On the streets...

And the street cleaners come and in a blink it's all gone,
And the glass that reflected the neon will be crushed and disappear.
And the street cleaners go and the city stands still
And those puddles of puke leave a stain for the rain to clear.

But we remember...

It is time to go home and in the morning the city will rise,
Holding the secret of what it witnessed in its concrete creases;
Its people have sinned as their lives displayed fractures and pieces,
But no echo will be heard of their screaming and heaving and cries.

But we remember...

For we hear it still, we have soberly recorded those moments that alcohol erases,
From consciences inebriated, and minds flailing to find,
Some sense in the madness of another drunken Saturday night.
For us, held before God now, there are new names and faces.

Because we remember...

Richard, perplexed and so sure that he had it all sussed:
"What's our motivation for a people possessed?"
"Why waste time on a binge-drunk generation?"
"Your faith is, at best, some cruel trick of the imagination."

Andy sat in a door-step with a dullness deeply set in his eyes,
No expectations of divine mercy, anticipating only the lies.
And for a minute I wonder has faith come more easily for me
Who is housed, clothed and fed by a seemingly benign deity?

Two brown-eyed men in a car with a window down, asking me over,
"Who do I work for?" "God!" I say naively, and the atmospehere's changing,
"You should convert to Islam" and their faces are frowning,
As I call on the Saviour, I am proud to be naming...

"Jesus is a prophet."
"No, he is the Saviour of the world!"
"...a prophet."
"No, the Saviour of the World!"
"...a prophet."
"No, he's the Saviour of the World!"

And my heart is racing as I smile and continue facing,
These men who seem not to let me go,
Until I realise I've become captive to my very own will,
And smiling and turning, wish them peace, assured God loves me still.

I am a little changed by the encounter and reflect on my jealous desires
To protect the status of the one I serve,
And wonder what my purpose is out here on this night
And wonder what the Lord would make of my verbal fight.

And my prayer partner has stopped praying,
He has faithfully stayed up til 4.
And he texts me to say the work will now start,
And it does for the sirens are blazing
And for the first time I detect fear in what had been a fearless heart.

Across the city we are tearing to a club with its blue lights projecting,
A trip to Oceania, some underwater lagoon we are sadly expecting,
For the people are drowning on their own dark consuming,
As Satan prowls with his drug-pushers looming.

And one girl unconscious in vomit, lies helpless on a toilet floor
And now physically manifest are the signs of this spiritual war.
Her modesty's hiding and her dignity can not be found
And child-like she sobs and collapses again to the ground.

We remember...


And I remember it still
And I want to go out there again
So I pray God's protection on street pastors everywhere
So that God's Kingdom might extend into the depth's of the devil's lair.

Passion in the sand...

WOW, check this out!
h/t Bosco Peters

The implications of Hooker's theology for infant baptism

It is stimulating when guests grace our presence at St John's. Currently, we breakfast with the Bishop of Kenya who is staying for three weeks. The new Bishop of the diocese joined us for lunch and curates and priests who are already 'out there' join the community every few weeks for 'In-service study weeks'. As students, lunchtime conversation often seems to verge on the surreal, perhaps resulting from the theological reflection, which I think sometimes loosens our grip on reality. Either that or we are discussing our lack of sleep, appalling lack of exercise or pressing deadlines for assignments.

So when you are sat next to someone doing the job for real, it is something of a relief. Today I sat with a really chatty curate, ten years a Christian and in his second year of curacy. He had found Jesus in the RAF, not literally but you know what I mean!

He explained how he had entertained his lunch companions the day before with a discussion about infant baptism, which had rather divided the people whose minds had not been changed by the end of it.

I think I probably hold a very uncontroversial opinion on this one and I wonder if it might be supported by the theology of Richard Hooker.

If I make it, (hey, I am living a day at a time, there ain't no guarantees, who knows what they'll put on my "Bishops' Report"?!), I will gladly baptise members of the community who desire this, even if they do not yet come to church.

I believe that it is a chance for God's grace to win victories and for lives to be won for Christ and how could it be for me to declare otherwise. Richard Hooker talks about the church visible and the church invisible and I quite like his thinking here.


For Hooker inclusion in the visible church requires baptism and a minimal profession of Christian belief.

The invisible church is that ‘church which is his [Christ's] mystical body' because that body 'consisteth of none but only true Israelites, true sons of Abrabam, true servants and saints of God'. For Hooker the church invisible can only be seen by God and not by us. 'They who are of this society have such marks and notes of distinction from all others as are not object unto our sense: only unto God who seeth their hearts and understandeth all their secret cogitations unto him they are clear and manifest.’

