Shaped and defined by Jesus

One of the big dilemma’s parent’s face is how to enable their children to become independent and make their own way in the world. At the point that their children ’leave the nest,’ parents have understandable worries about the extent to which their children will cope in the ‘real world’ and what the world will do to their children. While we know that life in the ‘real world’ involves confronting challenges and, at times, dangers, we know too that children cannot be kept ‘wrapped in cotton wool’; they have to be enabled to mature into adults and developing independence from those who have nurtured them as children is an important element in maturing.

In Acts 20.28–end and John 17.11–19, we hear Jesus and Paul expressing similar anxieties in relation to the disciples and churches that they are leaving behind. Jesus prays for God the Father to protect the disciples in a world which may hate them and to which they do not fully belong. Similarly, Paul commends his churches to God expecting that, at times, they will be attacked by savage wolves.

Their sense is that the world can be a conflicted place for Christians and we might therefore expect them to pray that we should be kept entirely away from danger. Instead, just as parents can ultimately do more harm to their children by keeping them cooped up at home, so the place Jesus and Paul want Christians to be is in the world, despite its dangers, but for us to be shaped by God there, and not by the world. That seems to be what Jesus means when he says that his disciples do not belong to the world, just as he does not belong to the world.

Eugene Petersen, in his paraphrase of this passage, puts it like this: “I gave them your word; the godless world hated them because of it, because they didn’t join the world’s ways, just as I didn’t join the world’s ways. I’m not asking that you take them out of the world but that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no more defined by the world than I am defined by the world. Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth; your word is consecrating truth.”

In these passages, both Jesus and Paul spoke of Christians as sanctified. To be sanctified, as Eugene Peterson, makes clear is to be shaped and defined by God (his word and the message of his grace), rather than shaped and defined by the world. If Christianity means anything and makes any difference in the world then it must be because we live and act differently as a result of its influence.

In the Diocese of Chelmsford, where I ministered before coming to St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Diocesan strategy is called ‘Transforming Presence’ and is based on that same thought that “there should be something distinctive and attractive about the way we live our lives,” as, “if our lives are indistinguishable from anyone else’s it is little wonder that people conclude that the Christian faith is our hobby; a fascinating and exhausting pastime, but not the life changing transformation that is evident in the lives we lead Monday to Saturday.”

That is the prayer of Jesus and Paul, in these passages, that we grow as Christians by living in the ‘real world’ but shaped and defined (consecrated) by the Spirit and words of Jesus as we do so. As a result, instead of our lives being shaped and defined by the world, we become a transforming presence for Christ within the world.

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Delirious? - Paint The Town Red.

Christian Aid Week - coming soon!

For a growing number of people across the world, the horror of war is part of daily life. War tears lives apart. You can help put them back together. Christian Aid Week 2014 is an opportunity to give people a future without fear.

Tales of people from Colombia, South Sudan and Iraq feature in this year's appeal and bring to life some of the fantastic work we are supporting through Christian Aid.

The good news is that individuals, communities and churches like St John’s can make a real difference this Christian Aid Week. Last year, a magnificent 20,000 churches across the country helped raise £12m for Christian Aid Week. Thanks to our efforts and those of the other 19,999 churches involved, many more people can look forward to a future free from poverty.

You can make a real difference. That is the message when it comes to so much of church life. God says, ‘I made you with gifts and talents and what to empower you by my Spirit to use them to make a real difference.’ The Church says, ‘We need a new flowering of lay ministry in order to be a Transforming Presence in our parishes.’ Christian Aid says we can make a real difference to the lives of those in poverty around our world. In our Sophia Hub we train people to develop ideas and skills that will make a real difference in our local community. Many of you have for many years been making a real difference locally through your work (paid and voluntary) in particular through care for the elderly or homeless.

At our APCM I highlighted the fact that people who have joined St John’s in the last seven years are getting actively involved in our mission and ministry: on the PCC; among our Sunday School and Youth Group leaders; in our Mission Weekend planning group; on our All-Age Service planning group; assisting with our finances; servers and sidespeople; and assisting in the office.

This is a real encouragement. My sabbatical provides a further opportunity to see this in practice as (in addition to those clergy who will come and lead services) many of you will play your part in continuing the mission and ministry of St John’s during the time when I am away.

Sabbaticals, like interregnums, can be an opportunity for all to see that the Church is actually the whole people of God actively working together. As Christian Aid emphasise during Christian Aid, you can make a real difference.

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The Cars - Drive.

