The best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness

Here's the Stewardship sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever you do, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.

The Christian life is so much more than how we gather together on Sunday; 98% of Christian disciples spend 95% of their time not in church. Everyday faith is all about how we express our Christian faith every day, in everyday situations, Monday to Saturday, not just on Sunday. It is about where and how we encounter God as we go about our lives and how we express that to others in our words and actions. It is found in our joys and cares, in our challenges and conflicts, in our work and rest, in our workplaces and homes, in our friendships and relationships as we lean into God’s presence and guidance.

Our faith connects with the wider community through our everyday lives and commitments. Whether because of our paid work, our family roles, or our community or political involvements, we are all intimately involved in the wider community. God calls us to do so as people of faith.

God knows each one of us intimately and prepares us for our calling before we are born, so we need to trust that our interests, skills and talents are gifts from God to be used for his glory. Then, as St Paul wrote to the Colossians, whatever we do, in word or deed, we do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever our task, he wrote, we are to put ourselves into it, as done for the Lord (Colossians 3.23). The poet George Herbert wrote that this way of thinking is the “famous stone / That turneth all to gold.” So, this is where we begin with our calling, looking carefully at our natural interests, abilities and talents and putting them to use where we are doing what we do in the name of the Lord Jesus and for his glory.

Then, we develop and grow how we act as Christian people in our everyday lives. Living as a Christian is like getting undressed and then dressed again. The picture we are given in Colossians 3.12-17 is of taking off our old clothes (our old way of life – our vices) and putting on new clothes (a new and different way of life – Christian virtues).

This is something that we have to consciously choose to do. Getting dressed is not usually something we do without thinking about it. We take time when shopping to find clothes which we think suit us and generally we do not just put on the first thing that comes to hand with whatever the next item is. Instead, we match items until we are satisfied that we will look as we wish.

The new clothes that we are to put on as Christians are compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. That implies that the old clothes we take off would be their opposites; hatred, unkindness, pride, roughness, and impatience. Also implied is the idea that compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience do not come naturally to us, so we have to make a conscious change. Tom Wright has said that “the point about “vice”, the opposite of “virtue”, is that, whereas virtue requires moral effort, all that has to happen for vice to take hold is for people to coast along in neutral: moral laziness leads directly to moral deformation (hence the insidious power of TV which constantly encourages effortless going-with-the-flow). The thing about virtue is that it requires Thought and Effort . . .”

So, change begins with a conscious decision, not a magical or instant makeover. St Paul writes in Romans 12. 2, “let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.” We know this is so because we only make changes in our lives when we break bad habits and form good habits. Tom Wright, again, “The point about the word “virtue” – if we can recapture it in its strong sense – is that it refers, not so much to “doing the right things”, but to the forming of habits and hence of moral character ... All behaviour is habit-forming … we [can] use the word “virtue” and “virtuous” simply to mean “behaviour we have had to work at which has formed our character so that at last it becomes natural and spontaneous to live like that.”

We can use a different illustration to see how this works in practice. Tom Wright says, “The illustration I sometimes use is that when you learn to drive a car, the idea is that you will quickly come to do most of the things “automatically”, changing gear, using the brakes, etc., and that you will develop the “virtues” of a good driver, looking out for other road users, not allowing yourself to be distracted, etc.; but that the highways agencies construct crash barriers and so on so that even if you don’t drive appropriately damage is limited; and also those “rumble strips”, as we call them in the UK, which make a loud noise on the tyre if you even drift to the edge of the roadway.

“Rules” and “the Moral Law” are like those crash barriers and rumble strips. Ideally, we won’t need them because we will have learned the character-strengths that St Paul lists for the Colossian Christians and will drive down the moral highway appropriately. But the rules are there so that when we start to drift, we are at once alerted and can take appropriate action – particularly figuring out what strengths need more work to stop it happening again.”

So, to sum up, Christian virtue comes “as the fruit of the thought-out, Spirit-led, moral effort of putting to death one kind of behaviour and painstakingly learning a different one.” When the Spirit is at work in us in this way, “we become more human, not less – which means we have to think more, not less, and have to make more moral effort, not less.”

