mapped the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough will involve the provision of buildings for a wide range of community activities and services combined with the delivery of a wide range of community activities and services.

Once we have a better map of the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough, then two further possibilities can come into play. First, our buildings could be considered for the delivery of Council services and/or the services of other Government agencies. It makes no sense for precious local authority finances to be used on new builds when existing community buildings may have spare capacity? Use of existing community buildings, such as those we own, locates Council services firmly in the local community and provides support to the voluntary and community sector through rental income. That is a win win situation.

Second, faith groups, the wider voluntary and community sector and the local authority can then together take an informed look at the range of existing provision in the borough, signpost to existing services more effectively, identify gaps in provision, and work together to develop new services which meet real local needs.

Therefore, the work that we are beginning here today has real potential, not simply to recognise the real and actual contribution that faith groups make in our borough, but for developing a strategy in this borough that engages the voluntary and community sector, including the faith groups, as fully as possible in the development of the Big Society in Redbridge.

Finally, though, we also need to say that our response to the Big Society is that of a critical friend. We have many questions to ask about the direction of travel both here in the borough and nationally. The Archbishop of Canterbury articulated some of these issues in the editorial which he wrote for the edition of the New Statesman that I mentioned earlier.

He wrote that:

“If civil society organisations are going to have to pick up responsibilities shed by government, the crucial questions are these. First, what services must have cast-iron guarantees of nationwide standards, parity and continuity? (Look at what is happening to youth services, surely a strategic priority).
Second, how, therefore, does national government underwrite these strategic "absolutes" so as to make sure that, even in a straitened financial climate, there is a continuing investment in the long term, a continuing response to what most would see as root issues: child poverty, poor literacy, the deficit in access to educational excellence, sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities (rural as well as urban), and so on? What is too important to be left to even the most resourceful localism?”

Our role as faith groups is, I believe, to ask these questions at the same time as we play our part in expanding the Big Society within Redbridge."

We also heard from John Powell, Director of Adult Services and Housing in the London Borough of Redbridge and Tasnim Iqbal, Redbridge CVS and Chair of the Big Society Working Group for the borough. In small groups we discussed what kind of services and facilities faith groups in the borough currently provide and ways of working more closely with the local authority.
The event's aim was to gain an overview of the types of services and facilities that faith groups in the borough currently provide and how faith groups and the Council can work together to develop new opportunities. There was general surprise at the wide range of activities and services delivered by faith groups in the borough while issues of housing and homelessness were identified as the most pressing issue curently where new initiatives are required.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arcade Fire - Ready To Start.