Transforming Presence: Reimagining Ministry

All of those exploring the possibility of ordained ministry in the Chelmsford Diocese are asked to do the priesthood project. This involves interviewing a selection of Church of England ministers from across the church traditions, reading a particular book on ministry and then exploring the nature of priesthood in an essay drawing on the interviews and your reading.

When I did this at the end of the 1990s I took Ephesians 4. 1 – 16 as the key text for understanding Church and ministry. So I am very pleased that Bishop Stephen has chosen the same passage when he writes about ‘Reimagining Ministry’ in Transforming Presence:

“I would see my role, as vicar in a parish church, as being one of serving the royal priesthood in that locality by identifying, developing and co-ordinating the gifts and roles of the people within the priesthood so that we become a fully functioning part of the body of Christ able to reveal Jesus clearly in practice. Ephesians 4: 11-16 describes this as the task of every leader within Christ’s body:

“It was he [Jesus] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”      

The differing roles of leaders mentioned here combine to realise the same aim – preparation of God’s people for ministry (works of service). It is God’s people who minister - who serve and are served - and it is the leaders of the church who prepare God’s people for that service. Both serving and being served build up the body of Christ until the whole measure of the fullness of Christ is attained. Such service will include the priestly sacrifice of whole lives, possessions, praise, money, and evangelism.

The corporate nature of full and effective ministry is vital because God as Trinity is corporate. Jesus does not exist as a sole entity but as part of the Godhead, a distinct part of an inter-related whole that is God – Father, Son and Spirit. As this is the nature of God so it must also be the nature of the Church. Diversity within unity and unity within diversity with God and the Church seen fully as they are seen whole. This is the gift of Jesus, to be drawn into and to reflect corporately the inter-relationship of God himself.

The kind of ministry which I am attempting to describe draws heavily on the example of David Watson and the church structures and approaches that were introduced under his ministry at St Michael-le-Belfrey, York. Watson describes their model and approach in his book ‘I believe in the Church’. In his preface to this book, Michael Green isolates the key characteristics of the approach taken at St Michael-le-Belfrey:

“It is a church where the leadership is shared, where prayer is central, where the sacraments are dynamic, where art and drama and dance adorn the worship. A church where the gifts of the Spirit mingle with His graces of character – and also, no doubt, with many failures! But it is a church which does not depend on its minister. Indeed, it tends to grow when he is away. It is a church that has learnt the pastoral value of the small group, the renewing power of the Holy Spirit, the mutual caring of members one for another.” 

Green argues that Watson’s approach involves “the rediscovery of biblical precedents and principles which are often enough forgotten”. Watson points to six principles of Christian ministry:

1.         No distinction either in form, language or theory between clergy and laity was ever accepted by the New Testament Church.

2.         The ministry is co-extensive with the entire church (1 Corinthians 12: 7).

3.         The local church in the apostolic age always functioned under a plurality of leadership.

4.         There are no uniform models for ministry in the New Testament; the patterns are flexible and versatile.

5.         In the New Testament church can be found both leadership and authority, but no kind of hierarchical structure.

6.         There is one, and only one, valid distinction which the New Testament appears to recognise within the ministry, apart from the different functions to which we have been alluding, the distinction between local and itinerent ministries.”

Much of that remains what I try, very inadequately, to do as your Vicar and much of it overlaps significantly with Bishop Stephen’s vision for reimaging ministry.

Here are the basic principles which Bishop Stephen thinks, with our agreement, could form the basis of a more radical forward thinking look at the ministry of God’s church in our diocese:

·    Ministry belongs to the whole people of God. Every person, because of their baptism, has a ministry. We must nurture an expectation that every Christian gives expression to this ministry in their daily life and in their participation in the life of the Church.

·    Stipendiary priests will need to be more episcopal in the way they understand and express their ministry. They will become much more obviously those who have oversight of the ministry of the church in a cluster of rural communities, or in a town or suburb. Their role will be to lead and facilitate ministry in that area, not provide all that ministry themselves. They will, of course, be involved; but their main task will be to animate the ministry of the whole church.

·    For this to work, there also needs to be a huge flourishing of authorised lay ministry (especially youth and children’s workers, authorised preachers, catechists, pastors and evangelists) and ordained self-supporting ministry. And of course we already have many Readers. Alongside some priests being more episcopal we need many others who will be more diaconal, taking on a pastoral, catechetical and evangelistic ministry at the local level.

·    Each local church needs to have some sort of ministry team and, preferably, some minister to whom they identify as the worship leader and pastor of that community. Sometimes this will be a lay person, such as a Reader, and we should encourage lay led worship and ministry in many of our churches. In many cases I hope it will be an ordained self-supporting minister, so that the sacramental life of our church continues to flourish. But where there are lay led services of the Word it will still be possible within the cluster of communities under the oversight of the (probably) stipendiary priest, for there to be regular Sunday by Sunday Eucharistic provision. Some Self-Supporting Ministers will themselves be the leaders (‘episcopal’ priests) in these benefices.

