It was the first home game of the season last Saturday for Everton, and only the second for our new manager, Roberto Martinez. We were playing West Brom, and it was not the most exciting of games, ending in a 0-0 draw. We will have to do a lot better if we are to achieve anything this season. But it's early days, as Martinez brings his own style to our team. One perceptive fellow-Evertonian said, 'I can see what Martinez is trying to do - but not sure we have the right players to do it!' Time will tell whether they can adjust.
During one particularly uneventful period of play, I was captivated by the referee. (That shows how dull the game was!) I am not exaggerating, from a throw-in, he ran half the width of the pitch backwards! Once I'd noticed this, I became aware that referees often run backwards. I suppose that is part of their training: keeping their eye on the play, while getting to where the ball is likely to be kicked or thrown. It's quite an art actually: don't try this at home, but I bet you couldn't run far backwards without falling over!
I remembered this as I began to read a book I have recently been recommended: Relationships - A Mess Worth Making by Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp. As the title suggests, it addresses an issue which I guess brings us the greatest joy and the bitterest struggle. Most of us, the writers suggest, live somewhere between two extremes as far as relationships are concerned: on a continuum between Isolation (the safe option) and Immersion (total dependence). Neither are healthy for human wellbeing. The first precludes healthy relationship altogether; the second inevitably leads to disappointment and dashed expectations. Somewhere along the line there has to be struggle, engagement, risk, hopes and values honestly shared. The writers say, 'The highest joys of relationship grow in the soil of the deepest struggles.' But they are worth it!
Unfortunately, the tendency is to 'run backwards' from relationships. This is not the same as running away, turning one's back on the other person. It is more keeping one's distance, not getting involved, avoiding conflict or difference - and therefore not investing in that person's life. Inevitably, that means we will not receive from them either. The Church is full of people running backwards! And so is our culture.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has just retired as Chief Rabbi. In an interview on Sunday, he said that society is 'losing the plot', as illustrated by the collapse of various institutions, most notably the banks, and including marriage. At the heart of the problem is the loss of trust between people and institutions. The reason is that secular society is highly individualised (people running backwards?), fearful of commitment, which of course is one reason why marriage has become less popular.
Put positively, I often say at weddings that the newly-married couple are an inspiration! They believe there is a future, and that the future is held in trust to one another. The best thing about marriage is that one person promises another that they will give themself to the other for the rest of their life. The fact that this promise is mutual is the basis of trust in that relationship.
As in marriage, so in other relationships: they are healthiest when we move towards each other, and even embrace each other, rather than observe from a distance, preserving our own space, doing our own thing.
Tuesday 27 August 2013
Monday 19 August 2013
Leaving Church
Perhaps I should begin by saying, 'I'm not!' - leaving church that is! But an awful lot of people are, for a whole lot of different reasons. It's sometimes said that church has a narrow front door (it's hard to get into) and a wide back door (easy to leave). In my experience, not many people, having belonged to a church, decide to leave. They just miss for a few weeks - perhaps through illness or personal circumstances - and find they didn't miss it. Even worse, no one seems to have missed them either. At least, no one bothered to say so by getting in touch to enquire.
This presents quite a challenge for those of us in leadership. For one thing, we need to have a church culture where people are missed and are contacted if they go missing for any length of time. This is not as easy as it might sound, because these days not many people go to church every week: such are the complexities of modern living and the other choices available, from caring for elderly parents to owning a weekend cottage or caravan. It is also sad, but true, that too many people only come to church if they have some particular reason to do so: assisting in children's ministry (which might mean they don't appear in church anyway!), reading the lesson, singing in the choir or music group, administering at Holy Communion, being on welcome team etc. It betrays an attitude which is more about doing than being church. Whether or not we have a particular function on a particular Sunday, our presence is required. Who knows whether or not God might call on us to offer a word of comfort to someone who is struggling, or to rejoice in someone's good news? And don't we all need to make ourselves available to God by offering ourselves in worship, open to the promptings of the Spirit and the teaching of the Word week by week? Ok - so not all sermons are brilliant, but you never know when that light-bulb moment may happen!
Recently, after a rather difficult church meeting, someone said 'Where was Jesus in that meeting?' I wish I had thought quickly enough to say, 'he was sitting next to you, or across the room'. In other words, he was present in your brother or sister. I think it was Martin Luther who used to say that every Christian should be a 'little Christ', representing their Lord to each other and the world.