What habits do we need to break and what habits do we need to build as a result of what we have thought about today? “So then, you must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience … and to all these qualities add love, which binds all things together in perfect unity.”

The final week of our Stewardship month is to do with our community involvements. The Five Marks of Mission include: Tending - responding to human need by loving service; and Transforming - seeking to transform the unjust structures of society. Our Stewardship Pack suggests many things we can do to transform our community including:

• Volunteer with Project 58.7 or another voluntary organisation.
• Help at the Gateway Project.
• Pray regularly for your work and community.
• Make creative suggestions in your work.
• Write to your MP and/or Councillors about issues of international, national and local concern.

Can you commit to doing any of these or others mentioned in the pack? When we do, we are having a ministry of presence and engagement. Presence is what we often talk about here as ‘Being With’:

“The word ‘presence' points to our incarnational theology and the word ‘engagement’ to our pentecostal theology ... Presence can be largely passive, a simple acceptance that this is where we are, without any meaningful recognition of the relationship between our presence, the presence of others and the real presence of Christ who seeks constantly to bring human beings into relationship with each other in love. But the Spirit of God is constantly seeking to move us on from the fact of presence to the action of engagement – engagement as a public sign of our commitment to the wellbeing of the world and to the discovery of the Kingdom in the midst of the places where we are present.”

Jonathan Sacks has said: “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.”

David Ford has expanded on the opportunities that community engagement provides including the: “Opportunity to learn more about other human beings around us, especially those sincerely engaged in seeking God. Opportunity to present our Christian understandings of God by the lives we live and the words we speak. Opportunity to contribute to the common good and above all, opportunity to learn more about trusting in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” We can grasp these opportunities as we take up the challenge of our Stewardship Pack to be involved transforming our community and as we follow St Paul’s advice do everything that we do in the name of the Lord Jesus.

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Bob Dylan - What Can I Do For You?

Christianity is fire, passion, desire, longing, yearning

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Mary the Virgin, Little Burstead:

What is it that you most desire? How would you answer that question? It could be another person that you desire; your current or a future partner. You might answer in terms of other relationships; time with children or grandchildren, for example. It might be money that you desire; a lottery win would do very nicely and give you wealth to do with as you please. You might answer in terms of opportunity; the chance to travel or to enjoy particular types of experiences. Some might answer in terms of dreams; the chance to make a difference in the world, be famous for 15 minutes or to prove they have the X Factor.

Some years ago I was at a conference on ‘The Holy Spirit in the World Today’ where the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said that the Holy Spirit is desire in us. He didn’t, of course, mean that the Spirit is any or all desires that animate us but instead a very particular desire; the desire, longing or yearning or passion for Christ and to become Christ-like. The challenge of the Archbishop’s homily was that we should be consumed with desire for that goal. He quoted St Symeon who prayed "Come, you who have become yourself desire in me, who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one!"

The desire that the Holy Spirit creates in us is a desire to be where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father, in the stream of healing love which flows from the Father to the Son. In other words to know ourselves to be members of God’s family, brothers and sisters of Jesus, loved and accepted by God as his children and longing to grow up into the likeness of our brother Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God. When we are where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father then we are able to use the same words and pray the same prayer as Jesus who called God, “Abba” or Daddy. This is the place of intimate relationship with God, this is what it means to be in God and it is the Holy Spirit who stirs up the desire in us to be in that place where we are able rightly and truly to speak intimately with our “Abba” Father.

By stirring up this desire in us, Graham Tomlin has suggested, the Holy Spirit provides the answer to one of the most fundamental questions of existence; the question of identity. We ask ‘Who are we?’ and the Spirit answers, we are beloved sons and daughters of the Father because the spirit has united us to Christ that we might live forever in the love that the Father has for the Son.

