loving...

I know this is pretty old. But I'm loving it. Good for lenten ears.

son-of-feig goes large

a few weeks back the core community 'sent off' four guys to start a second expression of the feig community.

this evening I'm going along to lead a simple communion.

also coming is a boat builder who is wondering whether it might be the thing for him.

along with a young couple who are wondering if it is for them.

that makes... 8.

double.

son-of-feig might soon be having grandchildren...


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Ash Wednesday

Today, Ash Wednesday, marks the start of the forty days of lent... but you already know that.

I'll be presiding at the lunchtime Eucharist in the cathedral, during which time the congregation will have the opportunity to come forward to receive an ash cross on their foreheads.

The ashes are a sign of our penitence and a symbol of our mortality - in receiving them we remember that it by the grace of God alone that we receive eternal life.

As I mark the foreheads of those who come along with the ash cross, I will say:

'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.'

I remember my first ashing very well indeed.
Having spent my teenage years in a large (& pretty good) baptist church that didn't seem to observe the ritual at all, my first encounter with it was at a preacher's conference in 2001. Jonny Baker had come along to lead worship.
Ash Wednesday happened to fall during the conference and during the evening we shared in a profoundly moving service during which ashing was offered.
Hearing the above words for the first time was powerful and strangely helpful. It was both an antidote to the bizzare myth of eternal consumption that our culture propagates and an encouragement to turn to Christ - the source of authentic life - at each moment of each day.

If you're in Gloucester and are free between 12.45 - 1.15, the service is in the cathedral's Lady Chapel. Or, there's a 'fuller' version in the choir at 5.30pm.

A prayer for Shrove Tuesday

Be still and know that I am God
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know that I
Be still and know that
Be still and know
Be still and
Be still
Be


,

glad to have started Twittering.

if you're on then let me know so that I can 'follow' you


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Salvation...

I have been preparing something for part-one of three sessions on baptism and confirmation for members of feig. Six of us will be meeting tonight at our place to get our heads further around Christian initiation.

Anyway, in the process of my preparations, I came across the following on the part of the Church of England's website (here) that deals with Christian initiation.

'Although this new relationship [with God] is open to all human beings they do not automatically share in it. Being part of this new relationship normally involves responding in four ways to the good news of what God has done for us...' (the site goes on here to describe those four ways)

I found this interesting in light of discussions about who and what shares in the salvation won by Jesus.

More to discuss...

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by Jon Birch

for more, take a look at The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus

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Thought for the week from the Mayo known as Bob...

Bob Mayo's thought for the week just landed in my inbox and once again I felt the need to paste it up here...

'The passage for this week is the Transfiguration (Mark 2:2-9). Moses and Elijah appear alongside Jesus and a voice from heaven proclaims him as God’s beloved son. This glimpse of glory helped Jesus to understand what would happen to him when he went to Jerusalem. The authorities would never be able to accept him and so they would kill him (as they saw it) for their own survival. We hit out against anyone that brings us face-to-face with our own mortality. This is shown by the Internet vitriol surrounding Jade Goody’s reality death. There is a website inviting people to predict the date of the ‘media whore’s’ death with an iphone 3G as a prize. The Jewish authorities did not like what Jesus had made them realize about themselves. We do not like the way in which Jade Goody holds up a mirror to our society. Fame is her ‘secularized version of salvation’ and publicity offers her redemption. The £1.5 million offered by the OK magazine to cover her wedding will set up a trust fund for her children’s education. The Transfiguration gives us a glimpse of what lies beyond Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection; without this Jade’s death will be nothing more than another person dying.'


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reading...

'Don't Sleep There are Snakes'

a BBC Radio 4 book of the week... apparently...

the Piraha tribe have no conception of anything that isn't in their immediate experience.
If they haven't seen it, or can't see it, it doesn't exist. They don't speak about the past or the future. They never mention their dead. If a plane flies overhead it exists until it is out of sight and that's that.

