Reversing church growth

We are blessed enough to have Bob Jackson, an expert in the study of church growth and decline as one of our lecturers. He is very fresh and entertains us with some often quite surprising statistics, one of which we are taking quite seriously in the Marszalek household at the moment. My husband has set himself a year target to learn the drums. This has been on his heart for a long time anyway but it is helpful that according to Bob there is a correlation between a drum kit in a church and church growth. Good stuff!

At the end of the day, it is God's Kingdom we want to see bursting at the seams and it is our hope that growing church attendance figures indicate that his Kingdom is growing but it is also a lot messier than that. God's kingdom will grow in spite of our concerns about filling pews and as the church adapts to suit the times, not it's message, oh no, never, but just the way in which it delivers that message (let me be very clear about that!), I am hoping it will not be a simple case of counting up the bums on our seats on Sunday mornings. Church is spilling over and into other things, places, spaces and times of the week.

I could not help thinking of Bob when reading the article below, brought to my attention by one of the S J newbies (new St John's college ordinands) and I wonder if some of us are sometimes engaging in church reverse rather than church growth.

By Phil Cooke

Flips, all a bit worrying. We need to keep thinking all the time about the way that we do things. 

Our Abba Father

My Child..

You may not know me, but I know everything about you.Psalm 139:1

I know when you sit down and when you rise up.Psalm 139:2

I am familiar with all your ways .Psalm 139:3

Even the very hairs on your head are numbered.Matthew 10:29-31

For you were made in my image.Genesis 1:27

In me you live and move and have your being.Acts 17:28

For you are my offspring.Acts 17:28

I knew you even before you were conceived.Jeremiah 1:4-5

I chose you when I planned creation.Ephesians 1:11-12

You were not a mistake.Psalm 139:15-16

For all your days are written in my book.Psalm 139:15-16

I determined the exact time of your birth and where you would live.Acts 17:26

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.Psalm 139:14

I knit you together in your mother’s womb.Psalm 139:13

And brought you forth on the day you were born.Psalm 71:6

I have been misrepresented by those who don’t know me.John 8:41-44

I am not distant and angry, but am the complete expression of love .1 John 4:16

And it is my desire to lavish my love on you..1 John 3:1

Simply because you are my child and I am your Father.1 John 3:1

I offer you more than your earthly father ever could.Matthew 7:11

For I am the perfect Father.Matthew 5:48

Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand.James 1:17

For I am your provider and I meet all your needs.Matthew 6:31-33

My plan for your future has always been filled with hope.Jeremiah 29:11

Because I love you with an everlasting love.Jeremiah 31:3

My thoughts toward you are countless as the sand on the seashore.Psalm 139:17-18

And I rejoice over you with singing.Zephaniah 3:17

I will never stop doing good to you .Jeremiah 32:40

For you are my treasured possession . Exodus 19:5

I desire to establish you with all my heart and all my soul.Jeremiah 32:41

And I want to show you great and marvelous things.Jeremiah 33:3

If you seek me with all your heart, you will find me.Deuteronomy 4:29

Delight in me and I will give you the desires of your heart . Psalm 37:4

For it is I who gave you those desires. Philippians 2:13

I am able to do more for you than you could possibly imagine.Ephesians 3:20

For I am your greatest encourager.2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

I am also the Father who comforts you in all your troubles .2 Corinthians 1:3-4

When you are brokenhearted, I am close to you.Psalm 34:18

As a shepherd carries a lamb, I have carried you close to my heart.Isaiah 40:11

One day I will wipe away every tear from your eyes.Revelation 21:3-4

And I’ll take away all the pain you have suffered on this earth.Revelation 21:4

I am your Father and I love you even as I love my son, Jesus.John 17:23

For in Jesus my love for you is revealed .John 17:26

He is the exact representation of my being.Hebrews 1:3

And He came to demonstrate that I am for you, not against you.Romans 8:31

And to tell you that I am not counting your sins.2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled.2 Corinthians 5:18-19

His death was the ultimate expression of my love for you.1 John 4:10

I gave up everything I loved that I might gain your love.Romans 8:32

If you receive the gift of my son Jesus, you receive me.1 John 2:23

And nothing will ever separate you from my love again.Romans 8:38-39

Come home and I’ll throw the biggest party heaven has ever seen.Luke 15:7

I have always been Father and will always be Father.Ephesians 3:14-15

My question is…Will you be my child?.John 1:12-13

I am waiting for you.Luke 15:11-32 .

