India here we come

A mosquie net and loo roll

A great deal of hand-wash

A collection of sandals

All into a bag to squash.

Medication for movements

That I pray feel okay

And a couple of tickets

or two for the way.

Passport and visa in small plastic case

Keys and pashminas and cleanser for face

Toothpaste and pyjamas in plentiful supply

Just under nine hours over ocean to fly.

Sunglasses and hairdryer to help with the frizz

And Deet in generous layers applied at each zizz

Splat'em with haste as they go zooming by

No Malaria tablets needed, they say, for Mumbai.

Eyes keep them downwards and no shaking hands

Dreading that in toilets I have heard that one stands

Wash out your glasses, wipe over your plate

Check water seals for contamination state.

Tipping and bowing and generally trying

To get through the crowds with those temperatures frying

Talking of which it is probably best

To eat deeply fried than their salads so dressed.

I have heard that the water there upsets your tummy

So hoping there's something I decide to find yummy

Asking the waiter for everything bland

This delicate stomach they won't understand.

No chilli, no meat, nothing too spicy

India for me will be definitely dicey.

Lining the intestine with heaps of probiotic

The precautions I am taking may sound idiotic.

Hoping that I come back relatively in tact

From 'Indaba does India action-packed'

Out to see a culture that's all for discovering

And a gospel that God there is obviously recovering. 

The Anglican church with some Indian flavour

And a people encountering the love of our Saviour.

SPREADing Indaba to India

These thoughts are my thoughts alone and do not represent my diocesan team or the Indaba project. 

(Continuing Indaba Encounter Social network and Blog Policy)

Charles Raven, moving on to Kenya to work at one of its theological colleges, will no longer continue contributing to SPREAD - The Society for the Propagation of Reformed Evangelical Anglican Doctrine.

He references his work over the last three years and the drift against which he has been campaigning, describing the Anglican communion's 'co-opting [of] non-Western terms like ‘indaba’ to promote the illusion of a middle way.' He claims that 'Such stratagems which elevate ‘conversation’ as a defining feature of being Anglican are a favourite device to numb the spiritual ‘nervous system.’ I do not agree with him, as you might have by now anticipated. His reference to 'non-Western terms' seems like a criticism but we are the worldwide Anglican communion. The conversation of which he is critical has gone on in councils and synods since the beginning of the faith. Raven believes that his book ‘Shadow Gospel: Rowan Williams and the Anglican Communion Crisis’, sought to 'break through ‘indaba’ induced drowsiness.' I do not think this book achieved its aims because it was built on a polarised version of the theology of Rowan Williams, it set out SPREAD's causes and found evidence to back them up - it never approached the debate from a neutral place.

The thing is, there are evangelicals within the indaba process, those of us who hold to a reformed, evangelical, charismatic expression of the faith, who subscribe to the tenants of the ordinal, the thirty-nine articles and the Book of Common Prayer. So be careful before you believe all the hype and hysteria from those adamant about defending something that seems to them to be under threat.

What are they understanding by Anglicanism, anyway? 'The Anglican Way' is about an openness characteristic of a 'Communion which, practically from its inception, has always stood opposed to the notion that its hierarchy might have a magisterial authority to declare what its "current teaching" is.' (Bartel, 2007, 418). Organisations like SPREAD do not define orthodoxy adequately either.

Rowan Williams is prepared for whatever comes out of the Indaba process so long as it is guided by the 'most painstaking biblical exegesis.' Being open to changes supported by 'a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding' (Williams, 2009, 2502) is surely positive and in keeping with the tradition of the Bereans.

As I prepare for Indaba Mumbai next week, I prepare also to listen but speak, to contribute rather than rubbish and to see a church that is continuing to faithfully witness to the glory of the crucified and the risen one and to what the Spirit might be saying to the churches.

I am praying that in all things we will be guided by these wise words:
Augustine of Hippo, ‘Whoever thinks he understands divine scripture or any part of it, but whose interpretation does not build up the twofold love of God and neighbour, has not really understood it.’

That we might reflect too on the wisdom contained  in The Virginia Report:
'The Church needs to be tolerant and open enough to conduct its arguments with charity and attentiveness to the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Care needs to be taken to ensure that complex matters are fairly and appropriately considered...The various levels of the Church are accountable to each other. This will be expressed by openness to dialogue, by attentiveness to the particularity of people, times and places, by acceptance of interdependence on both the personal and corporate levels and by honouring plurality and diversity as gifts of God...Christian attentiveness means deciding to place the understanding of others ahead of being understood. It means listening and responding to the needs and the hopes of others, especially when these differ from one's own needs, agendas and hopes.'



