For the family record, Sunday we were all together for the baptism of Lucy’s latest godchild, Shanice Isobel White. As you can see she is just completely gorgeous and wonderful, and everyone had a great day. Teaching, appropriately, was from Luke 24 about greatness in the Kingdom of heaven, servanthood and becoming as a child. It was all a great reality checkpoint for a new year’s work.
There was a guy at Willow Creek demonstrating the Sony PRS-505 eBook Reader. These devices are not available in the UK until September, but I’ve been test driving one this side of the pond. Could this be the iPod/iTunes for the reading classes? On the basis of some geeking about and having read a couple of substantial (500 page+) books with one, thus no blogging yesterday, this is my preliminary verdict...
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly
Just for today, and cherishing some hope of more reflection on the learning from this summer's conferences over the next few days, our whole family grinds to a halt as we try to work out whether it’s rollercoasters or animals for us tomorrow... this in the week Lucy and the boys spent a day doing extreme rides at Drayton Manor, whilst I took the girls for girlie stuff at the V&A. Also, Nick produced his own wooden coaster on the computer...
Basil Hall, my Director of Studies when I was an undergraduate, taught in a Presbyterian seminary in Wales, I believe, just after the Second World War. There, in a mental hospital garden, he encountered a quiet elderly man, rather broken in manner, whom they said was in fact Evan Roberts, leader of the great Welsh Revival of 1904-6. He suffered a massive breakdown in 1906 and withdrew from public ministry. The Western Mail said of him, on his death in 1951,He was a man who had experienced strange things. In his youth, he had seemed to hold the nation in the palms of his hands. He endured strains and underwent great changes of opinion and outlook, but his religious convictions remained firm to the end
As a young man in his twenties, Roberts, a former miner, ignited a chain of dramatic Evangelical conversions that swept 100,000 people into the chapels of the Principality. Before that time Wales wasn’t known for male voice choirs and teetotalism — it was the Welsh revival, they say, moved the goalposts.
Real life is strangely mixed — Swift satirised fair tulips sprung from dung. Among my favourite movies is Steve Martin’s Leap of Faith, which affectionately parodies an Elmer Gantry shyster revivalist. Jonas Nightingale pulls all the tricks in the book but finally a little girl is genuinely healed, rain really does come to the dustbowl, and the joke’s on us all, as well as him.
Cue a couple of posts from Maggi Dawn, here and here, about the breakdown of Todd Bentley’s marriage (details from Brother Maynard here). Earlier this summer a friend who’s a nearby Baptist minister was kindly critiquing the Lakeland revival on the basis of some UK follow-on stuff he’d attended. Amidst much extreme stuff (people being knocked over in a supercharged atmosphere some outsiders would associate with stage hypnotism rather than religion), I would lay serious money some people have actually been helped to genuinely good places they otherwise wouldn’t have reached.
If it’s a spiritual virtue to value the person more than the sins they commit, perhaps it’s also prioritising mercy before sacrifice to look to the human being amidst religious hype, to remember them personally and charitably in our prayers, and to recall that in the end we’re all in the same boat.
A while ago, I was interested to hear from someone who runs Samaritans, a UK suicide helpline, that most of their contacts come as emails. Perhaps the comparative anonymity of the keyboard provides an open space where shy people can open up. But, as my first vicar used to say, every silver lining has a cloud. What if the internet is the ideal low-accountability zone for people to lash out angrily, plumbing new depths of ad hominem sarcasm, rubbishing whole swathes of humanity with simplistic “them and us” namecalling? People who are otherwise perfectly nice say things online in ways they would never dream of talking to flesh-and-blood human beings. In a brilliant Op-Ed for the Guardian, Andrew Brown talks of the sincere but more nuanced way his forebears drank with and against their religious enemies in Northern Ireland:
How very different the conduct of religious discussions on the internet. On the web the participants are often sober and they spare no pains to offend and insult one another, even when there is nothing at stake. I nearly wrote "nothing but prestige" but prestige in whose eyes? Who is watching? The strange, weightless intimacy of online communication has enabled complete strangers to hate each other passionately within minutes. This has had measurable effects in the real world. In the US, for instance, the breakup of the Anglican Communion has already resulted in some huge and juicy lawsuits and will certainly result in many more as conservative parishes try to remove their churches from the liberal central body. The schism could never have happened without the internet, which allowed each side to see exactly what the other was up to, and then deliberately to misunderstand it.