Hopefully you can see the overlaps between these principles and Ephesians 4, as well as seeing that this is not radical for St John’s Seven Kings as it has been our direction of travel over the time that most of us have been here.

It stands or falls, however, on the understanding that ministry belongs to the whole people of God and on there being a real flourishing of authorised lay ministry. That is why it is so relevant to preach on Transforming Presence during our Stewardship month. Such service includes the priestly sacrifice of whole lives, possessions, praise, money, and evangelism or, as we put it in our Stewardship packs, time, talents and treasure.

All this is so that our churches can be a transforming presence in our community as: places of prayer; places where people learn about the faith and are active in discipleship; places where there is a ministry of evangelism; places where ministry is shared and developed; places which serve the local community; places that are inclusive and welcome to all; places which are seeking the unity of all God’s church and working with their neighbours locally and globally.

Next week, in our Patronal Festival Service, we bring our reflections on Stewardship and Transforming Presence in our annual recommitment of ourselves in the service of Christ by saying together:

I have a part in God’s great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for nothing. I shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place. Deign to fulfil your high purposes in me. I am here to serve you, to be yours, to be your instrument. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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The Staple Singer - Pray On, My Child.

Transforming Presence: Serving with accountability

Today we had our All-Age Harvest Festival at St John's Seven Kings. Our congregation generously collected a large amount of Harvest goods to donate to the Redbridge Food Bank. After the service we enjoyed a bring & share Harvest lunch. In the service we thought about the third of the Transforming Presence priorities - serving with accountability.

"They spent their time in learning from the apostles, taking part in the fellowship, and sharing in the fellowship meals and the prayers." In a single verse Acts 2.42 describes the life of the very first Christian community. It is a community which is faithful to Christ. It is a community that is growing as the Lord adds more people to its number.

 

It has a life of clarity, integrity and mutual accountability. The apostles teaching, fellowship with each other, the breaking of bread and the life of prayer constitute and characterise the life they have in Christ.

In Transforming Presence Bishop Stephen asks us to consider how these things are evident in the life of our community? What else would we add to this list? Or, put another way, what aspects of the apostles teaching need to go alongside these other three basic priorities of our life together?

Is there a bottom line? Is there a set of ministries and activities that we should expect to find in every Christian community, whatever its context and circumstance, and about which we should hold ourselves accountable? Is there a rule of life for the local Christian community? Are there a set of ingredients that constitute a faithful, healthy Christian community?

Our churches should be places of prayer; places where people learn about the faith and are active in discipleship; places where there is a ministry of evangelism; places where ministry is shared and developed; places which serve the local community; places that are inclusive and welcome to all; places which are seeking the unity of all God’s church and working with their neighbours locally and globally.

We must move, Bishop Stephen suggests, to a situation where it is no longer possible or acceptable for a church to say, for instance, ‘we don’t do children or young people’ or ‘evangelism isn’t our thing.’ Each community will, in its own way, be developing a common set of ministries so that we might be a church that is faithful to its apostolic calling.

As part of doing so, a Diocesan rule of life could help us answer the following questions:

·        What are we doing to teach people to pray?

·        What are we doing to teach people the faith and help them in their discipleship?

·        What are we doing to share the faith with others and what have the results been in the past year? And does our church have a place of nurture?

·        What are we doing to nurture and develop the ministry of the whole people of God including enabling people to come forward for authorised lay and ordained ministry?

·        How is your church a blessing to the community we serve? And how are we witnessing to God’s kingdom of justice and peace?

·        What are you doing to ensure our church is a place of safety and welcome for all ages and for people of all backgrounds?

·        How are we working in partnership with other Christian communities in our locality and at the diocesan, national and global levels?

As we ask and answer such questions we are being accountable to each other and to God for the ministry of this Church. Similarly Stewardship month is a time when we stop and reflect on our actions and activity and review what we are doing. To do this is to be accountable to God and each other. 

