Lord, teach us to pray

‘Lord Teach us to Pray’ was a School of Prayer held as a marvellous Parish Away Day for St Martin-in-the-Fields at St Mellitus College last Saturday. In exploring the theme of prayer together, we asked - Why do we pray? How can we pray? What should we pray for?

Led by our clergy team and a very wide range of members of the St Martin’s congregation the day offered a wonderful chance to explore a broad range of traditions and practices of prayer including through music, meditation, intercession, a labyrinth, movement and drama, pottery and art. There was the chance to choose the forms of prayer that interested us the most and to learn about or try those that were unfamiliar to us. There was also time to pray together and enjoy time together as a community, including a shared silent Eucharist. I particularly enjoyed a session on centring prayer and the opportunity to walk a labyrinth once again.

I gave a presentation on Icons and Images which encouraged participants to both pay attention to images when using icons or other images as part of prayer and also to look beyond the image as a window into the divine. I briefly unpacked something of the history and theology of icons but also looked at the influence of icon painting on modern art and therefore ways in which all images can be used within prayer, particularly when prayer is understood as, the words of Simone Weil, absolute unmixed attention.

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Taize - Let All Who Are Thirsty Come.

Karamsar Gurdwara visit

Yesterday I took a group of ordinands from the North Thames Ministerial Training Course at St Mellitus College on a visit to the Karamsar Gurdwara in Ilford.

The Gurdwara building was originally a Labour Hall which, in the early 1990’s, was acquired and converted into a Gurdwara by the local Sikh community under the guidance of Sant Partap Singh. Initially a single storey building with a prayer hall (Darbar) in the front and the community kitchen (Langar) towards the rear, the Gurdwara enjoyed tremendous success by catering to the spiritual and emotional needs of the community and soon outgrew the existing facilities. 

In 1998 a project was started to build a newly designed Gurdwara. The culmination of this effort is the magnificent Gurdwara now standing in place of the old Labour Hall. It was officially opened in April 2005 to coincide with Vaisakhi celebrations – commemorating the birth of the Khalsa Panth.

The building gracefully combines traditional sikh and mughlai designs with modern western architecture. Its façade and distinctive domes are perhaps its most striking features. Carved entirely from pink sandstone in Rajasthan-India, it was shipped to the UK and reassembled in-situ. The foyer is a grand and simple space with a skylight bringing in natural light all the way from the third floor. It has prayer halls on the first and second floors with the Langar hall on the ground floor. The interior is all white and uncomplicated.  

Our guide to the Gurdwara was Lakhvir Singh Bhui, who shared stories about the Gurus with us as well as information about Sikh beliefs and practices. It was a very interesting visit for us all and everyone was impressed with the hospitality and welcome. 

For anyone wanting to find out more about interfaith engagement the national and Greater London Presence & Engagement sites are the best first ports of call - http://www.londonpen.org/ and http://www.presenceandengagement.org.uk/.

The training materials I have prepared for parishes on Living with other faiths can be downloaded from the Greater London PEN site - http://www.londonpen.org/?page_id=702.

Information about interfaith initiatives in our parish can be found at: Sophia Hub (multi-faith social enterprise project) - http://stjohns7kings.org.uk/sophia-hub; and Scriptural Reasoning Group - http://joninbetween.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/scriptural%20reasoning.

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Noel Paul Stookey - One And Many.

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.

Seek the Welfare of the City

"Inspirational"..."great"..."brain and soul food"... these were some of the responses to the Seek the Welfare of the City conference organised by the Greater London Presence and Engagement Network, King's College London and St Mellitus College last week. Many of the talks - including keynote addresses by Bishop Doug Miles and Bishop Richard Chartres, and sessions with Lucy Winkett, Giles Goddard and Russ Rook are online here. Over 250 people attended the event, held at Holy Trinity Brompton and St Paul's Hammersmith, with presentations on the theology and practice of urban ministry.