I am reading 'Leaving Alexandria', by Bishop Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh. Here is a man who has definitely and intentionally left the church, eventually finding the conflict unbearable between private doubt and public ministry. He is a scholar whose life journey has taken him from Glasgow slums to national prominence. It is a sad book, I think, and I find myself wondering whether his deep disappointment is more with the Church than with God. He seems to have fallen in love with Church - its rituals and its monasticism - in his teenage years and somehow this got in the way of his relationship with God. As disillusionment set in, so it became impossible to continue as a member of the Christian church. I am reminded of another bishop, John Robinson, years ago who wrote that it was important to love Jesus more than the Church.
To which I would add: we love the Church for Jesus' sake.
Coincidentally, I was reading at the weekend an interview with Barbara Brown Taylor - an American Episcopalian priest. She has also left the Church, in the sense that she has moved out of parish ministry, after many years as a particularly gifted preacher and pastor, into academia as a professor of religion. She says, religion gets in the way of God when the well becomes more interesting than the water...She has actually written a book called 'Leaving Church', which I suspect is more positive than Holloway's. What holds us together [as 'church'] is a certain way of seeing the world; a certain set of sacred stories that keep that view in place; and a certain way of responding to them that gives life meaning. That's not a bad way of describing what it means to belong to a 'community of blessing'.
September 29 is 'Back to Church Sunday' (www.backtochurch.co.uk). A good opportunity to re-engage with those who may not have left, just taken leave.
This presents quite a challenge for those of us in leadership. For one thing, we need to have a church culture where people are missed and are contacted if they go missing for any length of time. This is not as easy as it might sound, because these days not many people go to church every week: such are the complexities of modern living and the other choices available, from caring for elderly parents to owning a weekend cottage or caravan. It is also sad, but true, that too many people only come to church if they have some particular reason to do so: assisting in children's ministry (which might mean they don't appear in church anyway!), reading the lesson, singing in the choir or music group, administering at Holy Communion, being on welcome team etc. It betrays an attitude which is more about doing than being church. Whether or not we have a particular function on a particular Sunday, our presence is required. Who knows whether or not God might call on us to offer a word of comfort to someone who is struggling, or to rejoice in someone's good news? And don't we all need to make ourselves available to God by offering ourselves in worship, open to the promptings of the Spirit and the teaching of the Word week by week? Ok - so not all sermons are brilliant, but you never know when that light-bulb moment may happen!
Recently, after a rather difficult church meeting, someone said 'Where was Jesus in that meeting?' I wish I had thought quickly enough to say, 'he was sitting next to you, or across the room'. In other words, he was present in your brother or sister. I think it was Martin Luther who used to say that every Christian should be a 'little Christ', representing their Lord to each other and the world.
I am reading 'Leaving Alexandria', by Bishop Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh. Here is a man who has definitely and intentionally left the church, eventually finding the conflict unbearable between private doubt and public ministry. He is a scholar whose life journey has taken him from Glasgow slums to national prominence. It is a sad book, I think, and I find myself wondering whether his deep disappointment is more with the Church than with God. He seems to have fallen in love with Church - its rituals and its monasticism - in his teenage years and somehow this got in the way of his relationship with God. As disillusionment set in, so it became impossible to continue as a member of the Christian church. I am reminded of another bishop, John Robinson, years ago who wrote that it was important to love Jesus more than the Church.
To which I would add: we love the Church for Jesus' sake.
Coincidentally, I was reading at the weekend an interview with Barbara Brown Taylor - an American Episcopalian priest. She has also left the Church, in the sense that she has moved out of parish ministry, after many years as a particularly gifted preacher and pastor, into academia as a professor of religion. She says, religion gets in the way of God when the well becomes more interesting than the water...She has actually written a book called 'Leaving Church', which I suspect is more positive than Holloway's. What holds us together [as 'church'] is a certain way of seeing the world; a certain set of sacred stories that keep that view in place; and a certain way of responding to them that gives life meaning. That's not a bad way of describing what it means to belong to a 'community of blessing'.
September 29 is 'Back to Church Sunday' (www.backtochurch.co.uk). A good opportunity to re-engage with those who may not have left, just taken leave.
Wednesday 7 August 2013
James Bond and the Importance of 'We'
Les and I had a marvellous weekend a few days ago. We travelled south, with Jude, for some time with Les' extended family. On Friday night, an early 70th birthday meal for her elder sister, and the next evening a much bigger party for her cousin's 50th. We were particularly delighted that our own entire family made the journey to Hertfordshire to share in Saturday's festivities. They all love being with aunts, uncles and cousins. En route there or back, each of us in turn visited my mother, who is in a nursing home in Rugby, together with my sister and her husband who live nearby. So, a good all-round experience of family. During the day on Saturday, we wandered leisurely around St Albans, where I was brought up. It was market day, and the place was truly alive. I have never seen so much fresh fruit and veg on display. It was good to revisit the Abbey in particular, where I was confirmed just after we won the World Cup in 1966!