If it’s any consolation for Anglicans, Atheists vs Creationists are equally rude, dismissive and vituperative... But why carry on mindless slugging matches, shouting past each other into empty space, anyway?
In County Fermanagh, religious differences were real enough for people to kill one another: my great-grandfather is buried in Enniskillen, which was the scene of one of the worst bombings. Perhaps because of that, people learned not to give offence unless there was something really serious at stake. But online, everything feels like a game, and in the teeth of all the evidence we persist in believing that there is a clear sharp line between gaming and reality.
Perhaps Christians who, like me, believe in the authority of Scripture, would do well to remember that, even online:
Back this morning to our little ol’ medieval house of prayer in Great Missenden. Last Sunday, after days worshipping with a wonderful rock band at Willow Creek, Lucy and I went Anglo-Catholic in Chicago, at the Church of the Atonement. The congregation at the third service, very full for the vacation season, seemed delightfully diverse after the slightly WASP feel of the previous few days. The Episcopal Church welcomed us, generously and delightfully.
It was great joy to be in a church family where people broadly rub along in realistic ways. They readily kitted me up (incuding mitre) to be part of a joyful shared experience in which everything fitted together smoothly. Mother Jackie Cameron presided beautifully, though I realise Brother Ronald Fox and others work hard behind the scenes to make everything hum along seemingly effortlessly.
Celebrating the Transfiguration at the Atonement was a bit mountain-top. God’s light shone through clearly, showing me the centre, like a trip to the cleaners. I was delighted to meet various people afterwards. Many had personal stories to tell about being there, some involving recovery from various kinds of religious abuse. If this congregation is “liberal,” though, frankly, it would be pretty meaningless to call it particularly so, it would not be a matter of ideology, but an understandable instinct in people who had been impacted negatively by more “illiberal,” manipulative or chauvinistic religion. Atonement had the breadth to take it and could, it struck me, be a real healing place.
I first experienced Anglo-Catholicism as a teenager. I was fascinated by Anglo-Catholics’ ability to engage with God in Church with solemnity but without taking themselves too seriously. At the pub aftrewards, people were real and really humerous about what had actually happened in Church. Aged 17, a friend and I bumped into the priest in a pub, and wondered whether we would get a rollicking. Far from it. We got a drink, along with a pin cross to wear and an injunction never to be ashamed of being known for a Christian wherever we were. This incident said something powerful to me that I hadn’t quite caught yet in more earnest and self-conscious Protestant discipleship, and I’ve never forgotten it. I was so captivated that years later when invited to find a subject in historical theology I wrote a thesis on historical Anglo-Catholic ecclesiology.
Use (A) of “Catholic” refers to a mark of the Church named in the creed, extended in time and space. You become part of the Catholic community of Christ’s people throughout the world in baptism; it’s an objective characteristic of Christ-followers (to use Willow Creek terminology) and God sees them whole, both in the scope of their life together, and their eternal destiny. In this sense the Prayer Book talked about “the whole company of Christian people.” One of the most powerful experiences of Lambeth was to be surrounded by people saying the Lord’s prayer in over 100 languages simultaneously, gathered freely from autocephalous local churches all over the world. It expressed particularity and true Catholicity perfectly.
Use (B) of “Catholic” is as a kind of designer label. It’s a particular house style or, even worse, a term of exclusion. It can even be reduced to a denominational tag. Once this bizarre piece of reductionism happens, people can develop an anal retentive fascination with whether Rome, or someone else, has the best exclusive franchise on the club. Such a process applied to this word, of all words, is bizarre, if you think for a moment about what it actually means. Who on earth could be silly or arrogant enough, really, to think that their particular denomination was somehow everything? 