Earthed in practice this was an opportunity to reflect on urban mission and ministry through a mix of case studies, keynote speaches and panel discussions. The venue for the first day was Holy Trinity Brompton and the keynote speaker Bishop Doug Miles, Koinonia Baptist Church, Baltimore. Panel topics were:- Missional church in practice; Christian Social enterprise - developing sustainable and resilient forms of social welfare provision; Urban spirituality and discipleship - beyond the rural and the monastic.

The venue for day two was St Paul's Hammersmith. Panel topics were Christian social and political engagement in multi-faith contexts and a roundtable and plenary discussion of Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilites of Faithful Witness by Luke Bretherton.

You can follow the conference Twitter feed here. Luke Bretherton's comments summed up the mood of the conference well: "Something rather special emerged as people began to connect outside of stereotypes and listen afresh - together."

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After The Fire - Life In The City.

St Albans Festival exhibition & procession

Yesterday I visited the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban before leading a session on transforming the workplace for students of St Mellitus College. The Cathedral was preparing for the Festival Pilgrimage with its giant, spectacular puppet procession to the Cathedral to witness the re-enactment of the events leading up to the death of Britain's first martyr.

Also part of the St Albans Festival was the Magna Carta Showcase in the North Transept with the opportunity to view a replica of the Magna Carta, one of the most iconic and revolutionary documents in English history. Alongside this display was an interesting selection of art pieces created by Foundation art students from Oaklands College from the creative brief to design something in line with the essence of Magna Carta. The students were asked to produce original artwork celebrating the rights and freedom of human beings and those works judged most inspirational and imagiative have been displayed.

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Pierce Pettis - Loves Gonna Carry Me Home.

The Holy Spirit in the world today

Graham Tomlin, Jurgen Moltman, Ken Costa and Rowan Williams

Q & A with Moltmann, Costa & Williams

Miroslav Volf

I've spent today with friends and colleagues from the Diocese at the conference on 'The Holy Spirit in the world today' organised by St Mellitus College and held at Holy Trinity Brompton.

It has been a lengthy (made longer by a station evacuation at Holborn) but very fruitful day hearing from some of the most interesting and stimulating contemporary theologians including David Ford, Jurgen Moltmann, Miroslav Volf and Rowan Williams.

The day got off to the best possible start with a wonderful homily from Rowan Williams in which he spoke of the Holy Spirit as desire or longing to become the new humanity for which we have been created by God. Quoting St Symeon - "Come, you who have become yourself desire in me, who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one!" - and Mother Maria Skobtsova - "either Christianity is fire or there is no such thing" - he argued that the Holy Spirit is the desire in us to be where Christ is - God's child - and to become Christ-like - self-emptying. True freedom, he said, is freedom for a full humanity. Full humanity is Christ-shaped. Freedom is kenotic - for self emptying - humanity overwhelmed by the energy of gift.

By contrast Ken Costa seemed to me to provide only a lightweight comic turn between the heavyweights with a contribution which had plenty of jokes but was light on illustrations of his theme that the Holy Spirit was active in the world of work and economics. Philip Ritchie and Graham Hamborg however assured me that that message was a necessary one for those who tend to view the Spirit as primarily working through the Church and, to be fair to Costa in the later Q&A with Moltmann and Williams he did provide examples to back up his argument.

Moltmann, like Williams, was simply wonderful. A brief initial interview by Costa revealed the humanity which informs his theology and then he spoke on 'The Church in the power of the Spirit'. His perspective is a European theological voice not commonly heard in Church debates within the UK which is informed by the destruction of state Christianity that occured in Europe following the First World War but which is only slowly occuring in the UK. As a result, he is comfortable seeing the Spirit's initiative in and the need for the Church to ally itself with human rights organisations and Greenpeace, alliances over which much of the UK Church still agonises or resists. He emphasised the extent to which his theology had been a response to world events - The Theology of Hope was a response to Germany after the War and The Crucified Christ a response to the assassination of Martin Luther King - and an attempt to resource the Church for ministering in the light of those events.