Love,

Your Dad Almighty God

Meaning

It's that time of year

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Pre clerical tension

Adjusting her dog-collar. One of St John's placement supervisors. This shot is widely used by journalists in the coverage of the Women Bishops legislation in the summer of 2010.

Not PMS but PCS - involves heightened sensitivity, cause for deeper than usual reflection and itching around the neck area in anticipation of a certain cotton collar...

I have been suffering from a heightened sensitivity regarding how to describe myself and have been conscious that different descriptions are causing different reactions. Describing myself as a student never really batters an eyelid and I like to kid myself I might even look young enough to pass for one, however the photographs tell me otherwise and I am aware that this is a little delusional but understand now what my mum has meant all these years as she continues to describe herself as never feeling any older than 21, until she looks in the mirror.

If I say I am on placement, I usually then add that this is part of a Theology degree and that usually creates conversation about studies, unfinished dissertations or the hopes to do something as interesting and unusual one day.

Today I tried two or three different descriptions. People were curious why I was at the toddler group but without any small people of my own in tow.

I told one woman I was helping out for a month, she looked a little bemused but wished me well.

With another woman, I discussed parenting and I lamented a little with her and threw in heaps of encouragement too and stories of my own exhausting times but when I said I was 'vicar training' to her query about why I could possibly want to be there when my own children were at school, I wondered if my description rather made her shudder and whether she will be quite so open with me next time.

I do not know if I want people to adjust their language and rearrange their sentences because I am a vicar. I know that little plastic white thing is going to enable encounter and listening and entry into people's hearts and lives so that God might do his thing but I am also aware that it will also cause people to think before they speak and to perhaps, at times, be less spontaneous. So for now I live, at times, in a state of Pre-clerical tension, sometimes it hurts a bit but most of the time I just get on with it all and forget all about it really.

In the meantime, I found real comfort in reading this essay (snippets from which I include below) from Rob Culhane, who seems to understand my Contemplative Crisis

At first, wearing the shirt may be exciting, much like the excitement the bride feels wearing her new wedding ring, a reminder of the translation which has recently taken place in her life from one role to another and the change in her relationships with friends and family. But this clerical shirt could also become a cloak, a comfortable identity which I use to stop or excuse the need for the hard work of holiness and continuing transformation and professional development which is required of all of us until the day we translate into the next life.

For me the shirt is something quite different: it is the symbol of the mourning of loss, the loss of being hidden, amongst the crowd...

Before ordination, I enjoyed being a hidden contemplative, alone with God during the week and enriched with the Sunday morning home coming of sharing with my Christian brothers and sisters at communion and worship.

Some of course will wear the clerical shirt out of a sense of nostalgia or a desire to recover an idealised past. Some may or may not choose to wear it due to simple laziness in having to wrestle with clerical identity and ambiguity. For others, there is no ambiguity either way on the issue. Blessed are they who sleep well at night on this issue. Some may choose to wear it from a desire to claim an identity which they find rooted and nurtured in the rich history of the Church. The shirt and collar may express both a theological truth embedded in this past as much as to a sense of being called forward to express this truth in this historical particularity. Of one certainty I am sure: that we will be using
some of these reasons to lesser or greater degrees with differing  degrees of self awareness. 

In the end, clerical identity is rooted in our sense of calling, but we must also always remember that our deepest sense of who we are is rooted in our relationship with Christ. Daily we must turn again and confess: ‘Our life is hid in Christ, therefore we seek the things above . . . ‘ (Col 3:3). We are loved by God for who we are, not what we do or how we perform. Putting on the shirt and collar comes after this confession...

...now that's as good as any aspirin you might use for the cramps...

Radical hospitality

 My daughters at the wedding

 


...to show to others the same befriending love that God shows to us.