Everything to them, if they like, but the Catholic whole is so much more diverse, particular, gifted and resourceful than the local. It would be good, especially after Lambeth, to capture that dimension increasingly back home. The Church of the Atonement was a great place, personally, to do that.
Sweet to grab a day out last Saturday in Chicago rubbernecking with Lucy and friends. The Trump is going up fast, along with a couple of other megastructures. It proved impossible to spend less than 20 minutes nosing around the Bean, even on a busy day. I had not quite sppreciated the finer points of 333 Wacker Drive before, though it was faintly lodged in the consciousness from Ferris Bueller's day off and, of course, the Truman Show. It’s made for bright sunshine and storm light effects.
...because Diana was a contemporary and accessible princess, the fountain's goal was to allow people access to the structure and to the water for quiet wading and contemplation. However, shortly after its opening and after three hospitalisations caused by people slipping in the water, the fountain was closed. It reopened in August 2004, surrounded by a new fence, and people are now prevented from walking or running in the water by six wardens.
So, over seven million dollars and, er, it doesn’t quite work. Thus the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain notches up another skull, and the suits have a damning precedent to chuck at anyone intrepid enough to have a creative idea in future. It’s not quite the whole story, witness the London Eye, but it’s what happens much of the time. By contrast the Crown Fountain has to be about the most entertaining piece of public art for children in the world — It’s simple, it’s fun, and it works. I rest my case.
In a way that might have been unthinkable to many Evangelicals of a previous generation, Bill Hybels led us the final session of the Leadership Summit to examine the life and leadership of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whom he described as the most influential woman on earth. Her drew heavily on Come, be my Light, a collection of spritual writings and diaries that went paperback in the UK this week.
When first published some secularist reviewers took Mother Teresa’s radically honest, realistic account of faith and doubt as a promising revelation of unbelief. All it actually indicated was their inability to understand “faith” in anything but shallow and obvious terms. In fact, Mother Teresa’s book is becoming a source of inspiration and hope to Christians the world over.
We walked through her early story and serious sense of call — someone who had few obvious attributes to offer, but believed that if God had given all of himself, she could not answer with less than all of herself. From daily exercise of disciplines she called “little practices” emerged a radical calling, relentlessly pursued. So she walked through various obstacles placed in her way by ecclesiastical authorities sometimes, as much as by the magnitude of the task.
Living in a society where feelings and rewards are often pursued as paramount, and people feel aggrieved over minor frustrations, there was inspiration in her faith: “even though I do not feel his presence for long periods of time, I will seek to love him as he has never been loved.”
Back in Hebrew class, alongside rabbis-to-be, I imbibed traditions of reverence surrounding the Tetragrammaton in the Hebrew Scriptures. In an old git moment I have to admit this gave me an abiding and instinctive personal dislike of 80’s songs with jingle tunes and words like “Yahweh, we love you.”In the not-too-distant future, songs such as "You Are Near," "I Will Bless Yahweh" and "Rise, O Yahweh" will no longer be part of the Catholic worship experience in the United States.
At the very least, the songs will be edited to remove the word "Yahweh" -- a name of God that the Vatican has ruled must not "be used or pronounced" in songs and prayers during Catholic Masses.
I have never before encountered Chuck Colson. As enforcer for Tricky Dicky, Mr Colson became deeply embroiled in the Watergate scandal and was imprisoned. Remarkably converted, he went on to found Prison Fellowship. Among US Conservative Evangelicals he is something of an Elder statesman. I was looking forward to his talk because I was intrigued by his personal story, and endorse his advocacy for restorative justice.