That answer to the question of our identity then leads to the question of our vocation – what are we here for? Again, the Holy Spirit is key because the Spirit is given to us as the first fruits of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is still to come but we have the Spirit as the guarantee that the kingdom will come. The Spirit comes from the future to anticipate the kingdom in the present by creating signs of what the kingdom will be like when it comes in full. So, the Spirit initiates the mission of God which is to bring humanity and creation to the completed perfection for which we were originally intended; the time when the whole world will freely return to God, worship him and become like him by living in him. As Colin Gunton has written, “the Spirit is the agent by whom God enables things to become that which they were created to be.”

Our role is to become involved in this work of the Spirit to heal the broken creation, bring it to maturity and reconcile it in Christ. We get involved by creating signs of the coming kingdom here and now in the present. In the conference, as an example, David Ford spoke of being in Rwanda with women whose families had died in the genocide. They spoke in a service about the pain of their loss and then a younger group of women danced. As they danced in praise of God, the older women cried and mourned their loved ones. Joy and grief were combined and both brought simultaneously to God.

Ford also gave the example of the L’Arche Community where those with learning disabilities and their Assistants live and work together. L'Arche is based on Christian principles, welcoming people of all faiths and none. Mutual relationships and trust in God are at the heart of their journey together and the unique value of every person is celebrated and both recognise their need of one another.

At the conference Rowan Williams also told the story of Mother Maria Skobtsova who on Good Friday 1945 changed places with a Jewish woman at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp and went to her death in the gas chambers. Like L’Arche and the Rwandan women, Mother Maria was a sign of the coming kingdom in her passion and sacrifice. Mother Maria said that "either Christianity is fire or there is no such thing." Christianity is fire, passion, desire, longing, yearning for Christ and Christ’s mission. What is it that you desire?

If the Holy Spirit has stirred that fire, passion and desire in you then, like St Symeon, we need to cry out for the Spirit to come to us. To daily pray, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Come to stir up this desire and longing and yearning and passion in me. Come to make my heart restless till it finds its rest in you. Come to cause me to run into your arms of love. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Let us pray,

Almighty God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Together with believers all over the world,
We gather today to glorify Your Name.
Apart from You, we can do nothing.
Transform Your Church into the image of Jesus Christ.
Release Your power to bring healing to the sick,
freedom to the oppressed and comfort to those who mourn.
Pour Your love into our hearts and fill us with compassion
to answer the call of the homeless and the hungry
and to enfold orphans, widows and the elderly in Your care. Amen.

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Victoria Williams - Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is desire in us

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Mary's Runwell and St Chad's Vange:

What is it that you most desire? How would you answer that question? It could be another person that you desire; your current or a future partner. You might answer in terms of other relationships; time with children or grandchildren, for example. It might be money that you desire; a lottery win would do very nicely and give you wealth to do with as you please. You might answer in terms of opportunity; the chance to travel or to enjoy particular types of experiences. Some might answer in terms of dreams; the chance to make a difference in the world, be famous for 15 minutes or to prove they have the X Factor.

Some years ago I was at a conference on ‘The Holy Spirit in the World Today’ where the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said that the Holy Spirit is desire in us. He didn’t, of course, mean that the Spirit is any or all desires that animate us but instead a very particular desire; the desire, longing or yearning or passion for Christ and to become Christ-like. The challenge of the Archbishop’s homily was that we should be consumed with desire for that goal. He quoted St Symeon who prayed "Come, you who have become yourself desire in me, who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one!"

The desire that the Holy Spirit creates in us is a desire to be where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father, in the stream of healing love which flows from the Father to the Son. In other words to know ourselves to be members of God’s family, brothers and sisters of Jesus, loved and accepted by God as his children and longing to grow up into the likeness of our brother Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God. When we are where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father then we are able to use the same words and pray the same prayer as Jesus who called God, “Abba” or Daddy. This is the place of intimate relationship with God, this is what it means to be in God and it is the Holy Spirit who stirs up the desire in us to be in that place where we are able rightly and truly to speak intimately with our “Abba” Father.

By stirring up this desire in us, Graham Tomlin has suggested, the Holy Spirit provides the answer to one of the most fundamental questions of existence; the question of identity. We ask ‘Who are we?’ and the Spirit answers, we are beloved sons and daughters of the Father because the spirit has united us to Christ that we might live forever in the love that the Father has for the Son.