The curate I was speaking with warned me that our opinions can change once we are actually in the very practical business of ministry to a community, so I am prepared for this to happen. However, I am also aware that Church of England ministers are not actually allowed to withhold baptism from a family desiring the christening of their child, so in some ways I am relieved that I feel as I do.

To  return to Richard Hooker, I am rather enjoying his generous orthodoxy and that charity 'which hopeth all things, prayeth also for all men (people).'

...feeling more real

We had our college community day today. I was actually able to speak to some normal people; people who live and breathe outside of the college bubble. Hoorah!

We went to a church in the centre of a council estate, south of Nottingham, who have a small and largely elderly and infirm congregation and we washed windows and rearranged space and painted.

As we arrived, a coffee morning was happening with some of the local people in attendance from the estate and it was stimulating to talk to people about their lives and aspirations and answer questions regarding our presence there.

One man was perturbed by the whole 'becoming a vicar' thing, put it all down to Henry VIII and compared curacy and incumbency to renting a pub before becoming a landlord yourself, which I thought was probably a fairly good analogy.

A woman, about to become a teacher in an adult education college, was interested in the presence of young women in a largely middle-aged male dominated 'industry', as she saw it, and was very positive about the contribution us female, under forty types, might be able to make.

As we cleaned, my friend and I imagined ourselves as the 'Kim and Aggie' of 'How Clean is your church?' and pushed filing cabinets into every conceivable position before deciding that the Feng shui was working so that harmony could reign. We had a ball. We also got to share, as we worked, some of our angst about college life.

We lamented that for a purportedly 'charismatic' college, we sometimes have a tendency to stuff our worship so full of human words about and to God, that we really do not leave enough room for him to speak to us in return. Oh, for a little more waiting and resting in his presence!

We explored what feels like a gulf between interactions inside college walls about Jesus and then how transferable or even, more significantly, relevant to people, such discussions are in the outside world. We both anticipate the messiness of ministry with excitement and the doing rather than the learning how to be, which can get a little wearing. "Do not disturb me, I am learning how to 'be'" - emmm!

So...with God's help, there are about 15 months to go and 6 finished, as we come to the end of the second term. After Easter, we start our main church placements, which will culminate in a month in the job for the whole of September and come to a close in December.

For my family and I this entails a farewell to our sending church, where we have worshipped for 10 years and a move, on mass, to this new church. I have met my supervisor and it is with some trepidation but much openness and expectation of the mighty things that God is going to show me in that place, that I set my eyes on this new community of people exploring Jesus.

It is a large charismatic church on the edge of Derby and it has some thriving and diverse ministries. It has been on my radar for some time and I consider it a real privilege that they are allowing me to muck in there. I expect it will be formative and challenging. It seems to be free of the middle class suburban Christian England worshippers, in attendance because this is what they have always done. It appears to be attended by people who have made that significant decision and expect God to reveal himself in significant ways. I have a feeling it is going to be pretty awesome.

Hooking up with Hooker

Well, it seems like Richard Hooker is a reasonable kind of bloke. It's doing me quite a lot of theological good, reading this champion of the Via media, which is what some scholars claim him to be, whilst others deny.

Whilst I have trod the wide path of Anglicanism all my life, my husband, whom I met at tender 16, was somewhat popish, Polish Roman Catholic and then my Christian renewal came, in part, through the teaching of a rather reformed, pro-Calvin expression of Anglicanism (and Nicky Gumbel can claim some credit too), so I am enjoying the reasonableness of Richard Hooker.

I am only part way through a massive stack of photocopying and reading, so I am yet to really get to grips with how his theological method is significant for Anglicanism today, but I suspect I am fast becoming something of a Richard Hooker fan. Well, at least there has been nothing about him to cause me to theologically shudder yet and the shudders I had, with Catholicism and Calvinism, so that's a blessed relief.

What do you think? Anything I am yet to encounter that might shock and terrify?

Lenton angst

Lent - ahhh!

Waiting, anguish not relenting, hope increasing, ceasing feasting, crowns amassing, torture passing, out and down and glory crashing, strength is rising, hope surprising, lenton lamentation anticipation, cruel creation terminating, Kingdom come but caught in stagnation, release the radical resurrection, pure emotion pain injection, sense from senseless sin reflection, hope increasing, glory rising, hope from hopeless heart surprising...

...the mad, the bad and the, dare I say it, mundane

We have been learning about the Canons of the Anglican Church in our Anglicanism module. Some of them encapsulate beautifully the mad, bad and downright mundane aspects of Christian ministry. They are necessary, I know, but I quickly chased away visions of having a pocket-sized version sewn within the linings of my vestments, suspecting such musings were anticipating imaginary trouble from a potential mind-set of deep paranoi, surely to be avoided at all costs! Surely, it is more in the spirit of optimism to have them available somewhere, lurking in a draw you can't quite identify.