One Amazon reviewer says:

'Dan Everett has written an excellent book. First, it is a very powerful autobiographical account of his stay with the Piraha in the jungles of the Amazon basin. Second, it is a brilliant piece of ethnographical description of life among the Piraha. And third, and perhaps most important in the long run, his data and his conclusions about the language of the Piraha run dead counter to the prevailing orthodoxy in linguistics. If he is right, he will permanently change our conception of human language.' - John Searle, Slusser Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley

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any Nephilim at your church?

Remember the Nephilim?

No?

Well, if you'd read Genesis more attentively, you would have spotted the reference to a long-forgotten race of giants...

"Now it came about, when people began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown." (Genesis 6: 1 - 4)

What are the Nephilim? What did the writer of Genesis mean? What are we to make of it all??

These guys might know...





crazy, eh?


obviously a photoshop fake, but check this out...

watching...

Burn After Reading

bad.

offensively rubbish.

don't bother.

listening to...

'Mexico' on the Putumayo world music series.

very, very cool indeed.

a young Gladstone in the woods?

St Deiniol's Library, in which I am sitting at a desk at this very moment, was established by the former British Prime Minister William Gladstone. He lived just across the road at New Hawarden Castle - which had previously belonged to the family of his wife, Catherine Glynne. The 'castle' was built in 1752 and Gladstone occupied the place until his death there in 1898. The castle and estate are still a private residence owned by the Gladstone family. In its grounds are the ruins of a large-ish medieval castle.

I tell you all this because some of the grounds are open to the public - I took a very long walk in them yesterday and today. The ruins of the medieval castle are pretty good actually. Anyway, I digress. Whilst I was walking today, I passed a young man on the edge of the woods. He was a sort of well-dressed-looking-student-type. I was hoying on along the path, but he was just hanging around. It struck me that he bore a striking resemblance to the pictures of Gladstone that are hanging around in the library here - there's one of him aged about twenty just outside the door.

Thinking about it now, I'd bet he was the great, great, great?? grandson of the great man.

I wonder if he'll be chopping down massive oak trees on the estate for excercise at the age of eighty like his famous forebear?

And yes, I realise that this has nothing whatsoever to do with God, feig, theology, the emerging church, fresh expressions or other related topics, but I don't care...

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Sentamu gets a front page

I spotted Arch Bishop Sentamu on the front page of today's Telegraph. What he said has to be a big corrective for a couple of Telegraph readers I know who are down on the CofE because they perceive it to be full of liberal wets who won't speak out about anything...

The Telegraph write:

'In a speech delivered yesterday to Holy Trinity Brompton church in west London, the birthplace of the Alpha Course, Dr Sentamu said: "Many Christians are living out their lives as the church dispersed in the world of business and commerce every day. They are involved daily in building the Kingdom and have the daily challenge of living by a set of values that the world thinks are mad. Their counter-cultural work and calling needs to be recognised, affirmed and supported.

We [Christians] bring to the table a particular perspective – the vision of justice and righteousness that comes from a creative and generous God. It is not as if we are the only ethically minded people on the block – far from it. But what we are called to in Christ often asks of us more, and beckons us to a bigger vision."

He added: "All of life is religious and there is a desperate need to reconnect the sacred and the secular. There is no more urgent time than now to break down the compartmentalised thinking that separates trust in God from the world of work.
There needn't be a separation between what goes on in church and in our prayers – and what goes on in the office or in the boardroom or on the shop floor."

Over the past six months Dr Sentamu has criticised repeatedly the greed and recklessness in the banking sector that has led to the current financial crisis.
In his latest attack, he said: "In our imagination, addiction to growth, fuelled by over-borrowing (debt), stopped being a bad thing. Instead, it became a means to an end, a route to growth. The unfettered pursuit of profit was never going to deliver. It is this idolatrous love of money, pursuing profit without regard for ethic, risk or consequence, which led us to our current situation."

He conceded that "banking is an honourable objective" but went on: "Not the gambling casino in the basement of banking".
"History is littered with the moral bankruptcy of people who were Christian in name but not in behaviour, who were silent or indifferent in the face of dehumanising and destructive power of governments,"

Good. Very good. So much for being able to say nothing worth while. Makes me proud to be an Anglican...

Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?

Further to the post on evolution etc yesterday... (sorry to bore you if this is of zero interest...)