'Think globally, act locally' is a lesson that the Church can inhabit and so he began with stories of the Church in Germany and his own church of St Jacob's Tübingen. This is a church which has moved from being a church for the people (religious caretaking) to become an inviting, participatory community church of the people where the gifts of all are trusted. The opposite of poverty and property, he argued, is community because in community we discover our true wealth the spirit of solidarity through which all our needs can be met. Such spirit-filled communities are seen in the fulfilling of Joel's prophecy at Pentecost and the descriptions of the Jerusalem Church in Acts. Such spirit-filled communities are bridgeheads to new life on earth where righteousness will dwell.

He posited three paradigms of Church - the hierarchical, the hierarchical community and the charismatic community - which equated to the Father above us, Christ with us, and the Spirit within us. The Church is come of age, he suggested, so we are no longer just God's servants or his children but, his friends. Peace with God, however, makes us restless in the world and a revolutionary Christiaity will both call the world evil and seek to change it, ultimately by reconciling the cosmos. The Spirit of God is no respector of social distinctions which divide us and awakens democratic energies for a new humanity.

Graham Cray drew on John V. Taylor's The Go-Between God to identify criteria for discerning the work of the Spirit in leading God's mission and the part that the Church plays within it. Discernment involves learning of what God is doing and learning to do it with him. This means understanding the shape of the Spirit's ministry. The Spirit is essentially relational and arranges the meaningless pieces of reality until they suddenly fall into shape. The Spirit anticipates in the present, things which are still to come. The Church is, therefore, to live in each culture as an anticipation of the future. Christ-likeness is the ultimate test of the Spirit's presence and where the Spirit is making Jesus more real neither caution nor convention or reputation ought to make us resist his possession of us. The Spirit is manifest in the translation of Christ in all times and cultures, so that he is multiply incarnate.

Cray's specific criteria for discernment were: charism, character, content, characteristics, community, cultivation, and experience. However, each of these is open to interpretation as was illustrated by his response to a question regarding the Episcopal Church which he thought to have departed from scripture. The actions of the Episcopal Church in relation to the LGBT community could be understood within Cray's criteria as a discerning of a move of the Spirit in a direction that subverts previous understandings of scripture, as in his biblical example from Acts of Peter's re-evaluation of his understanding of God's mission in response to the Spirit's work in Cornelius.

Paul Westin helpfully summarised Lesslie Newbigin's understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in mission. Newbigin blazed a trinitarian trail in thinking about mission as he responded to the changing thinking seen at the major mission conferences of the twentieth century. For Newbigin pneumatology is mission, as the gifts of the Spirit are always for mission. It is the Spirit which takes the initiative bringing the Church after, in contrast to the Church-centric focus of the 1938 mission conference in India. The Spirit brings new forms of Church into being and by doing so works towards unity which is the deepest expression of the Gospel.

Miroslav Volf posed the key question in a globalised world of whether and how religious exclusivists can live comfortably with each other i.e. is monotheism by its very nature exclusivist? He answered this question by arguing that Christian monotheism contains democratising and universalist aspects which justify political pluralism, including the Spirit of justice and of many languages/cultures, so that a consistent religious exclusivist ought to be a political pluralist.

Having set his question up in an interfaith context I felt that Volf should have explored an interfaith answer and was disappointed that he unpacked only a Christian answer. Others thought that this decision was appropriate to the nature of and audience at this conference. As a side issue he also suggested that the example of religious conflict in India indicates that the pluralism of Hinduism is no more effective at warding off exclusivism than is monotheism. This would have had my friend, the Hindu educationalist, Jay Lakhani fuming at the suggestion that his faith should be defined by its worst and therefore least representative practices (an approach that we rightly resist when used by Richard Dawkins' to stereotype Christianity), particularly when he views the pluralism of Hinduism as the solution to religious exclusivity (a position which has an imperial aspect as it requires other faiths to reframe themselves in Hindu terms). All this in my view indicates a need to examine this issue within the worldview of each of the monotheistic faiths, although this too might involve remaining within, as opposed to challenging, the exclusivist mindset.