However, perhaps I am naive. It is very sad to read about Madpriest, curate blogger, who has been treading some murky waters in parish due to his negotiations over hymn selection and this did rather cause to me reflect upon this canon and all the potential dangers of not having one's canons to hand!

B 20 Of the musicians and music of the Church
2. Where there is an organist, choirmaster or director of music the minister shall pay due heed to his advice and assistance in the choosing of chants, hymns, anthems, and other settings, and in the ordering of the music of the church; but at all times the final responsibility and decision in these matters rests with the minister.

It's Wright to hope on 'that and other things like that'

Not too sure about the trailer for this DVD!
However, suspect this is a good resource for discipleship.

Twordinands

Well done, Angi. It's about time the Twordinands got a mention.

It's good to know you're not going it alone, and when fellow students are all tucked up in bed with their Karl Barths, there is still someone out there to go to, other than the chaplain, whom you've decided not to wake up a second time because of your 2am Hans Frei crisis. Emergency essay help tweets bear plenteous fruit, as I have discovered.

There are quite a few of us blogging our way through the ex'cruc'iating formation and clergy training process, so visit Angi's site for a whiff. Perhaps this is all the beginning of something rather beautiful.

oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

CEN FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2010 No: 6014 www.churchnewspaper.com

Oh dear, primarily the author of this letter builds his case on a study that is over a century old and goes on to make some absurd claims about the genders. 

 

I applaud Alpha against this backdrop. It has come to my attention recently, from being in conversation with people sharing their testimonies, that Alpha's introduction to Christianity has often been a place of life-changing encounter. It presents credible Christianity, it appeals to the rationale mind. It presents a case. It also explores biblical phenomena which triumph the Reason of an enlightenment rationale. 

 

I just do not think that the author of this letter has any real evidence to suggest that a rise in women priests and bishops will result in an approach which is governed by feeling over reason. Why must feeling and reason be separated? God ministers to us 'whole'istically. The gospel is the most beautiful, truthful foolishness there ever was. Is the author of this letter not more lamenting the stubborn will of humanity? By arguing that it is men who need argumentation and women only an appeal to the emotions, he is limiting the capacities of both the genders. Are we not surely more complex as individuals than his neat gender separations imply?

"But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence."(1 Peter 3:15)

...and my next challenge commences

Assess the significance of Richard Hooker's theological method for Anglicanism today

And this one is at Masters level so I better sock it to 'em, well, at least pass, anyway.

I have been praying away my pride, no tall order! Phe! Anyway, I have come to realise that pursuing top marks is no longer the right approach. I have to learn to hold a lot of things in tension. Ah! Just that whole 'tension' thing again - eschatological tension and the rest of it.

So I need to remember why I am doing this, I am not called to be an academic but a practitioner, however, a thinking one, I figure, but not a burnt-out one who can only 'spout it' without having the 'clout about it'.

I had been reflecting on John's latest reflections about the educational levels of the clergy and whilst I agree with much of what he says, in essence, I was also struck by the very effective evangelistic strategies proposed by Mark Russell, head of Church Army, who came to speak to St John's students last Wednesday.

I am sensing that we must work with God through the all the ways that he manifests himself, so that whilst knowing my New Testament in the Greek will certainly help, at times, to bring nuances that would otherwise have escaped us, to the fore in sermons, this alone will not do. We are as church to come together to meet Jesus and each other, to share his love with the world around us in acts of compassion and service and to be a community of transformed people seeking to transform the world. The energy we are given for this mission comes from the Holy Spirit who must be welcomed in our midst, celebrated and desired. In this way we will be working in His strength and not our own. God speaks to us through the Word and the Spirit, so we try to be balanced, as hard as that is. With his grace we ask for strength and discernment. There should be no unhelpful dischotomy between word and action. They flow out of one another. Mark Russell provided me with a nugget of wisdom I shall not forget and that is that Word and Action are like 'breathing in and breathing out'. We can not choose one or the other. It is both and if we are asked which is the important one then the answer is, it must be the one you failed to do last! This analogy works well. So whilst I appreciate the requirement for academic astuteness, I am also very slowly praying to be free of the grip of always having to satisfy a certain academic level, for the mission project of God is varied and variable and all parts better contribute to a whole.

So any book recommendations on that old Hooker chap would be much appreciated so that I can also live a little in other ways than solely inside the dust covers of beautiful books, however lovely a place that might be!

Everything points to the Majesty of God

 

Eternal, encircling, waves of intimacy

Connect us in deifying love with the Trinity

A tenderness unsurpassable, an energy divine

God speaks to our hearts, 'You're inseparably mine'

'Encircle us Father and lift us on high

To share in your glorious mystery', we cry.