Public

so, this evening the feig cafe goes public for the first time.

when I say public I mean the doors will be open between 6.30 - 9pm.
we have told friends and various other but we have deliberately left publicity undone for the time being. we're keen for this to grow as a word-of-mouth venture, and to have an opportunity to sort out teething troubles before things get busy.

what we definitely don't want (at least to start with) is a bunch of Christians from various local churches bundling down en-mass to 'see' the fresh expression.

what we do want is a natural vibe and a space in which people of no faith or some can drop in for conversation and a relaxing coffee.

you're welcome to drop in if you're around.
there'll be a Eucharist at 6pm if you fancy that...

Praise of Folly

this W/Es Guardian has a review of Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus (don't you wish you had that name?).

It's an old book but someone has recently churned out a new translation.

anyway, the reason I'm bothering to mention it at all is a single line from the book that I am tempted to print out in bold and pin up in the oversized 'spirituality and self-help' section of my local Waterstones.
Here we are:

'The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.'

indeed.

thoughts from the Abbot of Alton

I just read an interview with Giles Hill, Abbot of Alton, and was interested in what he had to say about new guys seeking to join the community:

'Novices [now] have no understanding of family life, but very strong ideas of personal rights... I'm more concerned with our responsibilities and privileges as Christian people.'

Something he says about prayer ties in with a lot of thought I've been giving the subject in the past couple of weeks:

'We don't pray. I prefer to say that God prays in us. Otherwise it's like giving God earache. We need to allow him to be in us. So many of us haven't learned to live with ourselves, in silence, for fear we might hear him say something we don't want to hear. We drown out anything that might be going on inside.'

forgotten again?

just put my clock forward.

which means that instead of it being just after 10.15am it is a little later...

community meal and 4 seasons blow out

We met last night, as we do every wednesday, for our community meal.
Daniel Robinson, who has abstained from meat for the season of lent, cooked for us.
He named his creation 'the 4 seasons'. it was a truly magnificent festival of meat.
excellent!
The arrival of babies has forced an evolution in the structure of wednesday evenings (although if I look back I realise that we have always been evolving as people come and go and things are tried and enjoyed or rejected).
Anyway, we are currently trying to factor in babies by making sure our wednesday gathering has deliberate but interruptable learning and worship.
Dan led us in some conversation starters that wove focused discussion on things like prayer and values into our meal time.
An excellent job.
It worked really well.
I tailed it with a psalm, a brief reading and responsorial prayers from the Celtic book of daily prayer.
A grand evening.

Karen Ward and the Church of the Apostles

I first came across Karen Ward (pictured) and Church of the Apostles (in Seattle, USA) when I read 'Emerging Churches' by Gibbs and Bolger.
Every time I read something Karen had contributed I had to put the book down, stop and think.

It's possible that I will get to spend a little time learning from Karen later in the year. This would be most excellent, so I'm hoping it all comes together.

COTA say this on their homepage (link here):

'Church of the Apostles is a future church with an ancient faith... in the story of Jesus, we have glimpsed God's future and know that "thiscouldchangeeverything."

So our purpose is to helpgodchangeeverything, by participating in God's future within today's culture and our local zipcode, in intentional community around Jesus Christ.

The future is not something we manufacture, and community is not something we can coerce you into, but both are works of the spirit to which God calls you.'

good eh?

Happy Easter!!!

My sister in law made a Simnel cake for easter.
I'd never heard of one before but they are apparently a traditional thing in England and Ireland. The 11 balls of marzipan represent the 11 apostles (no Judus on this cake).

We are finally at the end of a lot of cathedral services and, more importantly, the thing I was really looking forward to - the baptisms.

It was a fab service - a great gathering of our community and few family members.

The whole thing went well and was a profound, wonderful occasion that I will remember until the end of my days.
What a privilege - baptising my 3 children and my younger brother.

Praise God! is all I can say.

Prayers for us and the children and my brother would be much appreciated!!

tomorrow's the big day...

so, Easter Sunday is almost here.

I'm excited because I'm baptising all three of our kids, and my brother!

amazing.

I'm wondering if I'll get through it without a major emotional breakdown.