That answer to the question of our identity then leads to the question of our vocation – what are we here for? Again, the Holy Spirit is key because the Spirit is given to us as the first fruits of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is still to come but we have the Spirit as the guarantee that the kingdom will come. The Spirit comes from the future to anticipate the kingdom in the present by creating signs of what the kingdom will be like when it comes in full. So, the Spirit initiates the mission of God which is to bring humanity and creation to the completed perfection for which we were originally intended; the time when the whole world will freely return to God, worship him and become like him by living in him. As Colin Gunton has written, “the Spirit is the agent by whom God enables things to become that which they were created to be.”

Our role is to become involved in this work of the Spirit to heal the broken creation, bring it to maturity and reconcile it in Christ. We get involved by creating signs of the coming kingdom here and now in the present. In the conference, as an example, David Ford spoke of being in Rwanda with women whose families had died in the genocide. They spoke in a service about the pain of their loss and then a younger group of women danced. As they danced in praise of God, the older women cried and mourned their loved ones. Joy and grief were combined and both brought simultaneously to God.

Ford also gave the example of the L’Arche Community where those with learning disabilities and their Assistants live and work together. L'Arche is based on Christian principles, welcoming people of all faiths and none. Mutual relationships and trust in God are at the heart of their journey together and the unique value of every person is celebrated and both recognise their need of one another.

At the conference Rowan Williams also told the story of Mother Maria Skobtsova who on Good Friday 1945 changed places with a Jewish woman at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp and went to her death in the gas chambers. Like L’Arche and the Rwandan women, Mother Maria was a sign of the coming kingdom in her passion and sacrifice. Mother Maria said that "either Christianity is fire or there is no such thing." Christianity is fire, passion, desire, longing, yearning for Christ and Christ’s mission. What is it that you desire?

If the Holy Spirit has stirred that fire, passion and desire in you then, like St Symeon, we need to cry out for the Spirit to come to us. To daily pray, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Come to stir up this desire and longing and yearning and passion in me. Come to make my heart restless till it finds its rest in you. Come to cause me to run into your arms of love. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Let us pray,

Almighty God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Together with believers all over the world,
We gather today to glorify Your Name.
Apart from You, we can do nothing.
Transform Your Church into the image of Jesus Christ.
Release Your power to bring healing to the sick,
freedom to the oppressed and comfort to those who mourn.
Pour Your love into our hearts and fill us with compassion
to answer the call of the homeless and the hungry
and to enfold orphans, widows and the elderly in Your care. Amen.

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Delirious? - Our God Reigns.

The future of Christian Theology

Today I have been at the Barking Episcopal Area Annual Study Day which this year was entitled ‘The Future of Christian Theology’ and led by David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University. David is Acting Director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, the author of several books and editor of Modern Theologians. He is currently working on a theological commentary of St John’s Gospel.

He led us in exploring themes from his most recent book, The Future of Christian Theology (including ‘In a Secular Age: a ‘dramatic code’ for 21st century living,’ ‘Collegiality and Conversation,’ ‘Interfaith Blessing,’ and ‘The Apprentice Theologian’) and in Bible Study together on the Prologue to St John's Gospel.

He gave us two past points of reference for the future of Christian theology; the Prologue of John’s Gospel and the diversity of theologies developed during the twentieth century.

He thought of the Prologue of John’s Gospel as being the most influential single text from scripture because it is a superabundant text to which he is constantly responding. It is an illustration of Ricoeur’s idea that the meaning of a text goes ahead of the text i.e. go on generating new meanings. John’s Gospel was written in order to act like that.

He particularly valued Jean Vanier’s Commentary Drawn into the mystery of Jesus for its understanding of this Gospel’s theology of the endless richness of God. It is a succession Gospel which looks to the future. In the farewell discourses Jesus says you will do greater things than these and be guided into all truth; in action and understanding there will be more and more of what you have experienced to date. The Vanier take on this is that there will be more footwashing. The writer of the Gospel is utterly confident that God has more and more for us in future. God has a future full of good surprises for us; of superabundant love.