I read an excellent article by the author of this book in Third Way magazine a while back.

One reviewer on Amazon US, does a great job of summing up the book. So, I have quoted him at length...

'This book is primarily for Christians who are seeking a better understanding of the current creation-evolution debate. The author, who is the Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St. Edmund's College, Cambridge, begins by assuming that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God.

Dr. Alexander then tackles his subject systematically, starting with biblical interpretation, then the biblical doctrine of creation, then three chapters on "What do we mean by evolution?" His discussion of the supporting evidence for evolution is the best and most up-to-date that I've yet seen in the popular press. He then spends a chapter defending evolution against common objections, such as:
* Evolution is a chance process and this is incompatible with the God of the Bible bringing about his purposeful plan of creation.
* The theory of evolution is not truly scientific because it does not involve repeatable experiments in the laboratory.
* Evolution runs counter to the second law of thermodynamics.
* Perhaps God makes things took old, although in reality they are much younger, in order to test our faith.
* What use is half an eye?
* Surely if evolution were true, God would have simply told us so in his Word so that we don't need to have all this discussion.
* Perhaps God made the original kinds by special acts of creation which then underwent rapid evolution to generate the species diversity that we see today.

In bringing together Adam & Eve and evolution, he presents the same five models (A-E) that he described in his paper at the joint meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation and Christians-in-Science in Edinburgh in 2007. He favors his Model C, in which "God in his grace chose a couple of Neolithic farmers in the near East . . . to whom he chose to reveal himself in a special way, calling them into fellowship with himself - so that they might know him as a personal God." Model C is consistent with the historical and biblical records. So is a local flood saving those who "walked with God." The calling of Adam & Eve to be the recipients of God's specific commands set the pattern for all the other specific people subsequently called by God for God's specific purpose, including Abraham, Moses and Mary.

In his discussion of death before the Fall, he makes the point that "nowhere in the Old Testament is there the slightest suggestion that the physical death of either animals or humans, after a reasonable span of years, is anything other than the normal pattern ordained by God for this earth."

Chapter 14 (Intelligent Design) does as good a demolition of ID as science as I have seen anywhere, and better than most.

This is an excellent book for Christians, especially Young Earth, Day-Age and Progressive Creationists, who have doubts about their current position but greater doubts about the compatibility of the Bible and biological evolution.'

Interesting eh?

(or, perhaps not...)

breakfast with Ray Simpson

During my time here at St. Deiniols I've been pretty focused on the work I came here to do - to the extent that my laptop has gone with me to the dining room for the evening meal so that I can work-whilst-feeding.

This morning, after the Eucharist, as I queued for breakfast, the man beside me commented on my 'hard work'.

I am not brilliant in the morning, so my first response was more of a grunt than anything coherent.

We ended up sitting together however, and it transpired that this man was Ray Simpson, the leader of the community of Aidan and Hilda on Lindisfarne (Holy Island). He is here for a couple of weeks writing a book.

I've wanted to visit Lindisfarn for a long time. This morning's meeting has prompted me to get on and book in a visit.

The website says:

'The Community of Aidan and Hilda is a world-wide fellowship whose members seek to live out Christianity as a complete way of life. We try to make ourselves wholly available to the Holy Spirit and to the way of Jesus as revealed to us in the Bible. In particular, we seek to nurture a spirituality for today by:

Cradling a holisitic Christian spirituality for today
Raising up a renewed people who journey with God
Developing reources for the emerging and existing churches
Healing fragmented people and communities'

You can read more here: www.aidanandhilda.org.uk (sorry. you'll have to copy & paste the web address as my link took is not working...)

creationism and apocalypse in today's G2

I was just reading today's Guardian G2 and stumbled across an interesting article titled as follows:
'Defying Darwin: The fundamental ideas behind the theory of evolution have been scientific gospel for decades - and yet creationists refuse to go the way of the dinosaurs. Who exactly are they? And just what do they believe?'

To be honest, the debate is not one I want to spend a great deal of time thinking about. It can end up becoming rather a distraction from the job of following Christ in the here and now. It seems to drag people into a bunch of (often quite spiteful) arguments about all sorts of things that not too many individuals are really all that qualified to talk about.

