Standing proud in the heart of Manchester’s university district on the exterior of St Peter’s House, a 22 x 13 foot billboard towers above the streets below, giving a refreshingly affirming message to passing students and commuters. It says, ‘You are enough’. It would be easy to assume this is an affirmation of the kind of individualism that says ‘I’m alright, Jack’ as ‘I’m looking after No.1.’ However, as St Peter’s House is the base for the Christian chaplaincy team for the Manchester Universities and the Royal Northern College of Music, that’s unlikely to be the intended message.
The artist who created the piece, Micah Purnell, notes that, ‘Capitalist ideology aims to impart the notion that we are worthy of love and belonging - once we have bought into the product or service. Consumerism wraps things up in neat little packages and sells them as idealised gifts of perfection. Advertising props up this notion with the assumption that we are inadequate - stealing our love of ourselves, and selling it back at a price.’
He goes on to say that Brené Brown, a research Professor at Houston University, has found through extensive quantitative research that the one thing that keeps us from love and belonging is the fear that we are not worthy of love and belonging. She found that those who fully experience joy and live wholeheartedly have four characteristics in common: the courage to accept their imperfection; compassion towards themselves first; the ability to let go of who they should be in order to be who they really are, and to embrace vulnerability and unknowing. His installation, therefore, says, ‘You’re not perfect, you’re never going to be, and that’s the good news.’ You are enough, as you are.
At the last HeartEdge conference in Edinburgh, Cormac Russell, the Managing Director of Nurture Development the lead partner in Europe for Asset-Based Community Development, also said, ‘You are enough’. His point was that in every community there are leaders, makers, traders, networkers, peace brokers, gift givers and receivers, labelled/marginalized folks and connectors. Some of these folks then get together with a few of their neighbours and initiate a project; organize an event, share casual moments, help one another or respond to an immediate crisis that impacts the wider community.
He went on to point out that what often happens where a community group comes up with a great idea, develops it as a project and makes it successful; is that when it grows; they receive funding and go on to employ a paid worker to run the project. As a result power and responsibility relocate from the residents to the professional. The residents in question either pull back expecting the professional to take leadership responsibilities. Or they stay involved but solely as advisers on a management committee, no longer as the makers and producers of the effort, but as the key informants, advisers and sometimes managers of paid staff. Additionally, initiatives that are, in practice, led by paid, albeit well meaning, practitioners, not by local people, inextricably link the longevity of the initiative to future funding and paying the salaries of professionals.
By countering that kind of development Asset-based Community Development essentially says that the work of building community belongs to those who reside in that area as a birthright, it is the work of near neighbours; not salaried strangers. That means if neighbours don’t do it - it won’t be done. Cormac was saying, ‘You are enough’ to us, because, in any community, residents can initiate their own action and tap into local assets that are within their own control. That doesn’t preclude future action to address structural issues, but it does build a wider base of residents who can deepen their sense of what they want from outside because they know what they internal assets they have.
Similarly, in HeartEdge, we believe that we can do unbelievable things together if we start with one another’s assets, not our deficits. In a community of fear – a deficit culture - we begin with our hurts and our stereotypes, and find a hundred reasons why we can’t do things or certain kinds of people don’t belong. Churches today are often quick to attribute the decline in numbers attending church to a hostile culture or an indifferent, distracted population or even a sinful generation; but much slower to recognise that our situation is significantly of our own making. But when we do take off labels like disabled or wealthy or migrant or evangelical or single and instead see qualities like passionate or committed or generous or enthusiastic or humble then there’s no limit to what a community of hope can do.
We believe that churches and communities thrive when the gifts of all their members are released and they build one another’s assets. Sharing our particular assets (the skills, experience, insights and ideas) with other members will foster a wider understanding and model the practice of hospitality towards others. God is giving the church everything it needs for the renewal of its life in the people who find themselves to be on the edge.
If we’re looking for where the future church is coming from, look at what the church and society has so blithely rejected. The life of the church is about constantly recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives. And, as in Asset-Based Community Development, that includes all those in the wider community with whom we can partner. We believe the Holy Spirit is moving beyond the conventional notion of church, and believe in modelling the life of heaven by being open to partnership with what the Spirit is doing in the world. That, too, is a way of saying ‘We are enough.’
The temptations faced by Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4.1-11) were all temptations to see his situation and his trust in God as being insufficient, or ‘not enough.’ His temptations began with the reality of his situation, the fact that he was hungry because of fasting for 40 days. He had not had enough food and the temptation was to say that there was not enough and use his power to create food from nowhere. Jesus responded by saying that the words of God were enough for him. The second temptation was in regard to his mission and his then obscurity. Jesus was on his own in the wilderness and was offered celebrity and fame because his obscurity was clearly not enough to achieve his mission. Jesus’ response was essentially saying that the path he was following was enough. The final temptation was linked, but, instead of being focused on fame, was focused on power. Jesus’ mission was to save all humanity and he was offered power over all humanity as a shortcut to success and as recognition of the lack of power he possessed as an insignificant carpenter in a backwater of the mighty Roman Empire. Jesus responded by saying that God’s way was enough for him.
Jesus’ was tempted on the basis that who he was and what he had were not enough to achieve the mission he had been given. He was tempted to think of himself, his situation and God, in terms of scarcity and deficit. But deficit is not our modus operandi as Christians. We don’t have to look far for a mission statement for the church. Jesus said, ‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly’ (John 10.10). Living abundant life; that’s what the Father intends, the Son embodies, the Spirit facilitates.
Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields says that, as Christians, we are called to live in such a way that gratefully receives the abundance God is giving us, evidences the transformation from scarcity to abundance to which God is calling us, dwells with God in that abundant life, and shares that abundance far and wide. Jesus is our model of abundant life; his life, death and resurrection chart the transformation from the scarcity of sin and death to the abundance of healing and resurrection; he longs to bring all humankind into reconciled and flourishing relationship with God, one another, ourselves and all creation. Discipleship describes inhabiting that abundant life. Ministry involves building up the church to embody that abundant life. Mission names the ways that abundant life is practised, shared and discovered in the world at large.
In the middle of the wilderness where he literally had nothing, Jesus received God’s abundance, the abundant life that would sustain him throughout his journey to the cross, and beyond. Similarly, in a time of scarcity, when the church in the West seems to be getting smaller; and the church seems to be becoming narrower, we need to recognise that God is still giving the church everything it needs for the renewal of its life, often in those people who find themselves to be on the edge. A true gospel is one where we receive all the gifts God is giving us, especially the ones that the church has for so long despised or patronised.
Lent is commonly though of as being about those things we give up. But Lent is ultimately about our opening up. Opening up our lives to receive more of the abundance and the gifts that God is giving to us. We give up some of our usual practices in order to have more time for God and with God. More time to open up to him and deepen our relationship with him. That was what Jesus was doing in the wilderness and, like him, we too can discover that, as we receive all that God is giving to us, God is enough, God's abundance is enough, our communities are enough, and we are enough.
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Maurice Duruflé - Ubi Caritas.