Actually, his presentation was hard work, not only for me but for all of our group. Many others around us were respectful, but noticeably less plugged into this talk than the others. Mr Colson gave some helpfully provocative sound bites — “we have bought into a lie, and transferred our allegiace from truth to therapy” sticks in the mind as a challenge to consider.
f what Roman Catholics used to call integralism — everything about God, propositionally stated, hangs together as an unquestionable whole. Any compromise and the whole trickles away. No duck/rabbits or wave/particles for Mr Colson then. And why his particular whole package, not Pio Nono’s? Don’t suppose I’ll ever know.
This was a curiously unsatisfying talk, with its logical-positivist style — Dawkins stood on his head? Its knockdown arguments took us on a slightly clunky trip around the circle line, whilst most everybody else is up on the surface, strolling in the park these days. Perhaps whipping ideas together to force compliance from the unwilling is what good party enforcers do best. If ever I feel we need that doing, I'll know where to come, I suppose.
John Burke is lead pastor of Gateway Community Church in Austin, Texas, and a leading member of the Emergent Leadership Initiative, an Evangelical movement to plant and grow authentic new churches in emergent culture. Winning young people for Christ is not just about packaging, but about authenticity, allowing God to change us hardened burned out religious people into bearers of grace.
From ten years’ rich, fruitful experience of growing an evangelical church among the generation most cagey about Christian commitment, John spoke of creating the right soil for faith to grow, not expecting people to get everything sorted at the check-in. God requires Mercy not Sacrifice, raising a significant question — are we leading like Jesus or like the pharisees? The world does law not grace. Grace says come as you are, and that is the essence of the good news.
John reports that the two big stumbling blocks people have every time are about other religions and homosexuality. So the question for would-be prevailing Evangelical Churches is one a young neighbour asked him of Gateway, “Does your Church teach people to love others? because I could never attend a Church that teaches people to hate gay people.”
It was fascinating, gievn the all-too-open discussions of this subject among Anglicans, how very coy non-Anglicans are, with much coded communication. Having brought it up, John simply referred people to a chapter of his book, as does the follow up Website. Nobody was willing to discuss it in real time. Even in code, however, John brought exact corroboration, hot off the streets, of the Barna Group research last year indicating we have a major missional issue here. Pretending that this is a subject about which we are either in the 1950’s or can return to the 1950’s is just idiotic. Making it a lead issue seems to be missional suicide.
John’s book takes a commendable pragmatic line — keeping Christ at the forefront, not homosexuality, whilst being wide open personally to accept gay people just as they are. He believes people’s lives turn around in the light of Christian faith in ways they never could if cultural stumbling blocks were erected in the way of their coming to that commitment in the first place. So say all of us, no doubt, but I suspect it will be a good while before many US Evangelicals feel comfortable about discussing openly the follow on — is this, some gay people may feel, in the end a kindly but ultimaterly inadequate, even patronising, response to this personal, moral and cultural issue?
The person I am most glad to have encountered at this Leadership Summit has been Gary Haugen — lawyer, genocide investigator in Rwanda, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission. Quite simply, Gary is one of the most impressive and inspiring people I’ve ever met in my life, lawyer or not... his great priorities are Micah 6 — to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.
Martin Luther King used to say that the first claim of love is justice. We can only exert leadership that matters if we apply ourselves wholehartedly to issues that matter to God. Pharisees were well-briefed Biblicists. They failed because they tried to lead people into priorities which mattered more to them than to God.
Why should the man shot artbitrarily by police on the streets of Kenya, or the child prostitute in India, believe that God is good and loves the world? What is God’s plan to make his word believable? Incredibly, we are! IJM deploys skilled local people to contest slavery, trafficking, exploitation and violence around the world. It’s dangerous work, but infinitely rewarding. It’s grounded in prayer, and requires undertaking major risks daily.
Mr Haugen talked of a childhood trip up a mountain — a climb he missed, because he chickened out and stayed in the visitor centre, then tried to kid everyone else it was as good as the real thing. Is our Christian commitment about endeavouring the harder climb, or just looking at pictures down in the visitor centre?