The article says:
'Almost all Christians used to go along with the idea that Genesis was a bit suspect on dates, and that the six days of the Bible were metaphorical, with each day representing a vast geological age. The majority of Anglicans, theistic evolutionists who have no difficulty in believing in a Darwinian God, would still abide by that.'

I'd say (mostly) fair enough to that. From the reading, thinking and discussing I've done, it seems pretty clear that Genesis 1 - 11 is not setting out to be science or history. It is theology. It points to the truth that God is the source of all things and that we (humans) have gone our own way. The article quotes Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford and a theistic evolutionary, who said recently: "Creationists totally misunderstand the Bible. Genesis is in the business of story, myth, poetry, metaphor.'

I think these terms are easily misunderstood by Christians who see their use as some sort of compromise, or watering down of the authority of scripture. But it is not this at all. This kind of language acknowledges the complexity of the truth about which we are trying to speak. Since God is beyond all langauge, story, myth, poetry, and metaphor are things that help us understand what he is like and how we must live in relation to him.

Anyway, like I said, I don't want to spend too long on all of this as there is always more to say on all sides. The point of blogging about the article was something completely unexpected that caught me at the end.

There I was thinking this was just another fairly standard attack on creationism, when I read this:

'If you take the biblical beginning literally, you must also go along with the biblical end - apocalypse, the second coming of Christ, the final judgment, eternal damnation for non-believers, perpetual bliss for the lucky few. It was this that really turned Darwin off Christianity: inherent in creationism is destructionism. It strikes me, too, as a hideous doctrine.'

The guy writing the article suddenly seems to have introduced a completely different strand of thought into the debate, and in the process has revealed some of the assumptions upon which his point of view is founded. For me, the revealing of these assumptions (no doubt assumed to be shared by the majority of Guardian readers) significantly undermines the article.

His tone here gives it all away: 'the lucky few' and 'a hideous doctrine' are hardly neutral.

Although, like Genesis, Revelation is an extraordinarily difficult (and sophisticated) text, full of imagery and allegory, as a Christian I believe its central message - the return of Christ, the judgement of the nations, and the full establishment of the Kingdom that Jesus inaugurated at his first coming.

The sadness for me, is how this journalist has misinterpreted the message of Revelation (and scripture in general) as something narrow, spiteful, and essentially cruel. He appears to perceive the Christian God as vindictive and small-minded - wanting to spoil our fun and impose his crushing rule upon us, robbing us in the processs of what it is to be human.

How wrong. (But must Christians take some responsibility for this mis-reading of what we believe? I think so.)

For me, the hideous thing would be for a God who claims to be 'just' to not return in judgement of the world.

Anti-Christian liberalism is the privilege of the successful middle classes. I'm not sure that the masses who exist at the receiving end of injustice - the millions who wallow in poverty - would think of the second coming in judgement of the greatest man who ever walked the earth as a 'hideous doctrine'. In fact I'm fairly sure desperate people are praying for that each day.
The final establishment of the Kingdom of God at Christ's second coming is far from being a hideous doctrine - rather it is the hope of the nations.

you can thank me later Pete

So, we used one of Pete Rollin's YouTube parables to prompt a little discussion last night at our weekly feig gathering.

I noticed that before I blogged about it earlier this week, Pete's parable 'no conviction' had received 10 views. A couple of days later that had jumped to 37.

No need to thank me Pete. Happy to get the word out!

We enjoyed watching you on a laptop in Gloucester, having shared a large meal and a Celtic communion service...

Bob Mayo. again.

Well, once again, Bob Mayo's thought for the week.