At Harvest and in Stewardship month we regularly remember that our church is made up of people who, together, trust in and follow Jesus. We depend on Jesus and care for each other and for the community where we live. By being together as the disciples of Jesus we can offer spiritual sacrifices of our time, energy, abilities and possessions to bless God and our neighbours, by:

·        offering ourselves as ‘living sacrifices’ in love of God and our neighbour – including our enemies (Romans 12)

·        living a life of love – following the sacrificial example of Jesus (Ephesians 5:2)

·        sharing our possessions with those in need inside and outside our community (Philippians 4:18, cf. Galatians 6:10)

·        praising God together and sharing with people living in poverty (Hebrews 13:15–16)

But we are not on our own. We are also part of the global church – all made of living stones. Jesus the cornerstone joins us together. Our church, through Jesus, is joined to churches locally, nationally and internationally. We offer spiritual sacrifices to God, which benefit the people around us. We can also demonstrate unity through supporting – and praying with – churches across the world. As living stones, together, through Jesus Christ, we are being built into God’s global church, his spiritual home. Together we are church.

We are one of the richest nations in the world; we have been given so much. God calls us to make spiritual sacrifices for his kingdom, and we can start today by committing to offer spiritual sacrifices, through prayer, by giving regularly to this church and the global church, and by taking action to care better for the world in which we live (see today’s Stewardship form). These sacrifices, made in partnership with other churches - like King’s Church who run the Redbridge foodbank and the Anglican Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo whose youth work we support - enable more and more churches to bring spiritual and material transformation to their own communities. Together we are church.

(Taken from Transforming Presence and We Are Church - Tearfund's 2011 Harvest resource).

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Matt Redman - I Will Offer Up My Life.

Upcoming events and services

The All-Age Harvest Festival at St John's Seven Kings is this coming Sunday 16th September at 10.00am. We are collecting Harvest goods to donate to the Redbridge Food Bank. After the service we will have a bring & share Harvest lunch. In the service we will be thinking about the third of the Transforming Presence priorities - serving with accountability.

  

We have our 50/50 Auction on Saturday 22nd September. All items are included in the auction on the basis that 50% of the sale price is kept by the seller and 50% goes to the Church. Viewing begins at 10.00am on 22nd and the auction starts at 12 noon. Refreshments will be available. This is always a popular local event and a good fundraiser for the church.

  

We will then be celebrating our Patronal Festival on the weekend of 6th and 7th October. We have a Barn Dance on Saturday 6th from 7.30pm. Tickets are £8 for adults, £6 for under 12s. All are welcome. Our Patronal Festival service will be at 10.00am on Sunday 7th and the preacher will be Rev. Chris Wragg, Vicar of All Saints Squirrels Heath, who is a past member of the congregation at St John's. In the evening, at 6.30pm, we will host a Confirmation Service at which 8 candidates (from St Johns, St Paul's Goodmayes, All Saints Goodmayes and St Peter's Aldborough Hatch) will be confirmed by the Rt. Revd. David Hawkins, Bishop of Barking.

  

I am also involved, with other churches in the Redbridge deanery, in organising a series of arts events that will be part of this year's Woodford Festival (6th - 14th October). These include: art exhibition, Big Draw event, classical & choral concerts, Jazzathon, Poetry event, Street Pastors patrol, Woodford Proms, Youth Festival and various special services (including Jazz, Pets, and visual arts). 

 

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Neil Young - Harvest Moon.

Transforming Presence: Evangelising effectively

Earlier in the week Boris Johnson thanked the "unbelievable" volunteers at the Olympic and Paralympic Games and said London should capitalise on and learn from their "energy". The cheerful faces of the 70,000 red and purple-clad Games Makers and further 8,000 London Ambassadors have been a key feature of the Games. As we know from those of our congregation at St John's Seven Kings who volunteered, the majority of Games Makers gave up at least 10 days to volunteer and took on a wide range of activities including welcoming visitors, transporting athletes and working behind the scenes.

Meeting volunteers at the North Greenwich Arena, Mr Johnson said: "I think the reason why the Olympics have been such a success is because the people of London have made it one. The volunteers have been tremendous and I want to thank all of them. The important thing now is to look forward. We have to think about how to keep the energy in the volunteering life of the city. They have done an amazing job in welcoming people to London and we can learn from that."

As a Church, nationally and locally, we can also learn from the wonderful welcome given out by the Games Makers. As Bishop Stephen has written in his book From the abundance of the heart: "There is a fantasy about evangelism: people hear the gospel, repent, and look around for a church to join. Then there is the reality: people come into contact with the church, or have some inkling of the possibility of God, and enter into a relationship with the church, either through its activities, its worship, or just friendship with its members. In the loving community of these relationships faith begins to grow. Or to put it more succinctly: belonging comes before believing. Therefore, right at the heart of any effective evangelistic ministry must be a warm and generous attitude to those who are currently outside the church community and a place of welcome and nurture within it."

In Transforming Presence Bishop Stephen says that in recent years we have re-discovered that for most people becoming a Christian is like a journey. This changes the way we approach evangelism. For the most part it will mean accompanying people on that journey and this is why the story of Jesus on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24. 13 - 49) is instructive for us in thinking about evangelism.