David Ford summed up a part of what the conference has covered to date with the following questions: What is real humanity in the Spirit? How do we relate the world and the Spirit? How do we shape the Church globally in the Spirit?

Ford also gave these key elements in wise and creative theology inspiered by the Spirit:

• retrieval of the past and of scripture;
• engagement with God, the Church and the world;
• mastering the disciplines of thought;
• wrestling with mediums to come to and to commuicate new understanding.

In his experience intensive conversations had led to the greatest breakthroughs. Conversation and dialogue is therefore a key location for the movement of the Spirit in the world.

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Hillsong United and Tim Hughes - Consuming Fire.

Canon's installation

Philip Ritchie

A collection of clergy at the after-service reception - Paul Trathen, Brigid Main, Graham Hamborg & Gordon Tarry

Today I was at Chelmsford Cathedral for a service at which Philip Ritchie was installed as a Non-Residentiary Canon of the Cathedral.

Philip is responsible for the provision of adult education and training resources in the Diocese of Chelmsford including the Course in Christian Studies, Lent and Eastertide Schools and Reader Training. He is also on the staff of the North Thames Ministerial Training Course (now part of St Mellitus College).

A Canon is an honour given to distinguished people who have made a significant contribution to the life of the Church across the Diocese and beyond. Philip fully deserves this honour for the work he has done in developing training within the Diocese. I have greatly enjoyed working with him on The Big Picture courses that we have run together with Paul Trathen for several years as part of the Lent and Eastertide Schools and in the development of the Christians in the Workplace resource pack.

Bishop Laurie wrote in tonight's Order of Service that "On an occasion like this, when our priests or deacons are made Canons, clergy who have served the Diocese in particular ways and from every quarter can be honoured by us all as we give thanks to God for their ministry. They represent so much that is splendid in the Christian Church as it goes diligently about its business of worshipping Almighty God and proclaiming the Gospel of Christ in word and deed."

Another example of of a priest doing just that was given as a result of meeting up with Paul Trathen, who was also at the service and who gave me a whole pack of materials that he has recently collected about the ministry of Bernard Walke.

At about the same time that I came across Annie & Bernard Walke through seeing some of Annie's work in an exhibition catalogue while in Cornwall, Paul had bought a copy of Bernard's autobiography Twenty Years at St. Hilary in secondhand bookshop in St Davids Pembrokeshire.

A few days after seeing my post on the Walke's and commenting on the synchronicity of our both discovering this couple's work and ministry simultaneously, Paul was in Cornwall himself, a short distance from St Hilary's, and able to visit and collect the materials that he gave me tonight.

As a result, I now have postcards of some of the artworks commissioned by Bernard for St Hilary's, a biography of Bernard by Donald Allchin, Bernard's autobiography to borrow, and a CD of the 1934 recording of Bernard's radio play Bethlehem as performed by members of the congregation of St Hilary's.

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The Innocence Mission - I Never Knew You From The Sun.

A narrow FOCA?

One of the problems I have with the GAFCON conference and the resulting Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA) is the way in which their arguments deny the existence of any valid Biblical schlarship other than their own.

They begin by setting up a stereotype of liberal scholarship as a strawman against which to rally their troops:

"The first fact is the acceptance and promotion within the provinces of the Anglican Communion of a different ‘gospel’ (cf. Galatians 1:6-8) which is contrary to the apostolic gospel. This false gospel undermines the authority of God’s Word written and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the author of salvation from sin, death and judgement. Many of its proponents claim that all religions offer equal access to God and that Jesus is only a way, not the way, the truth and the life. It promotes a variety of sexual preferences and immoral behaviour as a universal human right. It claims God’s blessing for same-sex unions over against the biblical teaching on holy matrimony. In 2003 this false gospel led to the consecration of a bishop living in a homosexual relationship." (from the GAFCON declaration)

Then this is set against the clarity and undeniable truth of their position. So, for example, Archbishop Peter Jensen said at the post-GAFCON meeting at All Souls Langham Place (taken from summary notes posted by John Richardson):

"First, brothers and sisters, the Bible is clear and the Liberals know it is clear.

