Chelmsford! Essex! You Lucky People!

Much spontaneous warmth, joy and prayer yesterday at our Bucks area deans meeting for +Stephen Cottrell, called to be Bishop of Chelmsford. Having had the odd enquiry from friends East of Eden about what they’re in for, I can say this. Stephen is one of the most enjoyable and supportive friends I’ve ever worked with, and as an erstwhile fellow enfant terrible I will seriously miss his clear sightedness, holy pragmatism, warmth and humour.

What kind of disciple? Well, like the Church of England is supposed to, he runs Gospel (or Evangelical) software on Catholic hardware. He is clearly focussed on the kingdom, and has a real knack for drawing people into Bible passages reflectively at a level you can take away and think about. He is an Evangelism nut. He’s shrewd, but far more interested in holiness than politics. This approach seems to cut through squabbling and ego dressed as faith like a knife through butter (I don't know whether Chelmsford keeps its butter in the fridge.)

This looks like a great match. Stephen’s proud of Essex and coming from Essex; he has absolutely no side to him, to use a rather old-fashioned phrase. I will miss him a lot, and follow his joint adventures with his new diocese with real expectancy that God can stir you up to all kinds of fruitful labour if you let him. O people of Essex (and the bits of East London that some people think are Essex really), you are blessed. You have got yourselves the right man.

Binary Follies and missional drift

There are two kinds of people: people who divide others into two kinds of people, and people who don’t. Sometimes it’s wise to distinguish between others, but often not. Usually it’s helpful to remember that any one of us has it in us to be several things at once.

Which brings me to Bishop Stephen Cottrell’s great sermon at yesterday’s Racial Justice Sunday celebration in Oxford. St James tells us about pure wisdom, and that the harvest of true righteousness is sown in peace, for/by those who make peace. So he roots our divisions in our pride, frustrations and faithlessness, and calls on us, double-minded people, to wash our hands and cleanse our hearts.

Jesus told the story of two boys, one of whom refused to do as his father asked, but ended up doing it anyway, as against his brother, who said he would obey but never did, nor even really intended to. We will be surprised in heaven by all sorts of people getting there ahead of us.

Classic bourgeois hypocrisy is all about striving officiously to appear respectable, but another, possibly more pernicious form of double-mindedness is dividing up and compartmentalising the whole world, in ways that tend put ourselves perpetually in the right.

Looking at our grasp of St Paul’s great revelation of unity in Christ in Galatians 3 — all One in Christ, neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female — is not entirely encouraging. It took the best part of 100 years of bitter disputes to bring words and public deeds into alignment over Greeks and Jews, 1800 over slaves and free, and among Anglicans, we still seem to be a tad confused over male and female...

I notice, myself, another intrguing way of indulging this ugly side of human nature; making up novel denominational, racial or religious reasons not to engage with others, producing a technical but narrow conformity to our own particular interpretion of Galatians 3, or whatever.
Who’s driving the narrowness? God, or the limited way we see ourselves and others, and our reluctance to engage?

This all leads me to surmise that if ever we do decide to give practical Christanity a go, there are all sorts of people out there who would love to see it put into practice, much more than they can bear all the fear, excuses, bickering and other symptoms of doublemindedness they are picking up now.

Happy families? all a bit weird...

Do nothing — Christmas is Coming! Last year I followed Maggi Dawn’s excellent Biblical advent course. This year Lucy and I have been taking Stephen Cottrell’s advice as we prepare for the Big Day. Stephen tracks through most of the weary things we’ve all felt, and some of us have said, about Christmas on its way, then takes the whole thing to the cleaners, by suggesting some down-to-earth ways of Thinking Different, that could really make a difference.

On Page 1 (as far as the busy journalist can be expected to read in any book) Stephen quotes one weary grinch:

Groan. It’s the first day of December, I’ve got about a hundred Christmas cards to write...”

Sadly our journalists were so busy that they didn’t get far enough to realise that this wasn’t an ex Cathedra statement from Stephen but an opening quote about feeling harrassed round Christmas. This mistake gave birth to a “Father Ted has got it in for the Chinese” story about Stephen and Christmas Cards. This straddled the world, from GetReading:

The self-styled “crazy bishop” has made the news again urging us all to forgo sending Christmas cards.

to the sunburned splendour of the (Murdoch) Brisbane Courier Mail

Church of England Bishop Stephen Cottrell says we should chill out this December and forget about sending Christmas cards.

Even Kiddiwinks got misled, as the fountain of niceness, CBBC Newsround reported:

Stephen Cottrell says we should stop sending Christmas cards to absolutely everyone we know, because it's a waste of time.

This is the time of year when most journalists go out, leaving machines to write ritual formulaic stories instead. There is a Holy Trinity of seasonal RF Stories:

1. Sales exceeding all records (possibly not this year, but they might run it anyway)
   
2. A council somewhere cancelling Christmas so as not to offend other faiths
3. Some vicar somewhere who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.
   

These stories are not produced by human beings. There is no point treating them as though they were. The tale of a bishop banning Christmas cards is a variant of (3).

Having read as far as page 46 of Stephen’s book, I can testify that it’s worth it:

To one degree or another, we all find our families embarrassing. It’s something we all have in common. And the other sobering fact that we seem hell-bent on avoiding is that we are all members of our family. What really irritates us about them is that they are so like us! And here’s another uncomfortable truth: we are part of a common humanity. We all have the same frailties, insecurities, anxieties and heartfelt longings. We are all a bit weird. We are all flawed. We are all less than the people we want to be. We all get embarrassed by ourselves and by those around us. We all cause embarrassment to others.