When Jesus encounters the two disciples on the Emmaus Road on the evening of the first Easter day he meets them where they are but Luke tells us that "their eyes were kept from recognising him" (Luke 24. 16). He joins their conversation and walks with them while they are going in the wrong direction. He listens to them before he speaks. His first question is one of open vulnerability to their agenda: "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?"(Luke 24.17). In response to their questions and accounts of what has happened he then breaks open the scriptures, explaining to them "the things about himself "(Luke 14. 27). Arriving at Emmaus he "walks ahead as if he is going on" (Luke 24. 28). But they invite him in, and as he breaks the bread their eyes are opened. They then rush back to Jerusalem. They can’t wait to share with others the good news they have received.

Luke’s account provides us with a rich and challenging story about evangelism which is hugely relevant for the situation we face today because: "our own culture here in Essex and East London is not so dis-similar to the ones the first apostles encountered outside the comfort zone of the Jewish faith: a smorgasbord of beliefs, a general interest in things spiritual, a lack of confidence in the meta-narratives that had previously been trusted so much. In this sort of world becoming a Christian will be like a journey, and much of our work will be helping people to make the journey; and much of that will be removing obstacles from the path."

God longs for reconciliation with the whole of the creation and with every person on earth; he is therefore an evangelist. His great love for the world and his purposes for the world have been revealed in Jesus Christ, and through his death and resurrection Jesus has already done everything that is necessary for us to enjoy eternal life with God. The ministry of evangelism is our sharing with others the good news of what God has already done in Christ and the transformation it can bring to the world and to our lives here on earth and in eternity. It can involve specific ministries (such as a place of nurture where people can find out about Christian faith), but is also shaped enormously by our witness as individual Christians as we walk with others in their individual daily lives.

"Becoming a Christian is not just learning about the Christian faith: it is about becoming a member of the Christian community, and it is about relationship with a God who is himself a community of persons. Therefore, right at the beginning of the journey, people need to experience what it means to be part of a pilgrim church. Before people can become pilgrims themselves they need to feel happy to travel with us and be open to experiencing life from a Christian perspective."

"Nurturing a generous attitude of welcome to newcomers is something that needs to be worked at over many years … Welcome is not just what we do when someone comes through the door. It is an attitude which seeks to get inside the shoes of the other person so that they can be welcomed and accompanied at every point of their journey."

Bishop Stephen likes "to use the term ‘Travellers’ to refer to people who are beginning to explore the Christian faith, because it describes those who are on the way. They may not yet be coming to church, but they are committed to taking the next step. For many people the best next step is a course of enquiry where they can enter into dialogue with the Christian faith in the company of other Christian people."

This is often a course like Alpha, Emmaus or the START! course, which we currently use and, as a place of nurture, needs to be a safe place, where people are at ease, where they can bring their questions, and where they will feel challenged, but not pressured. People need to feel comfortable: they need to feel that their questions and concerns are taken seriously.

So, we are talking here about three specific forms of welcome: the welcome someone receives when they first encounter the Church or an individual Christian; the welcome involved in travelling with someone else on their journey to God and beyond; plus the welcome which can be provided in a nurture course like our START! course.

Just like the Olympics and Paralympics, the Church needs welcomers. The traditional role of welcomer to services in the Church of England is that of the sidesperson. We can see from all that we have thought about so far today why that is such an important role. We might not all have a ministry as a sidesperson but we can all get alongside others on their journey towards God in the way Bishop Stephen has described and as Jesus did with the two disciples on the Emmaus Road. How can you get inside the shoes of those you know so that they can be welcomed and accompanied at every point of their journey towards God?

Finally, could you help welcome people to our START! courses helping to create a place of nurture, making people feel comfortable and safe, putting them at ease so they can bring their questions and feel challenged but not pressured. These are all ways in which we can use our time and talents in God’s service and be a transforming presence in our homes, community, workplaces and world. This Sunday in Stewardship month is the time to think about the time and talents God has given to us and how we already use them and can use them for his glory in the future.

Over the next two years there will be training provided and opportunities available for getting involved in the ministry of evangelism. The London 2013 Festival is an initiative of the churches in London in partnership with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse. Equipping Christians in "whole of life discipleship" by providing training to develop evangelistic lifestyles and verbal skills in sharing the Gospel will enable Churches to connect with and serve, communities and civic society across London, providing a commitment to the social and practical needs of Londoners. This will culminate from 4^th - 6^th October with public events to invite people to hear the good news of Jesus simply explained by Franklin Graham - with a chance to respond.