The writer of the Gospel has been given the Holy Spirit and is being led into all truth, so is able to write daring, extraordinary theology. The Prologue is a midrash on Genesis 1 interpreting that scripture in ways not articulated before. It is a theology which begins with the interpretation of scripture but is not dull repetition, rather daring interpretation in the Spirit. The writer of this Gospel is saying that good theology interprets scripture and this is done in the Spirit and in relation to Jesus (Christology).

Logos is a term that enables him to relate Jesus to the whole of the Hebrew scriptures (Septuagint). Logos is used for the commandments, the prophetic word, and wisdom literature - so embraces the Torah, the prophets and the wisdom writings. He is immersed in scripture, inhabiting it - he frequently uses the greek word meaning to dwell or inhabit. Logos is also an inter-cultural word as it was a common word in the Hellenistic culture of the day. So there is a dialogue between the Hebrew-Christian tradition and the surrounding culture.

Logos becomes a key term in the Church for developing a Christology. In doing so it was crucial to engage with wider world because all things came into being through Him. Jesus relates to all things, so theology can not ignore any aspect of reality; all peoples, all cultures, all religions - Jesus is involved with everything.

Light shines in darkness; a great natural symbol which sets our imaginations going as we ponder, what does light mean? Theology has to stretch imagination and therefore has to be involved with the Arts. As example, Ford spoke about his relationship with the poet Michael O’Siadhail. Both are each other’s first readers and this has had a remarkable effect on Ford’s theology.

This image is also the beginning of conflict in the Gospel. John is an utter realist about conflict and dualism. It is essential to face up to darkness and evil but he always leads you beyond that. John doesn’t leave you with dualism - darkness doesn’t overcome the light - but he takes the darkness of the cross seriously. Ford was present at a Rwandan service with dancers from genocide survivor communities. As the children began to dance there was a great wave of grief expressed by those widowed through the genocide. There was both ongoing terrible grief and affirmation, through the children dancing to God, that that wasn’t the last word - the cross and resurrection were experienced together.

John the Baptist was a man sent from God as a witness. Our faith is one which is dependent of historical truth. A trust in testimony is central to the Gospel. Belief involves the whole person, everything you are. Faith is inseparable from love.

"His own did not accept him" - the Johannine community had a painful break with the parent Jewish community and the bitterness and pain of that break is apparent here. The Johannine community prizes unity and love. This Gospel is not legalistic and has no Sermon on the Mount. There is an astonishing sense of showing God to the world. Jesus is seen in the way that the community loves one another. They are an intensive community in love for the sake of going out into the world as Jesus was sent (remembering that Jesus was crucified). Being born of God is our identity.

The Word became flesh and entered into history. This is paradoxical for Hellenistic frameworks of understanding. The glory seen in Jesus is that which is seen on the cross. The only mention of grace in the Gospel comes here, in grace and truth. This raises the question, what is John doing in relation to Paul? The answer is that he is doing new theology. Abundance and fullness is set against a packaged theology. There will be more and more truth and wisdom. We have received grace upon grace from Jesus’ fullness.

No one ever seen God but the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has revealed Him. In John 1.18 the climax of this discussion of God and all things, the deepest secret of universe, is this the intimacy of love between the Father and the Son in the Spirit. At the end of the Gospel the beloved disciple leans on the breast of Jesus. We are all beloved disciples in the bosom of Jesus. This is where we are to dwell. We are to mutually indwell Jesus Christ. Vanier has a theology of talking with Jesus, sitting in the presence of the one who loves you.

It’s really just all about Jesus. Jesus leads us into all things. It is about whose face you live before, whose face is in your heart. This forms our identity. We are part of an ongoing drama of love and are not to be distracted by some of the other big frameworks that we might get into. Peter is asked, ‘Do you love me, feed my sheep.’ It doesn’t matter whether the beloved disciple lives to the second coming, the focus is on the ongoing ordinary drama of love - follow me and wash the feet of others.

So what is the future of theology in relation to John’s Gospel. We should be equally daring in our theology. This feels risky - what checks and balances are there? - but unless you grow the tree, you don’t have anything to prune.