This is becoming a habit... (but they are worth a read, so there we are)

'The reading for this Sunday is the first chapter of St John’s Gospel. It is a much-loved passage for Christmas Carol Services: In the beginning was the word; the word came into the world [in the figure of Jesus Christ] and though the world was made through him, it did not recognise him. People have been confused about the faith ever since. On the one hand belief is back in vogue. Labour does ‘do God’ after all, according to a Treasury minister. Steve Tims said that religious ideals are important in shaping Labour policy, despite the impression given by Alistair Campbell’s famous phrase to the contrary. On the other hand there is the story of Jennie Cairns, a primary school receptionist, whose five year old daughter was told off at school for talking about heaven and God. Mrs Cairns sent an email to ten friends from her church asking for their prayers. The email came to the attention of the headmaster and Jennie is now being investigated for professional misconduct. Rowan Williams says that God has long-range plan. Rowan Atkinson says that Baldrick has a cunning plan’. I will take Rowan Williams over Rowan Atkinson any day.'

Mind, Body, Spirit

On 24 - 26 April The Sheffield Centre are hosting the fist ever UK conference for Christians interested in engaging with those involved in new spiritualities.

The blurb says:

'Over the past few years many Christians from a wide range of denominations and styles of spirituality have been developing ways to relate their faith to the growing numbers exploring the New Spiritualities. This has lead to regular ministries at rock festivals, health & fitness centres and MBS fairs; life coaching, card reading and spiritual art; meditation, creation liturgy and healing prayer; and much more. This conference is a place for those engaged in the whole range of these to come together, learn from each other and most of all explore how we can move further towards the establishing of Christian communities that can sustain the faith journeys of today's spiritual travellers.'

For more, go here

listening to...

Cinematic Orchestra 'Live at the Royal Albert Hall'

evocative. uplifting. peaceful. etc etc. blah, blah...

St Deiniols Library

At some point during the next week or so I'll be spending a few days here, at St Deiniols residential library. I first heard about it a couple of years ago and have always been up for paying a visit.

Good for reading, thinking, praying, writing, walking etc etc.

Among other things, I'll be going over the final draft of the text for a book Survivor will be publishing in time for Greenbelt. I got the M/S off to them last October. It needs a little more tinkering before going off to the copy editor. Should be fun.

Proost

I need to re-subscribe to Proost. Have been using their excellent resources this year.

look here and subscribe too...

went to see...

After my DMin classes in London yesterday, and before squeezing onto a packed train home to Gloucester, I went along for a second look at the 2008 Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery (here).
It's really pretty good. There are one or two dull entries - images that seem to convey nothing much of interest, but on the whole the entries are intriguing and hint at deep stories.
Well worth a look if you're over that way (in the next three days).

The Starfish and the Spider

I bought The Starfish and the Spider ages ago and read some of it but have just come back to it.

It's good. Very good. It's making me dream all kinds of dreams about church.

The blurb about the book says:

'A breezy and entertaining look at how decentralization is changing many organizations. The title metaphor conveys the core concept: though a starfish and a spider have similar shapes, their internal structure is dramatically different-a decapitated spider inevitably dies, while a starfish can regenerate itself from a single amputated leg. In the same way, decentralized organizations, like the Internet, the Apache Indian tribe and Alcoholics Anonymous, are made up of many smaller units capable of operating, growing and multiplying independently of each other, making it very difficult for a rival force to control or defeat them.'

We need church like this. Except no one can say: 'lets make church like this' without being in danger of negating the whole point of something being decentralized and leaderless, right? I guess that's not the whole story - we could probably kick start something that grew in its own way. In a sense feig is in that corner of the field.
We could certainly be more decentralized though.
For some reason, it seems easier to achieve decentralization with illegal online file sharing than with church.

More thought needed...

'a space cleared by God...'

Dan P sent me the link to a lecture given by the Archbishop in 2004 which, in my opinion gives some profound insights and generally excellent food for thought and action. I particularly liked this:

'...it is about getting away from a view of the Church that is very seductive and very damaging – and very popular. This is the view that the Church is essentially a lot of people who have something in common called Christian faith and get together to share it with each other and communicate it to other people 'outside'. It looks a harmless enough view at first, but it is a good way from what the New Testament encourages us to think about the Church – which is that the Church is first of all a kind of space cleared by God through Jesus in which people may become what God made them to be (God's sons and daughters), and that what we have to do about the Church is not first to organise it as a society but to inhabit it as a climate or a landscape. It is a place where we can see properly – God, God's creation, ourselves. It is a place or dimension in the universe that is in some way growing towards being the universe itself in restored relation to God. It is a place we are invited to enter, the place occupied by Christ, who is himself the climate and atmosphere of a renewed universe.
Forget this, and you're stuck with a faith that depends heavily on what individuals decide and on what goes on inside your head.'