It'll happen in our own little feig+family service in the cathedral at 5pm.
I've put a bunch of work into the liturgy, images, etc. Dan will lead us in some singing - which doesn't happen all that often in feig but which surely must happen on such a momentous occasion.

I'm trying to keep it relaxed and informal at the same time as being profound and well within the Anglican tradition (which, in my opinion, does a beautifully poetic job of the liturgy for baptism).

anyway, off to an Easter eve service shortly: got to dress up, process around a bit and read a few things.

oh, I had to do a 'preach' in the middle of the city during the 'Gloucester churches together march of witness' yesterday.
In spite of praying long and hard I was crapping myself (as is only right and proper when you're going for a 'no-notes' reflection in front of 250 people, the bishop, the dean, the mayor, the sheriff, and an entire Salvation Army band).

In the end it went well.

cheers.

Easter services at the cathedral

If you're up for any of the cathedral's easter services, I've pasted the times below.

I've been involved in two today. What with it being the night we remember Jesus sharing his last supper with the disciples, this evening's service included foot-washing and stripping the altars in candle-light.
all very prayerful and profound.

Good Friday:
12:00 - 3pm: The Three Hours' Devotion (you can drop in and out of this)
16:45: United Service following the Procession of Witness in the city center.
17:30: Choral Evensong

Saturday 22 March
08:00: Holy Communion
08:30: Morning Prayer
16:30: Choral Evensong
20:30: Easter Eve service

Easter Sunday: (23 March)
07:40: Morning Prayer
08:00: Holy Communion
10:15: Choral Matins in the Quire
10:45: The Eucharist
15:00: Festal Evensong and Procession

Quiet Spaces

this arrived in the post today

it contains an article I wrote about our little emerging community.
the odd thing is, I wrote the piece almost a year ago.

a lot seems to have happened since then. still, if you get Quiet Spaces, have a read.

(Quiet Spaces)

breakfast

this morning i'm on duty at the cathedral's breakfast club for the homeless.

it takes place here, in the coffee shop, which is also where feig are hosting our stuff on Sunday evenings (entrance just down the path, & on the right...).

later I'm at a diocesan Eucharist with 'reaffirmation of ordination vows' in the cathedral.
this means that every single clergy-person in the diocese will be gathered in one place.
that's a whole lot of vicars...

bucket-O-eggs

Big G cooked our community meal this evening.
it was mighty fine fayre.

pudding was another story altogether.

see the picture and believe...

(thanks also to Mr Robinson, who led us in a little post-supper Benedictine liturgy.)

increasingly disturbed by...

the deaths of civilians in Iraq...

It's been going on for years now and still every single day women, children, babies, dads, old folks and any number of other innocent people just like you and me end up dead or maimed.

the Guardian supplement G2 published a decent article about the whole thing today (see here)

they write:

'...even though the Americans were not counting, people were dying, and every victim had a name and a family. Wedding parties were bombed by US planes, couples driving home at night were shot at checkpoints because they missed a flashlight warning them to stop, and hundreds of other unarmed civilians were killed for no legitimate cause. In just the last three weeks of April 2003, after Saddam's statue and his regime were toppled, US forces killed at least 266 civilians - a pattern of overeager resort to fire which has continued to this day.

So five years after Bush and Tony Blair launched the invasion of Iraq against the wishes of a majority of UN members, no one knows how many Iraqis have died. We do know that more than two million have fled abroad. Another 1.5 million have sought safety elsewhere in Iraq. We know that the combined horror of car bombs, suicide attacks, sectarian killing and disproportionate US counter-insurgency tactics and air strikes have produced the worst humanitarian catastrophe in today's world. But the exact death toll remains a mystery.'

As a fellow human being, and as a Christian, I don't feel like standing around and pretending I don't know this is going on, and that people in Iraq don't feel the same way about their dead kids as I would about mine.
But what to do?
Pray.
Find out more.
Get stuck in.

taught by...

my mum gave me 'The Latent Power of the Soul' by Watchman Nee a few years back.