Then in 2014 it will be the Centenary of the Diocese of Chelmsford, a year of celebration and outreach, and Bishop Stephen is inviting every benefice in the diocese to put on a mission weekend, where we can celebrate our faith and invite others to consider the claims of Christ. Again, in 2013, there will be training events, one for every deanery, so that in every benefice there can be a small team of people who have been trained in putting on small scale evangelistic events and understanding something of how we accompany people who want to find out more about the Christian faith.

By 2025, Bishop Stephen says we need to have become a church where evangelism is in our DNA and where we have learned ways of doing evangelism that work in the different and varied and fast changing contexts that make up our diocese. All these involve an intentional desire to share with others the good things that we have received from Christ. We need to commit ourselves to be faithful in this ministry because it is of the essence of what it means to be faithful to Christ. 

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Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More.

Transforming Presence: Inhabiting our world distinctively

The opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics and the opening ceremony for the Paralympics have all raised issues of what it means to be British; what there is in our history and culture that can be seem as being distinctively British. Between them they have included our green and pleasant land, the weather, the industrial revolution, scientific and technological discoveries, multi-racial popular culture, the Suffragettes, the NHS, popular music, the Queen, James Bond, Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Stephen Hawking.

While all these have something to do with being British, do they sum up what is distinctive about the British? John Major famously described Britishness as being,"Long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and old maids bicycling through the morning mist." Would we identify with that, living where we do? Perhaps not! By contrast Gordon Brown stated that "Britain's roots are on the most solid foundation of all - a passion for liberty anchored in a sense of duty and an intrinsic commitment to tolerance and fair play." We might be more likely to agree but how distinctively British are those values? Aren’t they values that many around the world would agree with and practice, can we really claim them as distinctively British?

All of which goes to show that defining what makes us distinctive is a difficult task but it is one that our Bishop is asking to undertake together as Christians. Bishop Stephen has written a document for the Diocese called Transforming Presence which aims to give us four strategic priorities to focus on as a Diocese for the next 10 to 15 years.

Bishop Stephen’s hope is that every Christian and every Christian community in the Diocese will begin to prayerfully consider its own response to these priorities and to engage in a continuing conversation across the diocese as we seek to discern what sort of church God is calling us to become. Our Ministry Leadership Team has suggested that we begin thinking about our response to Transforming Presence by studying it in homegroups (some of our groups have already done this and others will begin shortly) and by having a sermon series on it during September (our Stewardship month).

The first priority is the issue that we’ve already begun thinking about together this morning; inhabiting the world distinctively. In Romans 12 Paul speaks about the new life in Christ describing the members of the church as being "one body in Christ" (Romans 12.5) He goes on: "We are members of one another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given us." (Romans 12. 5b & 6) From verse 9 onwards he describes the marks of true Christian living and discipleship. He is saying that the Christian church is the Body of Christ in the world and each individual Christian a member of it, each called and equipped by God for ministry and service. It therefore follows that every Christian has a ministry and that every Christian should live a distinctive life.

Living that distinctive life is the way we worship God and it happens as we stop conforming to the standards of the world around us and instead let God transform us inwardly by a complete change of our mind. Of course this kind of inner transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit. It cannot be achieved by our hard work alone but there are certain things we need to do in order to create the fertile ground in which the Spirit can bring our faith to life, enabling us to live out our faith and give a reason for the hope that is in us.

First among these is prayer. More than anything else, we need to place a new priority on becoming a people of prayer, whose daily lives are formed and punctuated by our relationship with God in Jesus Christ. He is the centre of our lives, and new life in Christ is nurtured and shaped by a life of prayer and a commitment to worship and the discipleship that follows from it.

Therefore – and before anything else – teaching people to pray, encouraging greater biblical and theological literacy and developing a diocesan rule of life must become our priorities and must be reflected in the work that is done at every level of diocesan life: in every church school, in every parish community, in every chaplaincy.

Developing a diocesan rule of life would be so that there is a unity between us over the sort of lives we should be leading as God’s people in this place and some sort of mutual accountability. This rule will encompass those aspects of Christian living that we consider annually during Stewardship Week such as giving, participation in worship, ministry in our daily lives and also the way we inhabit the planet itself, including issues of ecological, social and political wellbeing.

"Hate what is evil, hold on to what is good. Love one another warmly and be eager to show respect for one another. Work hard … Let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles, and pray at all times. Share your belongings with your needy fellow Christians, and open your homes to strangers. Ask God to bless those who persecute you . .. Be happy with those who are happy, weep with those who weep. Have the same concern for everyone. Do not be proud, but accept humble duties. Do not think of yourselves as wise. If someone has done you wrong, do not repay him with a wrong. Try to do what everyone considers to be good. Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody … conquer evil with good."