I will be blogging my way through the process if I can get the technology to work. For those of you who follow this blog, I would appreciate prayers as I also journey from the cold (although mild really for the time of the year) to the hot and from the bland (such a wimp when it comes to food) to the hot and spicy. I expect to be rocked to the very core by some of the projects that we will be visiting, particularly to the slum children, whilst my own two wake up, each of the days that I am away, in warm beds and new Christmas pyjamas, to porridge and a brief walk to school.

Have a Barthian Christmas

Dear heavenly Father, because we are here with one another in order to rejoice over the fact that your dear Son for us became a human and our brother, we earnestly beg of you to tell us your self what great grace, well being, and help you have prepared for all of us in him.

Open our ears and our understanding, in order that we may grasp that in him there is forgiveness for all our sins, the seed and strength of a new life, comfort and admonition in life and in death, and hope for the whole world! Create in us the good spirit of freedom humbly and bravely to come to your Son, who comes to us!

Do this today in all ...the world, that there may be many who break through all of the vain externalities of these festive days and celebrate a good Christmas with us. Amen

Karl Barth, Fifty Prayers

The Bless Project

The Bless Project has been launched at our local high school and we are hoping to roll it out to the primary schools in the New Year some time.

It is all about impacting community with everyday acts of kindness and has involved cake-making to bless school support staff, litter pick-ups around the local area and present-making... so far. There is also an Explore group every Tuesday where matters of life and faith can be discussed.

The team is growing which is great and we are always on the look-out for new ideas and resources so suggest away!

Just for my own memory's sake

I wrote this full of restless anxiety six months ago having accepted a curacy not knowing where we were going to live, there was no house at the time, not knowing what my husband (Hen) would do with his career and whether my children were going to be alright at one of the biggest primarys in the country.




Keep us in the boat, Lord, safely here with you.
Keep us in the boat, Lord, make us whole and new.
Hold us in this boat, Lord, my dearly loved and mine.
Hold us in your boat, Lord, me and mine are thine.

Hold them up and in Lord, secure them safe and still,
Take us far from shore Lord, if that should be your will.

Place them next to you, Lord, sit Hen in the bow,
Have him look you in the eye so he might face you now.
Cover him in love, Lord, let his anchor down,
Set us out to sail. Give my daughters each a crown.

Covered now in saltwater, the sun will dry us clean,
Gently dancing morning light on waves that rise and glean.

Delighting in their giggles, Lord, hold them in your heart.
Keep us closely binded, Lord, so we're not pulled apart.
Wrapping rounds of seaweed, secure us in your net.
We climbed aboard in faith, Lord, not sure we trust you yet.

Tell me it's okay, Lord, you've got us all held fast,
We're safe and sound here on the waves, your strength will guide the mast.
The oars are strong and steady, the sea is mastered too,
There's nothing now to fear Lord, if we are found in you.

Your favour rests so sweetly, your yoke a burden light,
Though we have fished the shores, Lord, from morning time 'til night.

I trust you'll tell me when, Lord, so l can let it go.
You'll bring it into fullness, Lord, your nets will surely grow.
It takes me my resolve, Lord, l want you still to know,
How I'm so very desperate to tell you how it's so.

They are my precious catch, Lord, that you call out so freed,
I want to set their sails Lord, but you're the wind they need.
So you just tell me when, Lord, l'll wait to hear your call,
And then with every inch of me, I'll seek to give you all.

...and God was gracious: we were given a house, my husband is happy and the girls are doing well at school.

Not louder and more slowly

Steve Hollinghurst is a Researcher in Evangelism to Post-Christian Culture and spoke at the recent Derby diocesan conference. I took some notes. Much of the stuff below is expressed with my vocabulary but the content derives from Steve. He also had some great one-liners which I hope I not claiming as my own. He spoke particularly about us refraining from simply speaking more loudly and slowly in the attempt to be heard. This really resonated. His areas of interest capture my imagination - postmodernity, the impact of the internet and social media (although this was not developed in detail). He gave a good overview of some of the fundamental changes that we have, and are, going through. 

The discomforting transition from modernity to post-modernity came across and I am continuing to think through some of the suggestions that he is making for how we 'do' church in the twenty-first century. Conversation partners in the bar for several hours, I was really glad to meet Steve and enter into a dialogue that was completed as he presented his thoughts to us before we left to go home and unpack all we had learnt in our own particular contexts across Derbyshire.  

Steve Hollinghurst 23rd November Swanwick

Steve spoke about how in reading the Bible today, we reframe judgement, resurrection and atonement for our contemporary contexts. This has always been happening as the scriptures atune themselves to the mindsets of people living through various eras. Steve then takes us through the shifts of the last 500 years or so – naming them, summarising them. There seem to be changes in culture every five to six hundred years with the move to the enlightenment beginning in the renaissance and the return to the individual. Modernity then lasts several hundred years and really this thing that we label postmodernity will not become clear until we can assess it from a future vantage point. Steve reckons it will take generations to discover quite what it is.