Secondly, this is crucial. Sexual immorality leads you outside the kingdom of God, just as does greed. It is not a second-order issue.

Thirdly, if you continue in fellowship you are endorsing the lie and are complicit in it ...

The answer was that we must be clear that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a transforming gospel, which does not leave you where you are — which is what Liberalism does in simply affirming you. The testimony matters. We want to hear you are committed to the path of light and repentance."

The final move is to claim that Evangelicalism is deeply divided (because not all evangelicals agree with the views of the GAFCON participants!) and that we must all unite (i.e. agree with the GAFCON declaration) against the common foe. For example, here is Peter Jensen again:

"English Evangelicalism is terribly divided. We cannot continue our tribal warfare. We need to advance, and it is the gospel and evangelism which will bring us together under godly focussed leadership."

Most of these same components were also in the speech that Archbishop Greg Venables made to the All Souls meeting:

"The doubt being cast on the gospel and the person of Jesus is not the result of modern knowledge, it is the result of what the serpent said to Eve in Eden: ‘Did God say?’ Eve took a ‘modern’ approach: ‘I am modern, I know better than my husband.’ Thank God for those who have taught us to stay faithful to the word of God.

The modern doubt did not begin with modernism and the search for the historical Jesus. It began when the same tempter came to Jesus in the wilderness saying, ‘If you are the Son of God.’ Either Jesus is the Son of God or he is not. If not, Christianity is a sham. CS Lewis: Jesus is mad, bad or God.

In recent times it is about a shift from a biblical paradigm to rationalism, not under the authority of God and his word. The shift was from an open universe, where God can intervene, to a closed universe, where we are subject to determinism and religion is a subjective event for you.
Also a shift from universe where truth and non-truth are opposed to one where truth and non-truth can be brought together to find a new truth. Synthesis is not the way God works.

When the Global South came together they read the word of God together from Galatians 1, ‘I am astonished you are deserting him ...’ This is not about inclusion but about walking away from the gospel. If you want to understand this, go to Packer’s Fundamentalism and the Word of God written fifty years ago: the uninhibited character of American liberalism ... God’s character is one of pure benevolence, sin separates no-one from God, Christ is man’s saviour only as a perfect teacher and example, not divine, God only in the sense of God-conscious, no miracles, Christianity differs from other religions only as the ‘best and highest’, the Bible is not a divine record of revelation, doctrine is not the God-given word.!"

One problem with all this is that committed, responsible Biblical scholarship does exist which arrives at totally different conclusions to those of the GAFCON participants and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA) emerging from GAFCON. Examples of some such approaches can be found here and here and here and here and here and here (and these are just a few easily accessible internet based examples from a much larger pool). However, this scholarship is either ignored by FOCA advocates or dismissed as being part of the liberal stereotype that is perceived as 'the enemy.'

Last Wednesday I was at a service in St Paul's Cathedral to launch St Mellitus College (a report of what was a wonderfully creative service has been posted at Philip's Tree House). In his sermon Bishop Richard Chartres said the following, which I understand to be a critique of the narrow understanding of the Bible and biblical scholarship that underpins GAFCON and its aftermath:

"We can understand this better if we consider the nature of the Bible which is where we say faith “is uniquely revealed”. We want neat orderly systems which our minds can comprehend and God gives us Himself in the answer he gave to Moses – simply “I am”. We want absolute truth nailed down in propositional form and we are given a huge drama, a symphony of the many ways in which God has related to human kind. We want bottom lines for life and God gives us those and then moves beyond them to the law of love. We want programmes to follow, preferably with SMART objectives and the Bible teaches us to follow closely after God when he calls. We want something tangible and the Bible instructs us to have faith in the unseen. The Bible reveals truth, tragic and glorious; bloody and violent; nurturing and inspiring by breaking in upon our understanding from another realm and taking us by surprise."

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Buddy Miller - With God On Our Side.