This week we packed bags to go and stay with 'perfect strangers' and I mean perfect also with a literal meaning that the phrase does not usually connote (perfect with a God-given status as we stand dressed in the robes of the Son.) We would be 'put up' by the Smiths so that we could attend the wedding of a friend whose father and mother serve a church community down south. Our friend who would be married had arranged this.


What we were to experience that weekend would be a kind of radical hospitality that I do not think either my husband or I had ever experienced to such a degree before.


We were to ring half an hour before arriving at the Smiths so that a meal could be made for us and we were given a key so that we could come and go from the wedding celebration. We were taken into the home of this wonderful couple who had made beds up for our children with cuddly toys set out on pillows, a collection of books and a night light. We were greeted with hugs and kisses when we arrived and taken for walks around the countryside with their dog in tow.


We ate together and prayed together and the children dug potatoes from the garden which we ate for our lunch with roast chicken. Mrs Smith took the girls around the garden to pick flowers for mummy and we were shown family photographs and shared some of the angsts and the hopes of life as we conversed about our different life journeys. We asked them the secret of their happy marriage, 54 years long and reflected on the wedding that we had all attended together the day before.


The wedding was beautiful and everything we ate and gazed at had been produced by members of the church family who had cooked and prepared four courses and created a wedding cake and flowers for every high place and low place, folded paper into table settings and donated fairy lights to transform a church hall into a reception suite. Two cultures came together: as an English bride married a Serbian groom. A band played modern worship music and a trumpet played out the wedding march. We met with God in the worship and focused on Ruth's courageous choice to accompany her mother-in-law Naomi and make Naomi's people her people and Naomi's God her God. We understood that Kate would accompany her new family back to Serbia, a call that God had placed on her heart. Kate met Zeljko in Serbia as she worked proclaiming the message of the gospel and taking it quite literally to the streets in outdoor activities she set up to feed the local people.


The sun shone for the couple after early rains and we ate cake on the lawn of a church whose people have a vision for welcoming in and sending out, who exude a warmth that can only be the product of a secure identity in Christ. The next morning we came together around the Lord's table in the same church in which we had participated in the wedding the day before where the liturgy had been very corporate.


Yoder (For the nations: essays evangelical and public, Eerdmans Publishing, 1997) writes that the Eucharist is "the paradigm for every. . . mode of inviting the outsider...to the table." We had shared the Lord's supper, the wedding feast and the foods taken from this couple's garden as we sat together around the tables in their home. All of these meals had a sacred significance so that breakfast too seemed infused with the 'breaking of bread' as we broke croissants instead. 'In the beginning' Buber writes in I and Thou 'is relation'. When we begin to see each other with God-vision, radical hospitality is made possible. It should not be radical for those of us who follow the lamb, for it is only a necessary outworking of the love we have for God, it is radical though when in its mirror we see all the more clearly the fear and suspicion and mistrust that people have for one another in our world, as we alarm ourselves against each other, gate in our houses and hoard up possessions that we then have to protect because we are dominated by myths of scarcity and the idea that we can not trust one another. What we experienced this weekend and I reflect on here was a tear in the fabric of that worn-out cloth, a gap in the usual record of that ongoing dialogue that is preached from the television, as it encourages us to file claims against one another. We breathed the heady fragrance of that thing we have often caught a whiff of, but it was sustained for an entire weekend as we were welcomed into the arms of this community with its inclusive embrace.


I am left from this weekend with many things, amongst them:


a challenge to exercise a kind of hospitality so that God might leave a person somehow changed;

a challenge to bring alive a liturgy that is spoken by many a well-meaning and 'engaged' but really so disengaged couple throughout this land. Our participation as a congregation in the words of this ceremony cemented further still that common identity that we share in Christ.

A challenge to seek help, to think less about 'smart' usually costly solutions and think more about the people whom God has gifted with such creativity that in asking whether they might exercise such giftings you find that the blessing is for them as well as for those they provide.


...and perhaps most of all, that when we come together to remember the gift of God to us in the Eucharist, it is because we are also engaging, in every small and undramatic way, in the gift of ourselves to one another, just as Sunnyside church did for one family they had never met before, who traveled down from Nottingham, one weekend after a period of such changing locations and homes, to find 'home' the minute they arrived in a welcome that they will always remember.