Postmodernity

It still needs to be engaged with even if we do not understand it. Print and the printing press led to a revolution, the internet is now of this kind. There has also been gender equality and the rise of feminism and together with such things as the invention of the motor car these things affect our life irrevocably. There are transient and permenent changes. The invention of the CD – a blip. The banking crisis a mini-wave, micro-productivity and upgrading our hard-ware and soft-ware something now part of life.

Increasingly we are discovering that what affects us on a global level impacts us at the local level. Some of these things are momentous like the removal of the communist block and other things like online newspapers now affect how such changes are communicated. Global communication is changing the way we think and how we relate to one another. Is there a new term for the offering – 'Glocalism' – as global change affects everyday situations like one's moving house, for example? In terms of theology the cosmic cycle which moves from creation to new creation is playing itself out in the minutiae. There is an interdependence existing but also a reaction against some of what this movement is representing. Steve mentions Kepel whose 'The Revenge of God' witnessed prophetically in the 1980s to a rise in fundamentalism. Within fundamentalism there is that protected space from which people can 'stand against.' There is that tendency to want to safe-guard and protect.

A new reformation

Steve believes all of this requires the church to undergo reformation. The world of hadron colliders needs to impact the ways that we express our faith. When we speak of the cross and the resurrection we must seek analogies that make sense to people, avoid theory and tell stories from out of which people can make their own connections to the reality of their lives and the world they inhabit. What are these new language devices, these new metaphors? How do we effectively communicate timeless truths?

The eternal gospel has spoken through pagan, classical, medieval and modern worlds. Each time we saw different expressions of the deep truths of God. Take the reformation for example, it captured and expressed that new individualism in reaction to the corporate, feudal world that had preceded it.

Recovering community

We are called today to recover community against stubborn individualism. So what does authentic postmodern Christianity look like? It is to be attentive to a God who manifest himself outside as well as inside the church. This calls for an active listening, an appreciation of the 'Go-between God' (John Taylor). There is the need for an awareness of the assumptions that can be made, the presuppositions we carry, the inability to hear and communicate. The gospel message can be missed in our failure to communicate in a language that can not be understood. I love Steve's next point which is all about how we can not simply speak more loudly and slowly in the hope that someone will understand – this does not work. We have to accept and work with some fundamental changes. Modernity is a book culture. Books are still thought to be authoritative. But the internet creates a democracy where everybody's voice can be heard. Those who did not have a voice have one. The internet also makes everything temporary. Nothing is fixed and authoritative. We enter instead into the personal story where all become privileged. People can not argue with your personal testimony. For most people this means authority rests within themselves. People want to choose to believe and not be told to believe. Identity can become very superficial. People are carving out different identities for themselves dependent upon the context that they find themselves in. We need to speak into this about how through the scriptures I come to know who I really am – but how?

Religious service providers?

The ramifications of consumerism are that we have become religious service providers. People are paying to receive a package. In planning a wedding now, couples come with their list of requirements. They do not want to be guided, they have it all worked out.

In itself this speaks into the difficulties that there are with any form of guiding or communicating truth – if it is related with a modernist attitude, what is universally true is more often true for me and not true for you – difference and choice, statements are birthed now out of experience. For modernists truth is truth and so there is this dissonance. Much of our apologetics was hatched by the modernist mindset. Interestingly Richard Dawkins is as much opposed to postmodernism as he is to Christianity. People want to know how faith will impact them. How can faith become true for them? We are not dealing so much with the dechurched as with the unchurched – there is nothing deeply buried to reawaken, there are no Christian truths there in the first place. The unchurched unlike the dechurched are less likely to pinpoint a moment of conversion, they are instead slowly coming to relationship. For those without the tenants of Christianity there is not a vacuum, there is instead more the belief in a higher power of some description and there is spirituality. Personal belief is about choice – any and every belief become options.

Post 9/11 suspicion of power

In the face of this we need to recover the language of humility. Faith is to be sacrificial and hesitant and not triumphalistic. We also need to be aware of the lack of spirituality inside our churches and the need to recover perhaps the ways of the early church fathers and Christian mystics. Where are the sacred places in our communities?

So mission in this context – what does it look like?

In Japan people attend but they do not believe but they see religion as providing for certain basic needs. In Britain people believe but they do not attend. Indigenous churches were planted abroad in the past, there was inculteration. How does this work out in our local contexts? Does this merit the homogeneous unit principle? Is it about people living out their faith in their own particular context, relevant to their own particular way of life? Being critical of Christendom is too easy - the church actually had the vision to step in and take over the reign of chaos. Big stories were told to bring together and organise. So was this not about homogenisation?