It was so good to reconnect with wider family and my own past.
On our return (leaving at 5.30a.m. to get back in time for church!), we found ourselves with a free Sunday evening. So we watched our latest rental DVD, 'Skyfall' - the most recent James Bond epic. Here I have to confess: I have never watched a James Bond film before! I gather this one was typical in terms of the spectacular effects, car chases, shootings and sexual encounters. Hugely entertaining stuff, but my overall feeling was that it was much ado about not very much. The plot, such as it was, made little sense to me. But I gather this was a more sensitive picture of Bond, by now an aging agent, rather past his sell-by date with more normal human feelings and a definite vulnerability. I guess I'd give it 3*s out of 5.
Presumably, if bizarrely, because of 'Skyfall', James Bond was the theme of the youth pilgrimage to the Anglican shrine at Walsingham, Norfolk last month. The ABC (Archbishop of Canterbury) addressed the pilgrims, saying that as Christians we are the opposite to James Bond: it is not our task to save the world single-handedly. Rather, we are part of a community, the Church, to whom God has indeed entrusted that task as the Body of Christ. This is a truth which bears on me more and more the longer I serve in ministry. I don't think many of us Christians realise just how important we are, as a body, in God's purposes for creation. For this reason, it is so important that we think in terms of 'we' in the Church rather than 'them and us' - for which you can read those of different theological persuasions, Christian denomination, or leaders and led.
I have had cause to address this recently in a particular situation, where them/us language has crept in. For Church, it is always 'we'. Could not the same be true of society, if we seek the common good? I have just started to read 'The New Few' by Ferdinand Mount. His thesis is that slowly, inexorably over more than 50 years Britain has slipped into oligarchy, or the exercise of government by the few i.e. the wealthy and powerful. Despite Osborne's 'all in this together', nothing could be further from the truth. It is very much 'us and them' - the wealthy, powerful few and the general public. Mount quotes Adam Smith from 1776:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but that the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Ring any bells? The worrying thing is that history shows oligarchy e.g. in Rome to be a sign of a crumbling society.
It was so good to reconnect with wider family and my own past.
On our return (leaving at 5.30a.m. to get back in time for church!), we found ourselves with a free Sunday evening. So we watched our latest rental DVD, 'Skyfall' - the most recent James Bond epic. Here I have to confess: I have never watched a James Bond film before! I gather this one was typical in terms of the spectacular effects, car chases, shootings and sexual encounters. Hugely entertaining stuff, but my overall feeling was that it was much ado about not very much. The plot, such as it was, made little sense to me. But I gather this was a more sensitive picture of Bond, by now an aging agent, rather past his sell-by date with more normal human feelings and a definite vulnerability. I guess I'd give it 3*s out of 5.
Presumably, if bizarrely, because of 'Skyfall', James Bond was the theme of the youth pilgrimage to the Anglican shrine at Walsingham, Norfolk last month. The ABC (Archbishop of Canterbury) addressed the pilgrims, saying that as Christians we are the opposite to James Bond: it is not our task to save the world single-handedly. Rather, we are part of a community, the Church, to whom God has indeed entrusted that task as the Body of Christ. This is a truth which bears on me more and more the longer I serve in ministry. I don't think many of us Christians realise just how important we are, as a body, in God's purposes for creation. For this reason, it is so important that we think in terms of 'we' in the Church rather than 'them and us' - for which you can read those of different theological persuasions, Christian denomination, or leaders and led.
I have had cause to address this recently in a particular situation, where them/us language has crept in. For Church, it is always 'we'. Could not the same be true of society, if we seek the common good? I have just started to read 'The New Few' by Ferdinand Mount. His thesis is that slowly, inexorably over more than 50 years Britain has slipped into oligarchy, or the exercise of government by the few i.e. the wealthy and powerful. Despite Osborne's 'all in this together', nothing could be further from the truth. It is very much 'us and them' - the wealthy, powerful few and the general public. Mount quotes Adam Smith from 1776:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but that the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Ring any bells? The worrying thing is that history shows oligarchy e.g. in Rome to be a sign of a crumbling society.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)