So giving generously to God, others and our world using our treasure, time and talents is what Stewardship and a Diocesan rule of life would be all about. God loves a cheerful giver, we are told, and whoever shares with others should do it generously.

So, the way we inhabit the world as Christians should be about this kind of generous living and the rule of life would form a basis of expectation about what it means to be a Christian in this diocese but, of course, this does not mean that we are somehow better than other people or that generosity itself is distinctively Christian. It is manifestly true that there are all sorts of good and generous people who are not yet part of the Christian community. It does mean, however, that there should be something distinctive and attractive about the way we live our lives. Conversely, if our lives are indistinguishable from anyone else’s it is then little wonder that people conclude that the Christian faith is our hobby; a fascinating and exhausting pastime, but not the life changing transformation that should be evident in the lives we lead Monday to Saturday.

By 2025 Bishop Stephen wants this to change and says that without this inner transformation no other worthwhile change will happen at all, and we will simply carry on managing church decline as gracefully as possible. None of us want that to happen although we all recognise the challenges we face as Christians and as a church. We did not choose to be born or to live in such an age; but if we let its problems challenge us, its discoveries exhilarate us, its injustices anger us, its possibilities inspire us and its vigour renew us then it will be as though we were born for such a time as this.

If we live distinctive Christian lives, as Romans 12 directs us and as Bishop Stephen encourages us then we can make a difference where God has placed us, here at St John’s, here in Seven Kings, here in our family, here in our workplace, here in our diocese, here in our nation, here in our world. Let us pray …

Saviour Christ, in whose way of love lies the secret of all life and the hope of all people, we pray for quiet courage to match this hour. We did not choose to be born or to live in such an age; but let its problems challenge us, its discoveries exhilarate us, its injustices anger us, its possibilities inspire us and its vigour renew us for your kingdom's sake. Amen.

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Woven Hand - In The Temple.

Time for Youth

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Delirious? - Now Is The Time.

Church of England: Complex structures

In a Guardian article published on Good Friday, Andrew Brown quoted Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham as saying, "The longer I go on with this, the more I realise that the Church of England is not an organisation in any recognisable sense." In the article, Welby is quoted as expanding on this statement as follows:
"Any sort of concept of top-down direction is much more complicated than it looks. Part of it is illusion: because bishops are dressed up in funny clothes, with funny hats and special sticks it's assumed that if they say to a bunch of parish clergy 'do something', they will do it. But that's not how it works and never has been. Each part of the church has its own competence."
Welby is, as Brown notes, a bishop who "worked for 12 years in the oil industry before becoming a priest, so he knows something about the outside world." What he seems to be saying is that the structure of the Church of England doesn't look or function anything like the organisations he knew before ordination.

To the extent that I understand its structures it seems to me that the Church of England combines three different structures - a network of autonomous charities (parishes) covering the entire country; a regional framework (dioceses) which primarily supports the parishes; and a central structure delivering services to both dioceses and parishes while also undertaking national initiatives for the Church as a whole.

Within these three different structures there is rarely any direct line managerial responsibility for those whose ministries are enabled by some combination of these three structures. For clergy, this has presumably stemmed from our legal status as ministers of God rather than employees of a human institution. Clergy are centrally selected and trained but are appointed by a combination of external patrons, Diocese, and parish. We require a licence from the Diocese to minister but, once this has been granted, have considerable security and autonomy in parish ministry combined with minimal supervision (this situation is changing to a limited extent as a result of common tenure). Clergy generally chair the PCC (or varient) but it is the PCC as a whole which has overall responsibility for the charity that is the parish. As a result, the parish is essentially independent of the diocese and national church, although reliant on both for ordained ministers. The overlaps and complexities of these relationships extend throughout the three different structures and mean that, as Welby notes, the usual line management arrangements do not operate in anything like the same way in the Church of England as they do in other organisations.

All this has massive implications for the future of the Church of England because it means that there is no quick or simple mechanism for making the changes which are needed to respond to the changed mission context in which we minister. For example, Transforming Presence, the strategic document issued recently by Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Chelmsford, notes that, while deaneries have been asked to think about cutting stipendiary posts because of the ticking time bomb of clergy retirements, many deaneries have simply planned ahead on the basis of who is going to retire next. What the document doesn't acknowledge however is that, because of the complexities noted above, the Church of England has no mechanisms for doing anything else.