The challenge

How do we, as Christians, frame the kind of story that will shape cultural change? What might it look like? It certainly requires an expansion of the vision to the cosmos, which is biblical and in this we hark back to covenant and community and nations and continents – the human and the non human.

So we believe in the possibility that all can be saved? Perhaps, because this is not so much universalism, as a particular kind of patience, a holy waiting, a waiting with God for this to happen?

Living with diversity does of course require judgement - a justice that does not allow for the powerful to win and the weak to go to the wall.

Mission must be framed in terms of the social dimension of the trinity.

The other model is the body of Christ - mission challenges to us to live together - all are reconciled in Christ and so the emphasis is on diversity in unity.

We are called to be aware of the injustices in our communities, to become aware of how we are part of a solution to the problem and not part of the problem.

We engage creatively with this culture of the banking crisis and X-factor. 

There is the potential for new Christ-shaped life in this cultural openness to spirituality. God's new life is spilling out - how can those people doing spirituality can be lodged back into the timeless story. 

Perhaps also, in the midst of all this diversity, we are to recover a peculiarly British Christianity? 

Churches must be the yeast transforming their communities. 

And yet we also need the gospel to work for people who are strong - rather than Christianity being framed as a way to get the problems in your life sorted out - which is not the case for a many people. 

We are the only bible that many people will ever read. 

Loving God and loving my neighbour also calls for a more radical ecumenism than we have perhaps allowed ourselves to imagine.

 

A holistic view of the atonement - interdependent, cosmic, humble, hopeful

Rev Dr Moses spoke to us, offering his holistic view of the atonement. 

Regarding the atonement, it is not immutable this tradition in which we stand. There needs to be an openness by the spirit of truth because heavy handed assertions are unhelpful. Starting with the
New Testament, the atonemnet tells us a story of redemption.How do we make sense of the events and how do we speak of the mysteries? We have to try.

It's good Friday and Easter Day - how do we speak of the death of Jesus? How does it work and what difference does it make?

The cross tests everything, says Martin Luther.

Ignatius of Antioch in his commentary on Ephesians speaks of it in terms of a mystery wrought in the silence of God. And so we approach with diffidence. Silent contemplation is for many better than words. There is that limitation of language. Due to historical cultural baggage, the reference points may have lost their efficacy. In many ways all theories of the atonement are inadequate.

The church has never committed itself to one doctrine of the atonement. There are certain human constructs that attempt to get nearer - in the light if the thought forms of their perspective ages.

We are alive to what is happening around us as we speak of the mysteries of faith.

The idea of ransom in the early fathers owes something to the culture of the medieval world in which masters had rights over slaves and freedom could be secured for payment. The Satisfaction theory of Anselm needs to be understood against the background of a feudal society about honour with God as supreme feudal over-lord. Abelard with his subjective, moral or exemplarist theory has Jesus dying for us and exhibiting that love of which there can be none greater. We are set free by a deeper love freed in us to do all things in love and not fear. Was his emphasis on divine love to do with his own personal love story and the mark of this on his life or was he influenced by the new wave of creativity from the eleventh century? The law and its influence: civil, natural, penal is drawn on by theologians and the protestant reformers in the 16th century. Calvin was influenced by his legal background with this idea of the transference of guilt under the law. The cosmic drama of Aulen and Christus Victor - how much does this owe to the bitter experience of the war of 1914- 1918? There is that failure of the churches to respond during this conflict. Then there are the exponants of liberation theology who make a direct connection between the work of Christ and the liberation of those in the places from which they write. Their starting point is an experience of alienation and it insists that sin is both corporate and structural and that atonement is found in the contemporary scene and the eschatological import of working out all of this in history.

What does the word atonement mean? It is the action of making or becoming one.

Becoming one 'at - one - ment' - becoming one in Christ. (Eph 1:9-10, Col 1:19 -20) It is about reconciling all things; making peace by the blood of his cross. The uniting, the reconciling of all things. This emphasis on all things puts us on our guard - against those things that are all about personal salvation and the human element of things. The intedependence of all things is paramount - so the convictions of the gospel are in this and this is where they meet and inform each other.

At this point during Rev Dr Moses' talk I want him to talk about global, technological interdependence but he doesn't. We hear about that from Steve Hollinghurst the next day.

Moses talks about the world and the gospel informing each other in a cycle and the need to relate these things to people's experience of life. There is an urgent need to attempt from the standpoint of Christian faith for a systematic interpretation of our world. Is there a Christian world view that can create a world view with the cross as prime in the scheme of things?