Read the whole article here

Pete Rollins and his parables...

Pete Rollins is well known for his book: 'How (Not) to Speak of God'.

'The Orthodox Heretic' is due out in April and looks interesting. It's a collection of 33 parables that Pete has written. You can watch him read one or two on You Tube here.

Good, thought-provoking stuff, as every decent parable should be - will work well as discussion starters.

Anyway, enough of this, I must be back to reading about interpretation of texts for my DMin...

ha. ha.

Once again, Bob Mayo has produced an interesting thought for the week.

I have to confess to thinking that the Christian response to the Atheist bus campaign is a bit too obvious. The poster campaign didn't stand up and had nothing substantial to say, so I'm not sure why Christians now feel the need to respond. There were at least a few media-savvy Christians who realised the weakness of the atheist campaign early on and even contributed financially to the cause. Oh well, here's Bob's thought...

'In the Gospel passage for this week the disciples are amazed at the authority in Jesus’ teaching (Mark 1:21-28). Where are the sources of authority in our society today? David Hare’s play Gethsemane suggests that a collective doubt is at the heart of public life and so the question of authority is a mute point. It is not that the powerful people know what to do and trick the rest of us to get us onside. We are all caught in a void of knowing. This leaves us with competing ideologies of truth and bus advertising has become the most recent medium for debate. Christian groups have hit back against the Atheist Bus Campaign - “There’s Probably No God. Now Stop Worrying and Get On With Your Life”. The Christian Party have booked 50 bendy buses to run with the advert “There definitely is a God. So join The Christian Party and enjoy your life”. The Trinitarian Bible Society has booked 100 bus sides carrying a line from Psalm 53.1 “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God”. Russian Hour TV has booked 25 Superside bus adverts to run with the strap line “There IS a God, BELIEVE. Don’t worry and enjoy your life”. Why not a Bus Campaign that says - "There's probably not that much snow. Now stop complaining and get to work."

snow

"Have you entered the storehouses of the snow..?" says God to Job (in chapter 38 of the book of Job)

I think he probably said 'no' but then he didn't live in the icy north - unlike us...

It's pretty heavy today. Wish I had a sledge. And a decent hill...

Feig last night was special (as it always is).

A good time of sharing and even a little bit of singing - which is quite a rare thing for us - but great when it happens.

anyway, back to the snow. and wishing I had a sledge.

Yesterday was a BIG day

Well, for feig at least...

In the evening four of us met at Dan n Ruth's place for food, conversation, worship and prayer.
This seemingly small thing is, in fact, huge in the life of feig because it is the start of a new expression of a community that didn't even exist two and a half years ago.

We were getting too large for one gathering - not enough cutlery, chairs, plates etc for 15 adults. Cooking regularly for those kind of numbers is expensive and logistically tricky. We were also finding that there was not enough opportunity to have a say during our times together.

We all recognised this but didn't want to do the stiff cell group thing of 'splitting' down the middle.

After months of thought, conversation, prayer etc it was decided that we should 'send off' a handful of folks who felt it was right to go and establish an expression of feig elsewhere. It's not a seperate group. It's not a new church. It's not a 'plant'. It's an extension of the feig community - with feig values, and a degree of autonomy in how they develop.
I'll go along every other week to keep some of the continuity going and the two 'expressions' will get together for the regular feast event at the cathedral and various other bits and bobs.

Anyway, there it is. History for feig.

A good read

Amazon say:

'Richard Dawkins recently claimed that 'no theologian has ever produced a satisfactory response to his arguments'. Well-known broadcaster and author Keith Ward is one of Britain's foremost philosopher- theologians. This is his response. Ward welcomes all comers into philosophy's world of clear definitions, sharp arguments, and diverse conclusions. But when Dawkins enters this world, his passion tends to get the better of him, and he descends into stereotyping, pastiche, and mockery. In this stimulating and thought-provoking philosophical challenge, Ward demonstrates not only how Dawkins' arguments are flawed, but that a perfectly rational case can be made that there, almost certainly, is a God.'