None of this will change quickly so, as well as thinking about possible future structural changes, we need to make the best of the structures we have and recognise that in some respects what have is a structure which is focussed on the local parish but doesn't make that structure work very effectively (partly because of the inbuilt complexities).

In his article, Andrew Brown also quoted Alan Wilson, the Bishop of Buckingham, as saying, "The church of the future may be less a civil service or conventional business, and more a movement like Alcoholics Anonymous, the ultimate locally delivered, life-changing non-profit organisation. The job of the hierarchy will be to enable this, not to represent it or control it."

But as we have said the Church of England is not structured like the civil service or conventional business and we are actually structured for local delivery. The problem is the difficulty of ensuring that the three different structures work together cohesively and changing attitudes of independence and autonomy within each of the structures which do not prioritise cohesion and collaborative working. 

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Switchfoot - Dare You To Move.

Transforming Presence

Yesterday I was at Transforming Presence: Time to Talk, a well organised diocesan consultation on the strategic priorities for the Diocese of Chelmsford over the next fifteen years. These are intended to begin a continuing and widespread discussion of how we better become the church God wants us to be, and are better able to serve God’s world.

We discussed our best experiences of church, three words for the essentials of Church (I came up with creative, Christ-shaped community), what inspired and challenged us in the Transforming Presence document, and created headlines and news stories for the Church as we imagine it may be in 2025. While the document recognises some of the challenges which the Diocese faces, the event was predominantly upbeat meaning that my suggestion of 'Survival is success' as a headline wasn't picked up by the group of which I was part. To give the group their due though, we did grapple with real issues in the headline we eventually chose - 'Church accepts equality - 40 years too late!'

The strategic priorities identified by Transforming Presence - inhabiting the world distinctively, evangelizing effectively, and serving with accountability - are valuable but do seem to need some further unpacking or development.

One point that was particularly well made on our table was that it is hard to identify anything that is distinctively Christian about the way that we live both in the sense that our lives are often little different to those of others around us and also in the sense that most aspects of the way we aspire to live as Christians can also be found in other wisdom/faith traditions. The question to be addressed then is in what sense can it be said that these things are distinctively Christian if they are also found outside of Christianity? It may be that we would be better to speak of inhabiting the world ‘Christianly’ (if such a word exists), as opposed to distinctively.

Additionally, the document, in my view, needs to place a stronger emphasis on the practical outworking of faith in all forms of social action. At present, social action only seems to feature as an aspect of serving with accountability and should be given greater prominence, particularly in the light of many current mission initiatives which combine evangelism and social action.

My major concern with the document and its linked paper, Transforming Leadership, is that the analysis of the structural issues faced by the Diocese and Church of England is inadequate. The talk is of eradicating the sense of a ‘them’ and ‘us’ divide between parishes and diocese, where the diocese is seen as part of the Church of England’s top down, hierarchical, bureaucratic and, increasingly, managerial structures. My view is that this is a smoke-screen that we (priests and parishes) use to defend our individualism which in turn is fostered by structures which give exceptionally high levels of autonomy to us.

Those who have worked in generally hierarchical organisations will acknowledge immediately that the Church of England, while having its own hierarchy, is not a traditional hierarchical organisation where the decisions of those at the top of the organisation are simply implemented by those below. The hierarchy in the Church of England have little direct control over priests and parishes because incumbents have held the freehold of their parishes and each parish is essentially its own autonomous charity. This situation is only minimally changed for priests by common tenure and means that priests and parishes can effectively ignore the hierarchy of the Church should they wish to do so with, in comparison to most other organisations, minimal comeback. This independence and autonomy is, in my opinion, highly valued by many of us (priests and parishes) and we then fervently resist changes which would encroach on or limit this independence and autonomy.

It can then be, as part of seeking to preserve this independence and autonomy, that some come to oppose so-called bureaucratic or managerial methods which have the effect both of increasing accountability and decreasing scope for individualism. Managerial methods are decried as adopting the methods of the ‘world’ which don’t apply to the Church but, it seems to me, that our valuing of independence and autonomy without accountability is as much an adoption of ‘worldly’ values because it is an expression of the individualism which characterises modernism and consumerism instead of the communitarianism which should characterise the Christian faith.

While accountability features among the strategic priorities and within Transforming Leadership, I am not confident that this tendency towards individualism and autonomy fostered by the existing structures of the Church is adequately identified or addressed. While this is clearly a provocative contribution to the continuing and widespread discussion that Transforming Presence initiates, and a contribution with which many of my colleagues may disagree, I hope that we can have an honest and open discussion of strategic priorities, approaches and structures and that these views can be heard and understood within that process. 

For other views, see Banksy here and the twitter stream for the event.

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David Bowie - Heroes.