I've been reading it today. it's heavy and challenging, deep stuff - the kind of thing that is good to ponder on given the vacuum in my life created by a scanty helping of decent expository teaching.

anyway, to give you a flavour, here's a line or two:

'Each time we work for God, we need to first deal with ourselves, setting ourselves aside. We should lay down our talents and our strong points. We should ask God to bind these things. We should say to him: 'O God, I want you to work, I do not want to depend on my talent and power, I ask you yourself to do the work, for by myself I can do nothing.'

a difficult teaching to put into practice...

the hump of the week

well, that's what my wife used to call wednesdays...

today I'm doing the Easter assembly at my local primary school.
I love doing assemblies - especially with these kids. they're great - and they sing well too.

I'm presiding at the cathedral's lunchtime Eucharist and later we meet at our home for the community meal.

In between these three items will be packed various other pieces of preparation, admin, meetings, phone calls, e-mails - the bits and bobs that fill all of our days.

If you didn't know, it's Holy week.
(just a reminder for anyone too busy to have noticed)

the closing lines of 'A Short History of Christianity' by a guy called Stephen Tomkins:

'And so the varied mission of the church across the world continues into its third millenium, as does its mixed record of getting God's will done on earth as it is in heaven.
The church of Jesus has been an affair of genocide and jumble sales; of heroic self-sacrifice and self-defeating hysteria; of holy mysteries; of philosophers and philanthropists; of crusading geese, charismatic animal impressionists and high-rise, maggot-eaten monks; of charity and chastity; and, above all, of men and women - good, bad, indifferent, extremely different, wise, wonderful and simply incomprehensible. And, it is alleged, the house of God.
Mysterious ways indeed.'

I like that.

Iona Eucharist

This evening we'll meet for a 'dress rehearsal' in the cafe, before opening to the public the week after next.

I'm going to lead an informal Eucharist and have found some liturgy created by the Iona community (link).

Looking forward to getting together and beginning to see things taking proper shape.

in reply to the anonymous comment on my last post...

in reply to 'anonymous' I think lots of faithful church-goers would genuinely like to see others come into their churches and join in with their services and the way things have always been done.

the problem is that this doesn't start with the problem.

when churches start with the question 'how do we get people in?' and then work from there, they will simply end up with a new service, or a new initiative, perhaps a leaflet drop, or a give-away at the local shops, or some sort of badly guessed 'seeker event'.
When these things don't produce the desired result (more people in church) the congregation feel despair. The problem is that they only ask: 'what else can we try?'

What about starting further back with the real questions?
Why are we doing church like this?
Is the service 'church'?
Do people need to come into our building, on our terms, at our times to be church?
What if our culture is changing so rapidly that the ways of church that we find work for us no longer connect with the way people live their lives?
What if we need to re-imagine the shape of church completely?

But these questions don't get asked because the answers would change everything, and people don't want change.
So the only question that really gets asked is:
'we like the way we do things, we think others would enjoy it if only they came along, how do we get them to come?'

This is not working.

But many people (and a whole lot of clergy) don't want to, or simply can't hear this.

If they can't reach this understanding for themselves by looking at the reality of our emerging culture, then someone trying to point it out to them probably won't make much ground...

getting people in?

I just had a phone call from someone working in a parish church not so far from here.

He said this:

"we're bending over backwards to get people in... but it's just not working."

He sounded like a man who felt he really had tried everything.

Where do you even begin with that?
There is so much to say and all of it is so far from what he'd be able to hear that I didn't know where to begin and so I didn't say anything.

Instead I just had to listen to his latest idea with a sense of sadness, knowing that for all of his enthusiasm it wouldn't work and that eventually he'd be left disollusioned about why the things they'd always done weren't pulling people in any more.
And all the while life is evolving and things haved moved along so much that it's no longer a question of 'getting them in' even though the Church still insists that it is.
I wished him all the best and said goodbye wondering when someone might sketch a picture for him (and thousands like him) of the way the people we share space with will need to hear the gospel in new places and in new ways.

our community is evolving

with the arrival of babies (and more to come...) things are changing at feig.

it's been hard for me to get my head around adapting. up until now our kids have been tucked up in bed by the time people arrive for food, and if we've done other events, either one of us has missed out, or we've had to get babysitters in.

babies change all this - and the kids are getting older anyway, and need to be included.

so we're having to evolve out of contemplative, reflective, discussion-based, type evenings (which has become our default setting on wednesdays) and move towards times together that are a little more fluid, allowing for noise and interruption.
I guess it's about trusting the Spirit of God to be at work among us, and letting go a little of the desire to control everything we do - or at least the content of what we do.
This obviously needs to be kept in tension with being deliberate about meeting and learning and finding appropriate spaces and opportunities for silence and / or contemplation.