Moses then proposes that there should be a new approach to atonement theology that takes seriously a more holistic view. We have within the Christian revelation all the material that we need but the church can think through her faith in isolation from the world. Christian doctrine has gone through a long process of Christian dialogue and theories of the atonement are no different. We should develop the cosmic and the global in terms of our relationship with our planet and with one another, with political and economic life, with the evolution of life and our relationship with this planet and with each other, with political and economic aspects of life. If we do this four principles emerge.

These principles help us take forward any dialogue between faith and reason.

• The patterns of relationship - only expressed by words like interdependence, interaction, interrelationship - everything bound up to such a degree with everything else that there is relationship.
• Patterns of relationship - politics and economics and relationship and the planet - necessity and chance, spontaneity and choice - there is conflict, there is waste. Development will happen.
• Patterns of relationship are distinguished by a recurring motif of life and death and life - in the world of nature, in the seasons of the year, in the story of nations - the element of sacrifice - unseen deaths, dying to patterns of self-sufficiency - alive to relationship to the whole.
• And fourthly the possibility of coherence - coming together in ways that retain their own integrity and identity.

So we bring out of his treasury what is old and what is new. We take very seriously our understanding and our experience of the world in which we live, we can not do atonement theology unless we look at it all. The theology here needs to be central. Our places as men and women in the reality of God and the work of Christ and the redemption and the end all things - all this contributes to the necessary backdrop - so all theories draw on contemporary experience but they stand and fall to the extent that they reflect the Christian tradition, the incarnation, the trinity and the work of Christ.

Patterns of interrelatedness and interaction have something to say about a trinitarian understanding of God...and the coming together of the divine and the human in the incarnate world and the chance and purposefulness speak also of the provision and the freedom of God and life and death is encapsulated in the life and the death of jesus, the unity and the wholeness that God will accomplish for his creation. It is all in this.

The death of Jesys is a mystery wrought - atonement is a mystery that we receive in faith and yet because we need to speak meaningful theories of the atonement, they must be relevant in our contemporary world – the unity of all things is key. Moses proposes therefore a holistic theory of atonement but feel too diffident to propose it as such and so it is an approach to atonement theory - it makes all kinds of connections between vast areas of knowledge and experience. It does not sit lightly to the three legged stool - they confirm and complement one another - all these theories - open up the cosmic, global dimension - if we do this the things that Christians have always said about the atonement remain - it is focused in the cross. Life and death and life must be taken back into the life of God because Jesus is sacrificed before the beginning of the world - he enters the human predicament so nothing remains outside the mystery. All this within the context of the accumulated torments of our world and how they can not be accommodated within a facile account of unity - these things have to be brought within an account of the cross and so the cross speaks of our capacity for self destruction, the torments of the human condition and how God comes to meet us in all this - in the edarkness and the emptiness of this.

Secondly we have to recover our understanding of sacrifice - we associate this with patronage and warfare - but even the most outdated acts of sacrifice speak of what happened when people operated in the life of God himself, the energy and the power that bound a community together - sacrifice is the power that makes the world go around. It is about a search for meaning.

From the beginning that Christians have spoken of the cross as a sacrifice through which God acted decisively to redeem the world. Only the wounded healer heals - the cross is not external to God but within and is taken up because nothing in God is wasted so that suffering that defies reasonable explanation, self-destruction and that which runs through the whole of the order are taken up by God and contained in God and find their meaning in God.

This is the sacrifice of God.

The conviction that GOD'S PURPOSE is that all things will be united in Christ (1 Cor 15:8) - that God will be all in all - this is where Christian hope finds its fullest expression. The goal of all existence is this unity in God spoken of by the Christian mystics - all things held in God for all eternity. This is Christian hope - this eschatological dimension takes on a new meaning in the light of all that we know about creation. The cross tests everything and this can not be taken to respond only to human kind – the evolution of ourselves as a species is bound up with the cosmos, we therefore need a cosmic credibility to the cross - if all life is contained in God then all life has meaning in God. This needs to take place within our atonement theology – it commends itself to our world – is a high priestly prayer - in the unity of the divine life our unity is found - theosis - divinisation of human kind - speaks of a conviction that there is no life outside God - we do not stand apart from the creative powers of God. This requires from us a humility regarding the different viewpoints - there is no wrong but do we have to believe in them - there are some ways that drive Dr Rev Moses to despair but he can not disregard them - there is a tapestry and we have to interconnect.

When Dr Rev Moses is asked whether he is a universalist he alludes to all encounters containing promise and judgment, that some will choose to travel with God and others will not. He comes very close to being a universalist, he believes. He explains that some people's lives are so compromised - we have to allow for this - the divine love does not hold it against people who do not make a confession of faith.