Ward was Professor of History and Philosophy of Religion at King's College London in 1985, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University from 1991 to 2004.

His Wikipedia entry says:

'His work explores concepts of God and the idea of revelation. Ward has written on the relationship between science and religion. As an advocate of theistic evolution he regards them as essentially compatible, a belief he described in his book God, Chance and Necessity, unlike his Oxford colleague Richard Dawkins, an ethologist and vocal atheist. Ward has said that Dawkins's conclusion that there is no God or any purpose in the universe is "naive" and not based on science but on a hatred for religion. Professor Dawkins's strong anti-religious views originate, according to Ward, from earlier encounters with "certain forms of religion which are anti-intellectual and anti-scientific .. and also emotionally pressuring." He has also been highly critical of Materialist philosophers of consciousness such as Daniel Dennett as well as social scientists such as Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, arguing that they each attempt to reduce the Human person into aspects of their own discipline.

Ward has described his own Christian faith as follows:

'I am a born-again Christian. I can give a precise day when Christ came to me and began to transform my life with his power and love. He did not make me a saint. But he did make me a forgiven sinner, liberated and renewed, touched by divine power and given the immense gift of an intimate sense of the personal presence of God.'

The view from the top of our particular hill...

Tomorrow I am leaving my house at 7am to get to the retreat house in Glastonbury in time for a bunch of presentations on mission. I'd love to go on and on about who's there but it hardly matters...

Anyway, we'll be looking at the national scene and then the local.

I've been asked to say a little something on local stuff, and what we're up to in particular.

I'll start by stating that we set out to work towards church as organic community, and church with not for.

I'll go on to ask: what are we learning?

Lots of things, obviously.
But given that I have to give some sort of summary, I'm going to say that we've learned that when it comes to church, people value the following:

i) small (therefore growth leads to sending not wedging)

ii) food (preparing food and eating together regularly builds community)

iii) learning creatively (opportunity for discussion / disagreement . wise guides not experts.)

iv) ownership (I want to get stuck in but don’t want church events to cram my diary)

v) organic growth (if this is a beautiful thing I want to bring those who are important to me)

vi) adventure (rhythm of surprise. achieving balance between having a home and being part of something that is going somewhere.)

vii) tradition (BCP is not off limits. anything goes. it’s all about setting / juxtaposition)

viii) place (cathedral huge asset. events have mystery / awe / generate talk of faith)

ix) risk (mistakes ok. keep moving - journey metaphor crucial)

x) creation of space(s) (programmes: out - playing the long game: in.)

xi) service (social action / concern about what Christian faith has to say to a range of issues)

xii) networks (connectivity with like-minded groups nationally / and the wider church locally)

xiii) integrity (leader crucial but power located within the group. no one wants to serve my vision.)

xiv) prayer & scripture (fundamental but engaged with creatively and with integrity)

There is always more to be said but that's it for now.

Comments welcome...

reading (among other things...)

it's good. obviously.

better than the film. probably.

listening to...

Thievery Corporation: Radio Retaliation.

partner-expressions

A friend of mine has recently become the vicar of five rural parishes in the Cotswolds - basically (and this is the point) the shape of ministry in his context is a country mile from stereotypical 'pioneer' 'fresh expressions' ministry in a city center (although, in reality, there are a good few similarities).

Anyway, he and I have cooked up a little experimental weekend - just the sort of thing that, if it's successful, might be taken up in other places..? (although if you're some kind of diocesan missioner / arch-deacon type and are reading this and thinking of nicking the idea - we both know where you got it..!)

A good number of the feig guys and I are going to go and camp in his (large) vicarage garden one weekend in June.

We'll get to experience life in his neck of the woods - host a contemplative / creative prayer event in one of the parishes, be involved with one or two of his Sunday services, meet his parishioners, share stories and ideas, and generally be part of something that will hopefully be a worthwhile ground for cross-fertilization.

Good eh?

Spurgeon's conversion...

Spurgeon is widely thought to be one of the greatest preachers ever to have, well, preached...
A huge figure.