I stuck the message translation of part of Acts 2 up on the blackboard above our table to act as a kind of framework for thinking about the aerial view of our life as a community.

new times ahead.
as there always are...

May Hill. again...

there will be music at the cafe...

Dan's Darth-Vadar speaker. the cafe. Sunday evening

marriage and juggling

I did my first marriage preparation visit last night.
good hurdle to have jumped.

I'm marrying these guys in the summer.
after marrying an old friend from uni.

it's odd, because this is not a regular part of my job, but it's something I need to be able to do.

It went well. thanks.

and I'm looking forward to doing the wedding. what a privilege eh?

busy day ahead, busy times, busy life. too many applications open. need to shut down a few and stop trying to juggle too many unrelated balls.

nightchurch

there's a bunch of guys doing some exciting stuff at Exeter cathedral on Friday evenings.
'nightchurch' has been going a little while from what I can gather.

their website says: 'a growing bunch of friends trying to follow Christ in a messy world - with a humungous building to help!' (sounds familiar...)

might have to go down and have a little look-see.

link here

just been invited to join...

anglimergent - an online meeting place / conversation for emergent Anglicans...

looks interesting and useful. got to be discerning with forums though - keen to not spend half my day on on-line.

a few of us round the i-mac...

a few of us gathered at the cafe this evening to do a bit of prep.

(although we were down a few as Rach was putting the kids to bed, G was at a gig, Joe n Kim were visiting friends, Chris is moving house, Ligia is busy with work, Al came after the photo, and Tim came early but had to take his kids home for tea. so there.)

we're still getting our heads around how we're going to work things out.

it;s a 'dress rehearsal' next week, then Easter Sunday is a bit odd because we're doing some evening baptisms, and the week after we'll open to the public.

it's gonna be ace.

we're excited.

cafe. week 2.

this evening we are back in the cafe.

our second week. good to get a sense of it last week. this week we'll get there at 5.30, which will be our habit, to set up for a 6pm opening.

There's a bit of transforming of the space to do but we'll need to get this down to a quick routine.

I'm going to lead a Eucharist early in the evening and want to use images and sound so will work on some movies and liturgy etc this afternoon.

last week we had a lot of discussion about how the space will operate.

it is not us hosting a Christian event for others to come to.
it is not cafe church.
it is not just a cafe.
there will be a eucharist that visitors can opt into, but other than that it will simply be a 'safe' space in which friendships can form and God's Spirit can be active.
we want to serve, in community, with each other, and God.

so there.

working weekend

I was in Bath on Friday seeing my spiritual director.

all good. 'follow the joy' as he is keen on saying.

Saturday was a curates training day - I deaconed at the opening Eucharist and then we had the bishop along to do a couple of hours on leading worship.

some very good stuff in fact. it was interesting because after going through sections titled:
'what is the task of the leader in worship?'
'what is required of the leader in worship?'
'some questions to ask yourself early in your preparation'
'some questions to ask yourself as the order comes together.'

the bishop asked 'how much of this applies in a very informal service - perhaps not even in a church building?'

I wouldn't hesitate to say all of it.

if you are involved in informal worship, it is vital to attend to all the above stuff. if you don't think things through it is just chaotic. even in the most apparently un-structured set-up prior thought is essential if everybody is going to be enabled to worship God.

Anyway, today I've been leading children's church at the cathedral.
I love doing this - although it has been yet another thing to prepare for in a pretty busy week.
We looked at the story of Elijah running into the desert and God 'passing by' the cave in which he takes shelter.

at the end of the session, the kids began to bombard me with questions about God and heaven and luck and life. It was amazing. We could have gone on for an hour. They are full, full, full of questions.

gutted to have missed this...

Wish I'd been able to get to this - in Seattle, USA.
The website says:

"The New Conspirators…What in the World is God Doing?