I find this last point very interesting. I resonate with it. It challenges my evangelical foundations but makes me post-evangelical, I guess. It resonates with me in ways that the Barth Brunner debate resonated when the idea of people being unable to confess their faith has to be taken into account. It makes for my neo-orthodoxy and how it is all about God's condescension and his decision for us over and above our decision for him, which I think is a biblical position, anyway.

I was so pleased with the quality of our speakers on clergy conference, the intellectual struggle, the heart struggle, the conversations that it led to in the bar and the opportunity to attend seminar workshops on the topics.

Next time, I will write up some reflections regarding a summing-up lecture given by Steve Hollinghurst.

The resurrection as an intensification of the incarnation

Christina Baxter shared her thoughts with us on the resurrection at our recent diocesan conference. Her orthodoxy was inspiring. Her use of scripture warmed the soul. For thirsty people, this was good stuff. I took some notes and offer them below.




Analogous to the new discoveries we have made through science and our feeling here is the lead up to Jesus and his resurrection and the collision of expectation with reality. We rework what we thought about life before. The Resurrection has the disciples and followers of the way reshape their understanding. Tom Wright explains how individual resurrection came as a surprise against the Jewish expectation of resurrection as a corporate event.


The church's meditation on this event is ongoing.


Mary came to the tomb and we witness her grief, for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. Christ is transformed but the risen Christ helps us understand our transformation. There was this cruel crucifixion and how was sense to be made of that? This end is no end but a prelude to a beginning. Everything needs realigning and reassessing in the light of this event to the extent that they and we struggle to find words. What has God been doing amongst us?



There is the transformation of Mary and the disciples into bold and proclaiming and confident disciples. It tells of the transformation of relationships too. It is the women who tell this story. God entrusts those whom man would not have trusted. These women become the apostles to the apostles. They have an understanding of who Jesus Christ is. He is transformed.


The resurrection as an intensification of the incarnation. Jesus Christ affirms his humanity and the good order in the incarnation. Up to the crucifixion we might have decided that the powers of evil had overcome, that the incarnation had come undone but the resurrection tells us that this is not the case. Crucifixion can not end the incarnation when the incarnate one is transformed and is still incarnate and is eternally incarnate. From this vantage point we look back from the resurrection to creation and we see that creation is indeed God's good work. God affirms his creation. He has made it capable of receiving himself. Resurrection underlines and intensifies creation, so how do we relate to it before general resurrection?


The earth will be transformed as Christ is transformed and so all of this has ramifications. At the crucifixion we understand God as trinity but is it not more that we need resurrection to understand the trinity.


This is a continuing life, life in the risen and the crucified one. We hold on to the unity of God and so the cross and the resurrection force us to engage with all our theology.


Resurrection has us approach ecology too differently - this world is committed to resurrection and so we need to rediscover our role as stewards.

This continues to be a challenge and a place for repentance.

But there is this possibility of our own transformation NOW. This is why we believe in the possibility of it for people - the risen Christ performs acts of transformation in front of our eyes. It is right to have a passion for this idea that God is able to change us.


Theological colleges and attitudes wider need to take people as they are because God will transform them. We are not to be in a particular place first because God will equip and we believe that he can change us as we go along.

During that walk to Emmaus in Luke 24, there is that expressed hope that he was the one to redeem Israel. We read this story as the beginning of a meditation about the transformation of the disciples beliefs. Beliefs are being transformed and their whole understanding of the breaking of bread changes - there are new things to be told now. They were to preach the kingdom and healing but now they preach that he is risen according to the scriptures and we are to discover what all of this means - repentance and forgiveness is located in the resurrection - then there will be the teaching of the holy spirit who flows out of the resurrection.


Jesus can appear and disappear and eat. There is a consequent complete 180 degree turn for the disciples on the road to Emmaus, they were going one way and now they are going in another direction. If we turn then Ephesians 1, expressed is the meaning of all this – the hope, the riches immeasurable, the greatness,seated in the heavenly places. All things under his feet. We understand the risen one in the light of all that has come before and the foreground of this passage is in the power of God who brings Christ back from the dead and then seats him in the heavenly realms and it is this power that is alive in us when we believe.


For us as clergy where is all the particular significance in this. When we are in the middle of extraordinary pressures, addressing issues and enabling others to access their faith against endless demands, perhaps sometimes we feel we can not do this task, so we pray in the ordination service for the Holy Spirit. - the power we need is the power of God to go on the next day and the next day. We need it more as time goes on. God offers the same power as that which raised Christ from the dead, this power is good and life giving, it is generous and it is forgiving. His power makes all things possible. God's power has made possible what has occurred. Christ may dwell in your hearts in faith. We are given the power to comprehend things which surpass knowledge.