Anyway, I was in someone's house today - in the loo in fact - and on the wall was the following (in a decent frame and all that...).

It is the story of Spurgeon's dramatic conversion as a young and desperate man in 1850.
I have to confess to having something of a spiritual moment as I read it.
I was rooted to the spot, and an odd sense of being in a profoundly significant few minutes came over me.

Thought it was worth sharing:

'Sometimes I think that I might still have been in darkness and despair now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning while I was on my way to a place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned into a court and came to a small ‘Primitive Methodist’ chapel. There may have been twelve or fifteen people in that chapel. The minister did not come that morning: snowed in, I suppose. A poor man – a shoemaker, a tailor, or something of the sort – went up into the pulpit to preach.

Well, it is certainly good that a preacher should be a scholar, but this man was rather unlearned as one might say. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had nothing else to say. His text said, ""Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth."" He could not even say the words properly, but it did not really matter.

There seemed to be a gleam of hope in this text for me. He began thus: "My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says 'Look'. Now that does not take a great deal of effort. It ain't lifting your foot or your finger; it is just simply 'look'. Well, a man need not go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man need not be worth a thousandayear to look. Everyone can see; a child can see. But that is what the text says, then it says: 'Look unto Me, Aye'," he said in his broad Essex accent, "Many of ye are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You'll never find comfort in yourselves. Some are looking upon God the Father. 'No, look upon Him later on. Jesus Christ says, 'Look unto Me.' Some of you may answer, 'I have to wait for the coming of the Spirit. But it is not like that; look upon Jesus Christ. It is said 'Look unto Me'."

The good man continued with his text in this manner: "Look unto Me: I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me: I was nailed to the cross. Look: I was dead and buried. Look unto Me; I was resurrected. Look unto Me; I am in heaven. I am sitting at the right hand of my Father. Oh, look to Me! Look to Me!"

It took him ten minutes to say this and it seemed as if that was all he knew. Then he saw me under the gallery and recognised me as a stranger, probably due to the fact that there were only a few people present. He then said, "Young man, you look very miserable." Well, I did but I was not accustomed to remarks being made on my personal appear­ance from the pulpit. However, it was like an arrow piercing through me. He continued, "Yes, and you will always be miserable miserable in life and miserable in death if you do not obey my text. But if you obey now, you will be redeemed this very moment."

Then he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist can, "Young man, look to Jesus Christ!" And I "saw".

Immediately the cloud had disappeared, the darkness was gone and I saw the sun. At that same moment I could have jumped up and sung with any other enthusiastic Christian about the precious Blood of Christ, and the simple faith which only sees Him. Oh, if only someone had told me this before:

"Have faith in Jesus Christ and you shall be redeemed."

Candlemas today...

So today is Candlemas - or the presentation of the baby Jesus at the temple.

Once again I was leading children's church at the cathedral. All very worthy and worthwhile... (although still a little odd in that it fits in no way whatsoever with the pioneer stereotype / brief / etc etc. But it needs doing and that's that. Someone's got to step up. No point just saying its all outmoded when a bunch of kids show up wanting to learn. blah.)

Anyway, Bob Mayo's thought for the week is a good-un and goes as follows:

'In the Gospel passage for this Sunday Simeon says his Nunc Dimittis (Lord, now let your servant depart in peace). He has seen the baby Jesus in the Temple and feels that all of his prayers have been answered (Luke 2:22-40). What he had been waiting for his whole life had now happened and he wants for nothing more. What would it take for us to be able to say our own Nunc Dimittis and to feel happy with how things are? Aristotle [my hero]’s answer would that the pursuit of wisdom and the love of family and friends is all a person needs to become good, wise, just and, to put it in a nutshell, happy. By contrast we make a virtue out of wanting more and this leaves us feeling dissatisfied. A report published by the Economic and Social Research Council says that the number of people in their early 30s who report feeling symptoms of depression and anxiety has doubled in just over a decade, from one in 14 in the late 1980s to one in seven today. This weekend take a leaf out of both Simeon’s book and say your own Nunc Dimmittis and out also of Aristotle’s book and be happy'

so there