The twentieth century was the most fruitful, creative century for theology with theologies from around the world, new voices emerging, such as the voices of women, and the growth of theological institutions. This is utterly unique and how much there is going on is a delight.

What are the key elements of wise and creative Christian theology? There are four elements:

• retrieval - the sense that any decent theology has to re-engage with the sources of scripture and tradition;
• engagement - a simultaneity of engagement with God, Church and World. If theology is weak on any of these three, it is unlikely to be wise or creative;
• thinking - rigorous and imaginative thinking with the excitement of finding new concepts;
• communication - often neglected but intrinsic to content including the need to take the preparation and delivery of sermons more seriously.

Bonhoeffer is the theologian who sums these up best in his own work.

The book of Job gives us a healthy ecology of approaches to faith and theology. Much theology is concerned with indicatives and imperators - this is what you believe and what you do - neat packages which don’t open out to other moods and themes. Job questions, imagines, experiments to try to make theological sense of his trauma without givinhg up on his desire for God. He knows that there is more to grasp. Theology can’t be all wrapped up because God cannot be wrapped up. We have to desire God more and more, this has to be the central mood. It is not, first of all, about us - obeying, inquiring, desiring - instead we are affirmed, questioned, commended, desired by God. Job’s friends offer neat packages. We need to desire God for God’s sake. The key to the book is does Job love (fear) God for nothing - as gift, for God’s sake.

Wisdom cries out and wisdom is a discernment of cries. In a parish, you are surrounded by cries. Ben Quash argues we need to improve the quality of disagreement. We will always have disagreements but need to be committed to loving our enemies. There is something wonderful about being in a church (like the Church of England) which tries to engage with disagreement publicly. At the first Primates meeting, the bishops wrestled with Ephesians - dividing wall comes down through death of Christ - and ended by saying that to turn away from a brother or sister in Christ is to turn away from the cross.

Scriptural reasoning suggests that there are no short cuts to long-term inter-faith engagements where faith is on the table. Much inter-faith engagement has been by those on the fringes of their faith and has been seen as a liberal thing to do. A focus on scriptures is more likely to engage those in the mainstream of each faith. Through scriptural reasoning, you go deeper into your own scriptures, into other scriptures, into the common good, and the community doing the scriptural reasoning - not looking for consensus but friendship. When you realise how deeply diverse all religions are, all generalisations dissolve.

Theology is done for the sake of the name. We do things for God’s sake. Unless that is there, you lose the joy. Like O’Saidhail writing poems about jazz and saying, the only end of jazz is jazz.

What we inhabit/dwell in is spirituality. The mystery of God is what comes as and when everyone testifies to God. "No one comes to the Father but by me," John reports Jesus as saying but John has already told in the Prologue that all things relate to Jesus. Karl Barth wrote that Christians are those who, in the light of Jesus Christ, are those who are permitted to hope the best for all people.

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Jonathan Butler - Falling In Love With Jesus.

Conversations and collaborations

"Our society is not simply secular; nor is it simply religious; it is both religious and secular in complex ways. If it is to work well there need to be huge numbers of conversations and collaborations across religious and secular boundaries." David Ford
I found the above quote in a post on the London Borough's Faiths Network blog and it encapsulates a large part of what I was trying to say last night as part of a visit to St John's Seven Kings by a group of ordinands and readers in training from St Mellitus College.

After describing to the group the multi-faith, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic context of our parish - as it contains significant Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities together with a smaller Jewish community - I then talked them through some of the key arguments from the Church of England's Presence and Engagement report based on the recognition that  “the multi Faith context is now the real context in which a substantial and increasing number of parishes and proportion of the population actually live.”

“The report focuses on these churches and their contexts" - parishes like St John's Seven Kings - because they are increasing significantly and will extend further; because they represent many issues that are strikingly new for local churches in this country; and because they connect the local and the global in many sharply focussed ways.

Furthermore, the situation and experiences of these churches are important learning and teaching opportunities to be offered to the whole Church.”