Resurrection makes it possible for Christ to be in us and transform our understanding of all that has come before. Paul in 1 Cor 15 is a case study in transformation. By the grace of God I am what I am - transformation of our understanding and us and our work and our relationship with other people whom we would not have chosen but who are our brothers and our sisters through baptism. There is this promise of transformation, of glory into glory - are we cooperating with this?


The transformation of the breaking of bread - it is not a macabre re-enactment or a sorrowful event when the only thing that makes it a celebration is the resurrection - this is how Christ meets us. We constantly have Easter before our eyes. We need to pause before the God so cruelly executed who comes back to us to give us life. He is the type for our own resurrection. We have a glimpse of what it will be like. It will be grace and it will be gift. He has blazed the trail by going before - as in Adam all die, each will be made alive, Christ is the firstfruits. Resurrection is after the pattern of Christ and this is the power of God which can bring us into resurrection. He has begotten us again in lively hope.


We hold on in the face of the intractable obstacles. This is how we live under persecution where there are moments of extremity and martyrdom because the resurrection teaches us to hope in a future that is God's, that is his.


Donald Capp talks about how we revise the past and talk about a new future. He tells a story of a man in a village whose horse runs away. His neighbours lament for him. He says “We'll see” and the horse returns and brings two more horses. Christina explains other events that happen to this man, some seeming so tragic but the man always wonders and is only prepared to say that 'maybe' it is a disaster. Each time the event turns out for the best, even if the best is delayed. We do not understand the reasons for events turning out the way they do until the end because we see through a glass darkly. As we do this we hold on to a vision of the future, of what God will do in the future because we are part of a longer narrative and in doing this we revise the past and then we see past events in the light of what happens. Pastoral practice or spiritual direction is something like standing near the tomb to see what God will do - or waiting at the tomb of Lazarus to see what Christ will do - we can hold out the hope that God will work here too just as he did in the resurrection - a God who raises Christ from the dead can accomplish anything.


The power of God at work in us is the power of the Holy Spirit. Taking up our cross and being willing is the way that we are made ready to receive the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes when we are willing to let go of selfishness and by this can walk the way of the cross for the whole of our lives. The resurrection is not about triumphalism. There is triumph but not triumphalism. The power to be like Jesus Christ is power to suffer, the power to have compassion.


The resurrection power of the Holy Spirit empowers us to engage the powers and take the message out. As we have received Christ so we live in Christ as Paul says in Colossians and how we are to live is in the light of what has happened – our life is hid with God. H doesn't talk about the future-heaven but how it is to be lived out in this life - your life is with Christ in God so that we clothe each moment in peace and love.


The question we are called to ask ourselves has everything to do with how we participate in God's trinitarian life and think about the cosmic Christ and the responsibility we have so that we have the possibility to believe that the ordinary and the routine things that we do are worthwhile because of the resurrection and the victory through Jesus Christ?


My beloved be steadfast, your labour is not in vain.


Christina responded to questions from the floor. When someone proposed a metaphorical reading of the resurrection she said that it is an event and can only function as a motif for understanding life because it is a real event first.


She also explained how she makes no apology for being orthodox, that this is a conviction that enables her to train people for ministry. She is not adverse to thinking through theology for the common time but not at the cost of abandoning those things that the fathers found to be true. The scriptures are written because of the resurrection. If we had only had the cross then Jesus' sayings might have been thought worthy to write down and live out but the resurrection is it. We see the top of the tower - it is not floating free. It is built in the cross but it transforms us, this resurrection, from perplexity and fear and a running away. It is the light of the resurrection that enables them to see the glory of the three hours of agony!

Burnt out or on-fire?

A post about clergy burn-out

Consider:

'We should seek to become reservoirs rather than canals. For a canal just allows the water to flow through it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, then it can communicate without loss to itself. In the church today, we have many canals but few reservoirs.' (Quote from the twelfth century)

And:

‘Being available must never be the defining characteristic of effective leadership.... The wise leader will make wise choices about how time is managed, giving first priority to that space for refreshment and discernment where decisions about the right use of the rest of the time can be profitably made’ (Hit the Ground Kneeling, Stephen Cottrell, p17).

And:

‘Many leaders rush around doing lots of things because they are seeking affirmation in the wrong place, trying to keep everyone happy rather than being engaged in the more noble vocation of making them holy, helping them become themselves’ (Hit the Ground Kneeling, Stephen Cottrell, p22).

And from the same book:

'The Christian leader .. can be the still point at the centre of the maelstrom, the one whose judgement can be trusted, the one who is not seeking her own ends or his own self-advancement, but cares for those in their charge. Such leaders have an inner security and peace that is both a gift from God and the most important gift they can bestow on others: they are leaders who allow themselves to be led.'

Sue M picked up on the pastor's quote that I put up on facebook for discussion, the one that went "I have had plenty of opportunities to get depressed but I just haven't taken them!' a quote which met with triumphalistic applause from many members of the mega-congregation to whom he was preaching. Sue explores post-natal depression very candidly over on her blog in response.