What in the world is God doing? God is conspiring through a new generation to re-imagine and create new expressions of discipleship, community, church and mission to make a difference in our rapidly changing world. While God is indeed conspiring through a new generation, this gathering is an invitation for those from all generations to become much more a part of God’s conspiracy of compassion and creativity.

We are racing into an increasingly uncertain global future, in which the middle class, our poorest neighbors and our planet will face daunting new challenges. In this festival of imagination, we will invite you to create innovative ways to engage these challenges that reflect something of God’s new order…with the new conspirators.

We will bring together leaders from the emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic streams of renewal to explore new models, discuss tough questions and create new ways we can be a difference and make a difference in our own churches, communities and God’s world. To preview what God is doing through these four streams, go to mustardseedjourney.wordpress.com and search for “The New Conspirators.”

As far as we know, this is the first time that such a broad range of new conspirators from these four streams have come together to communicate, connect and create with one another and with the friends who join us.

We have three very clear goals for this festival of imagination:

1. to communicate creative models of what new conspirators are doing to address the new challenges;

2. to connect leaders from all four streams in order to share lives, stories and concerns;

3. to create new ways to advance God’s new order in our world, in our lives and in our churches, in response to the growing challenges facing the poor and the planet."

So there you go.
Gutted to have not been there. Maybe next year?

they're gonna be massive

blogged about these guys before but was watching it again late last night and have to give another plug.

you can watch some of their stuff on youtube.

oh, how you will chuckle....

yesterday

I jumped on an early train to London yesterday to get to Lambeth palace for 10am.

I am part of a roundtable group that meets a few times a year to discuss fresh expressions of church in a catholic and/or contemplative context.

Ian Mobsby of Moot kind of pulled it together and it includes some interesting people.

some good stuff discussed and exciting things on the horizon.

made it back in time to deliver my lent talk at the cathedral on the film Wings of Desire.

more about both these things later...

home today

conference nearly done.

home in a bit. back to my kids. and my wife. and a gathering of feig this evening.

Dan is cooking. looking forward to it.

at a conference...

so, I am about to think about bed on day two of this CMS gathering...

it's been good. and bad. like anything in life.

there have been some great conversations with old friends and new faces. some worthwhile stuff has been raised and discussed. some guff has also come up. some odd bits and bobs, and a few frustrations.

I have to flag up Ian Adams'night prayer (compline) yesterday. After a long day of back to back talk about church and models and systems blah, blah during which I decided that I couldn't bear to hear another word about church ever again, Ian's simple, candlelit, contribution sorted me out.

I've got to say that a highlight for me yesterday was 4 firsts.

between the end of the third session and the start of dinner there was a space.

Mark Berry suggested a few of us visit the pub beside the Spencer estate on which Di is buried.

One of the guys here has a brand new Range Rover (he's not in full time church work).

So I found myself in a RangeRover (a first), with Andrew Jones (a first), and then at Princess Di's local (a first), drinking Green beer (a first, and last).

Yes, that was 'green' beer.
The landlord had a whole lot of guest ales, one of which was called something like 'the joy of spring' and was as green as absinth.

Today has been good. cooked breakfasts are always a good start. Having more conversations with people is always good.
The sessions have been useful, thought provoking, challenging, sometimes frustrating. I think part of what we are doing here is trying to find some new language to give us resources to help shape church in an uncertain world and to 'escape the gravitational pull of the Christendom model' as Chris Neal would say.

anyway, good night.

I miss my kids.

CMS

I'm off to Northampton until Wednesday.

CMS are hosting a gathering for those involved in leading small missional communities.

should be very good indeedy.

looking forward to hearing stories from around the UK.

cafe lift off

today is a big deal.

a bunch of us took up residence in the cathedral coffee shop - wedged a couple of tables together, broke out the munchies and talked and laughed about what next.

i'm excited.

very excited in fact.

it's not a 'feig' thing - although it originated somewhere in amongst what feig have been experimenting with. Joe, Kim, Chris and Tim are not regular feig-ers but it is ace to have them interested and involved.

funny to have late comers climbing in through the coffee shop windows.
no front door keys yet...

need to sort that.