Bless you Sunnyside!

Buckets full...

Jane Stranz over at 'Of Life, laughter and liturgy' is exploring a book to be released tomorrow by Kate Coleman, whose background you can read about at Jane's blog.

Jane describes how the ‘7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership’ featured in the book are Limiting self-perceptions, Failure to draw the line, Inadequate personal vision, Too little life in the work, Everybody’s friend, nobody’s leader, Colluding and not confronting and Neglect in family matters.

I think that this will be an interesting read and it will be winging its way over to me soon from Amazon.

We're all on a journey and I recognise some of my own failings and developments with some of the issues above. My holiday in the little blue shed which is drawing near represents a serious development in my 'Neglect in family matters'. I booked this holiday rather spontaneously (lateRooms.com) and just felt really led that this was a needed break towards the end of a hectic year. It involves me rearranging a service lead and pulling out of a conference but both of those things were extras rather than necessaries. We go in a few weeks' time and give me a bucket, spade, a deck-chair and a flask of Yorkshire and I will be hanging out with the kids and we will not be taking mobiles or laptops, which in itself will be a first - flips - nothing is impossible for God! :-D

I'm thinking about the other 'seven deadlies', and all of this not a lot, but a little because my head is full of other things at the moment.

A college friend and I are also reflecting on all these awesome, strong women whom we are being asked to consider as models: her placement supervisor, mine, my future incumbent and the principal of our theological college, whose latest thoughts you can download here (thanks to Thinking Anglicans). Efficiency, drive, vision, amazing organisational skills, a confidence that coexists with a very real encouragement of the giftings in others, with a realness, a vulnerability, a transparency. Prayerfulness, passion and a purposefulness that powers decision-making. These are just some of the qualities we have been discerning.

Jane explores Kate's reflections regarding how our God is calling women into ever-expanding fields of leadership and how there is always more to learn and everything to pray for. 

Christus Victor victoriously!

This passage, as I listen to it this morning, raises a couple of issues for me. One is about doctrine, the other is about the reading of scripture aloud.

Primarily, it seems to shine its light on that facet of the 'multi-faceted atonement gem' that is - Christus Victor. Here I do not hear Penal Substitutionary atonement. I continue to be fascinated by church expressions of this doctrine, the package that rises up around it, our tendency to polarise and mis-judge and misunderstand one another. I will probably grapple with how to express what happened at the cross as I seek to communicate the expansiveness of Christ's victory so that I do not unhelpfully simplify it. I guess this is where with Barth, we become most frustrated by the inadequacy of any language vehicles.

The second issue it raises for me revolves around 'the clergy voice'. I have been discussing this on placement with a friend who says he sometimes discusses it with his own vicar father who has a tendency to use this voice. I remember as a child, feeling rather patronisingly sorry for these vicars who to me, quite obviously did not understand the beauty of what they were saying, for how could they not speak passionately about it?

I grew up to become an English teacher, demonstrating to children how they might use their voices to bring their reading alive. I wonder, is the clergy voice more a male tendency than a female one? Are there any women who read the scriptures in 'that particular voice'? What is its purpose? Is there some theological thinking attached to it akin to 'more of you, less of me God!' or 'do not distract your congregation with your personality?' Does this then slightly lessen the idea that God will use our personalities for his purposes and called us specifically rather than by type?

I can not imagine ever using the clergy voice. Can you convince me of any reasons why I should, however, give this a bit more thought.

I was so captured by this reading of Colossians chapter 2 with the obvious accent and the very real enthusiasm.

Science doesn't need God? Really - check this out...

"Freshers"....?

 Not really what we meant by a shirt with a dog collar!

One of my facebook acquaintances, a student, soon to grace the corridors at St John's, attracted my attention to this rather beautiful poem in the Church Times:

Lord, you seized me and I could not resist you.
I ran for a long time but you followed me.
I took by-paths but you knew them.
You overtook me.
I struggled.
You won.
Here I am, Lord, out of breath, no fight left in me,
and I've said "yes" almost willingly.
When I stood trembling like one defeated before his captor,
Your look of love fell on me...
Marked by the fire of your love, I cannot forget you.
Now I know that you are there, close to me, and I work in peace,
beneath your loving gaze.
I no longer make the effort to pray.
I just lift my eyes to you and I meet yours.
And we understand one another.
All is light, all is peace.