The question which needs to be asked and answered in and through these parishes is, “in what ways is the Spirit calling churches and individuals to engage with the new diversities?” These parishes provide new opportunities for the learning and future of the Church in the UK, including:

“Opportunity to learn more about other human beings around us, especially those sincerely engaged in seeking God. Opportunity to present our Christian understandings of God by the lives we live and the words we speak. Opportunity to contribute to the common good and above all, opportunity to learn more about trusting in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

The words 'presence' and 'engagement' provide a framework for thinking through our approach to these opportunities. “The word ‘presence' points to our incarnational theology and the word ‘engagement’ to our pentecostal theology ... Presence can be largely passive, a simple acceptance that this is where we are, without any meaningful recognition of the relationship between our presence, the presence of others and the real presence of Christ who seeks constantly to bring human beings into relationship with each other in love. But the Spirit of God is constantly seeking to move us on from the fact of presence to the action of engagement – engagement as a public sign of our commitment to the wellbeing of the world and to the discovery of the Kingdom in the midst of the places where we are present.”

As a result of this thinking, we have sought to renew and further develop the community/outward facing focus at St John's Seven Kings. We have worked with the kingdom model of mission - God>World>Church - which can be summed up in Rowan Williams' phrase, "Mission is seeing what God is doing and joining in."  This model of mission starts with action and partnerships in the community, for the sake of the kingdom. Church is then for those who respond to the call to share in God’s transforming mission.

We have, therefore, promoted and developed the St John’s Centre as a centre for the community - 20+ community groups/activities and 100s of Centre users. We have also become actively involved in local community engagement – Take Action for Seven Kings / Seven Kings and Newbury Park Resident's Association / Living Streets campaigns for improved community facilities. We have also developed a Community Garden, as a visible sign that we are here and we are for the community.

On this basis, mission and ministry can be understood as inviting others to share in a conversation between God and humanity about the nature of life. Mission and ministry then become about identifying the conversations that people in the parish may want to start with God or into which they could be drawn and contributing to those conversations (through action, meetings, preaching, press coverage, projects etc) from a Christian perspective. The starting point is to ask ‘what are the conversation starters in my parish?’

The Bible is, as Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has said, the record of the dialogue in which God and humanity find one another: “Abraham says: God, why did you abandon the world? God says to Abraham: Why did you abandon Me? And there then begins that dialogue between Heaven and Earth which has not ceased in 4,000 years. That dialogue in which God and Man find one another … Only thus, can we understand the great dialogues between God and Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job.”

Jesus says in John 8: 28 that he speaks just what the Father has taught him and in John 11: 42 that the Father always hears him. These two verses indicate that Jesus and the Father are in a constant dialogue or conversation. This understanding of God and mission is set out clearly in a translation of the prologue to John's Gospel, based on Erasmus' translation of logos as conversation, which I first came across in the Methodist Church report Time to Talk of God:

“It all arose out of a conversation, conversation within God, in fact the conversation was God. So God started the discussion, and everything came out of this, and nothing happened without consultation.

This was the life, life that was the light of men, shining in the darkness, a darkness which neither understood nor quenched its creativity.

John, a man sent by God, came to remind people about the nature of the light so that they would observe. He was not the subject under discussion, but the bearer of an invitation to join in.

The subject of the conversation, the original light, came into the world, the world that had arisen out of his willingness to converse. He fleshed out the words but the world did not understand. He came to those who knew the language, but they did not respond. Those who did became a new creation (his children). They read the signs and responded.

These children were born out of sharing in the creative activity of God. They heard the conversation still going on, here, now, and took part, discovering a new way of being people.

To be invited to share in a conversation about the nature of life was for them, a glorious opportunity not to be missed.” (John 1: 1-14 revisited)

This understanding of mission fits well with the HOPE Together initiative which asks us to imagine all over the country in communities large and small, churches working together, bringing Jesus’ story alive through word and action: “A new model of mission seems to have emerged across the UK in recent years combining words and actions, being good news as well as proclaiming good news … Grass roots collaboration between local churches served by national agencies allows the empowerment of Christians to serve their communities in ways which are appropriate to their situations.” The whole Church, for the whole Nation, for the whole year: An evaluation of HOPE08

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World Wide Message Tribe - We Talk to the Lord.