I think the closest I have come to burn-out was at university, first time around, when I was studying English in order to finish with a PGCE and become a secondary school teacher. The tendency to this disposition, I am aware, is part and parcel of my personality and so I take an interest in writing that explores such personality profiles so that I can watch for the warning signs.

Freudenberger, Journal of Social Issues Volume 30, (1974) describes 'burnout' in terms of negative feelings experienced by those working with people, as a result of exhaustion and low feelings of personal satisfaction.

During university the expectations I put upon myself to constantly achieve were too high. Take-home papers for examination purposes were a nightmare for someone who decided that there were therefore now more hours at my disposal for research, reading and writing purposes.

Detachment is common tendency thought to contribute to Burnout. I know that I detached myself from friends and family as I locked myself away to study at university, first time around - that was literal detachment. Sometimes we have to do this, of course, just to get the work done. Balance is what is required.

For people in the caring professions there is the tendency to psychologically detach themselves from other people. With clergy and medical workers, I wonder how detachment expresses itself?

Is the attitude doctors and surgeons appropriate for dealing with constant death and terminal illness an option for clergy against the gospel imperative for a Christ-like compassion?

My experience of funerals has, so far (just four months into my curacy), been exposure only to those who have had a good length of life with a death that was expected after illness. I have not, as yet, met a case of tragic death. Inevitably, this will be something that I will face.

In my last post about depression, I was wanting to explore how church particularly and more so charismatic expressions of church deal with depression and burn-out. Geoff Read, Chaplain of the Anglican Church in Basel, Switzerland writes about how, 'the focus on the importance of a dynamic, growing and renewed identity in Christ may seem obvious. But often the important gives way to the urgent, the good forces out the best...'

Read describes burnout as arising out of the 'misplaced use of qualities such as tenacity and dedication and a strong sense of responsibility to reach goals.' He quotes Roland Croucher who suggest that the mismatches are ‘... usually something to do with family-of-origin deficits in terms of unconditional love, a sense of belonging, and a tendency towards competitiveness to prove one’s worth.' It is good to look carefully to see if we can recognise these tendencies in ourselves and to look at our childhoods to see when and why they began to manifest themselves.

Our discussion in the diocese the other day regarding women bishops did in the end become orientated around the idea of humanising the clergy role. This has been explored with Rowan Williams in September when he met at Lambeth with ordained and lay women to discuss issues they faced. It would seem live issues on the ground are forcing the church to explore vocation from persepectives that would improve work/life balance for men too.

...and also for your interest...

Read presents Dr John Fletcher’s stages to Clergy Burnout:

Entry to ordained ministry with high personal ideals is overlaid with those of the church during training.

Once in a post, ideal and contextual reality disconnect and clergy draw ever deeper on the ideal, propelled by a growing sense of 'ought.'

The demands and the disconnect lead to symptoms of physical, relational and spiritual stress.

For some at this point stress is episodic but others are on the road to burnout with the emergence of cynicism and resentment towards the perceived demands of church members and diminished creativity.

After this horror can set in that such feelings are occurring, causing an individual to crumble or work harder while achieving less and less, delaying the inevitable crash.

AND SO WHAT DO WE DO?

These are some of the questions, that every now and then it is worth asking ourselves:

Am I frequently fatigued and in search of opportunities for rest and sleep?

Am I feeling cynical about the people with whom I work or alternatively suspecting that they feel negative about me?

Do I often feel drained by my ministry roles?

Do I find it difficult to muster up enthusiasm for my work?

Do I find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning, fantasizing an illness that would keep me at home?

Am I feeling 'put upon' or taken for granted?

I am becoming less flexible in my approach to things and frustrated when plans do not go my way?

Do I feel low and sad for no concrete reason?

Do I think about work in my personal/family time?

Books worth a look:
Geoff Read, Ministry Burnout, Grove

Stephen Cottrell, Hit the Ground Kneeling

Fred Lehr, Recovering from the 70 hour week… and other self defeating practices, 2006, Fortress Press, Minneapolis

Coate, M.A., Clergy Stress, 1989, SPCK

Francis, L.J., Kaldor, P., Robbins, M., & Castle, K., Happy but Exhausted? Work related Psychological Health among Clergy. Sciences Pastorales, Volume24-2 (2005), pp101-120

Francis, L.J., & Rutledge, C.F.J., Are rural clergy in the Church of England under greater stress? Study in empirical theology. Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 11, 173-191

Hart, A. Coping with Depression in the Ministry and Other Helping Professions, 1984

I really hope that this post has been a resource to you and that should I need it, it becomes a resource to me too! :-D