Michel Quoist (1921 - 97)

It's beautiful, isn't it? However, on a lighter note, I quote


"Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad. [Acts 26:24]"

I wonder if any of the new students will be wondering about this happening to them. I doubt it, although all that reflection that we're encouraged to do, does express itself in some strange ways of thinking. We have philosophised about the arrangement of the salt and pepper pots on our lunch tables at college as we send up the state of our thinking and I know I have received a hastily assembled but much appreciated birthday card last November with 'Happy Birthday' written in Greek, which made me chuckle.

We're a strange bunch and you can see that many of us are trying not to take ourselves too seriously and this is often expressed in how we dress. There are now an increasing number of T-shirts being worn by ordinands whose graphics are designed for light relief, from the body of a Flintstone or the Incredible Hulk, so that your own face becomes a part of the picture, as you sit with your head in Christology or Systematics, which can make for quite a funny contrast, to the Cookie Monster and Darth Vader, Superman and Kermit, our clothes are getting weirder and weirder.

My year group has a kind of cool and young element to it with some of the youngest ordinands in St John's history. We are quite a lively bunch, according to the lecturers, who have to help us to get our heads around Canon Law and Hooker's Lawes, recapitulation and Homoosiousness (if there's such a word) whilst reminding us not to log onto facebook whilst they are in full flow (that's an exaggeration, I think).

We will welcome a new cohort at the end of the month, many of whom are making the move and taking up residence in various student houses or flats on campus, as I write. I have been thinking about how really we can not quite call them Freshers. We become 'Returners', I do not think we have an official word for the new students.(?) (Open to suggestions!)

According to dictionary definitions, a 'Fresher' is a first-year undergraduate and we are such a mixture of people of all different ages and experiences, many of us have been through university once and have no desire to repeat Freshers' Week experiences that we may have had first time around (don't ask!).

As regards Freshers making friends TheSite.org  recommends the following:

• Wear a T-shirt with the answers [to all the usual questions about who you are and what you have studied already] and say, "fancy a pint?" instead.
• Say: "I'm from Mars, I already have a PhD in Cybernetics and just came down to Earth for the party".
• Dress obscurely; those lime green hot pants are sure to pass comment. Especially if you're a guy.
• Get yourself a famous mate/lover and get them to drop you off. Make sure they are credible; everyone will want to know you.
• Organise the party to end all parties at your halls, for which the entrance password is your name, everyone will have a great time, and know you were responsible for it.

The dressing obscurely thing, many of us are already exercising. It is probably some last ditched attempt at freedom before we don dog collars, a limited palette of shirts and clerical vestments (aka cassock and surplis), which quite frankly I feel like some kind of walking pair of curtains in.

The famous mate/lover (em, lovers are frowned upon at theological college!) for which everyone will want to know you, is invested in questions about whom the Bishop might be of your sending diocese or whether you are a product of something interesting like the Moravians, the Pentecostals or some other denomination different to Anglicanism and therefore highly exotic.

The student pub is The White Lion so 'Fancy a pint' is not a problem, the Church of England is positively encouraging us to get together in pubs these days so that our 'expression' might be 'Fresh', even if our breath is beery.

Parties happen and I have heard about a few that were more raucous, which, of course, I have not attended ;-) but student advice about safe sex and alcohol limits is probably not necessary.

So there we go, we should all survive!

New students will get a week with the place to themselves before we return for a full first week from our placement churches. By then, they'll already be used to bolting their food before lectures and racing up the stairs for prayers at one minute to eight to arrive somewhat less than serenely. They'll have been shown the dreaded box into which we post our assignments, knowing once we have made the drop, there's no retrieving the thing for one last proof-read and they'll have organised internet connections and added new friends to their facebook profiles, some of them might have even started to covet those really rather tacky themed T-shirts everyone seems to be wearing these days!