Christmas can be a time when we let this get on top of us. Wouldn’t it be better to take the medicine on offer? To accept these frailties, and then do two other things: first, accept yourself as the flawed and beautiful person that you are; and second, have a very good laugh at your own foolishness and enjoy the foolishness of others, especially those you’re going to be spending the next week with. After all, this is supposed to be the season of goodwill.

I defy the risk that the world’s press will now report that the self-confessed weird bishop has murdered all his family. I like his advice today:

• The best comedies will not be on TV this Christmas. They will be around your own table, if you can but see them.
• Re-imagine the peoples of the world as a hugely complex, extremely muddled, wonderfully odd and riotously funny family. Enjoy the differences. Take proper account of the deep-seated similarities.

Advent: doors in the Mind

Startling story of someone crushed to death on sale day at a Wal-Mart on Long Island. This is not the first time something like this has happened at such a place. With Christmas coming on, are there any alternatives out there to mindless consumerism?

In the US buynothingchristmas attemps to introduce some sense of sanity and proportion. Over here the Church of England has its own highly recommended website, whywearewaiting helps put the waiting back into wanting, with a brilliant, thoughtful and practical reflection from Rowan:

One or two people this week from the broader community have come across the site, and said how much they thnk it could help them think through an alternative run-up to Christmas to the usual clapped out desperate frantic activity.

As for me, I’m greatly loking forward to Advent with Sephen Cottrell’s Advent book, Do Nothing Christmas is coming. It’s a simple, good humoured practical countdown resource.
That doesn’t mean short on ideas. At one point he quotes Bertrand Russell:

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

What is provided is a daily opportunity to stand back from all that, and think. The text isn’t not preachy or specific in any way to particularly religious people. Each day starts with a daily snatch of ordinary conversation that captures one aspect of the season, with ideas and comment from Stephen, then some questions to help reflection. I don’t suppose doing it will take more than a five minutes a day.

This book is not, however, a comprehensive Bible Study resource, so I’ve loaded the iPhone with an application that supplemets the usual daily office with Bible themes.

(h/t Ottawa Raging Grans for the pic)

iSpy Advent coming up...

The publishing trade seems to have spotted a new market developing in Advent resources. Maggi Dawn got in first last year with Beginnings and Endings, a thoughtful daily Bible based resource that takes you right up to Twelfth Night. This year I want to try m’colleague and friend Bishop Stephen Cottrell’s down-to-earth Do Nothing: Christmas is Coming. Watch this space.

If that’s not enough to get you there, perhaps you need an Advent iPhone application. I’m trying Advent08 from iHabitus.com. This is a Scripturally based image enhanced supplementary office you run on your iPhone, that may well do nicely in the evening, complete with Celtic artwork that counts down from Advent Sunday, tying everything together. It can be used with personal or group meditation around an Advent wreath. For Liturgical anoraks, the scheme follows colour coded classic Advent themes up to and including the O Antiphons, and lands you up on Christmas Eve all dressed up and ready to go. All this for only 59p from the iTunes store!
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Redeeming the E Word

A helpful practical presentation about Evangelism at Diocesan synod by Bishop Stephen. Mission =

Everything that the gospel of God’s love in Christ does in the world

and Evangelism =

Processes whereby people become Disciples (not “churchgoers” or “converts”)

Classic C of E thinking was that Evangelism was basically Advertising, something we weren’t any good at. We left Evangelism to everyone else, including a few designated “evangelicals.” Everyone knew where to find us, and in the end people could graduate ozmotically to our superior brand! Not very glorious. The Decade of Evangelism did reveal some basic realities about how evangelism works.

One basic model just zips along from Contact to Commitment. To know the Christian community is to love it! Not. But For some people it really does work like this, a kind of hole in one. Why waste time thinking about it? Just load up on tracts and resources, and get out onto the streets — The Vivien method. It's by no means dishonorable. It often, however puts far more people off than on, which was not exactly the idea in the first place...

For most people this simple blatant model just doesn’t work, for personality reasons quite apart from anything else. God just didn’t make them that way. The average journey time is 4 -5 years, for a start...

During that time, people need some fairly basic things — a place to be accepted for who they are and to belong, with opportunities for discovery when they want it, and personl understanding and support.

This is the place for courses of one sort or another; but their effectiveness is almost entirely contextual not as something in itself. What counts isn’t the content of the curriculum, but the love and realism people find, and the generosity, and the space to explore for themselves. Actually, small churches can provide this nurture just by being themselves. They don't have to be all zapped up; in fact it almost helps not to be.

Strangely enough once people do commit themselves, sharing and generosity naturally develop a sense of vocation. As people respond to that, confidence grows, and they grow in the things they really care about in a way that’s infectious.

So what? provide contexts for nurture and growth, and the community of faith will grow, says this model. It's the way communities of faith always have grown. Christianity is essentially a way of life, not a religion or code of morals or ideology. I warm to the simplicity of this process, like the early Churches traveling light institutionally. Am I right to warm to this? If I did, I'd be in good company (h/t Ian Macdonald) — “the Church of God does not have a mission, but the God of mission has a church.” (Robin Greenwood)

It all comes down, in the end to the kind of community we are. In these terms, we get the growth we really want, deep down, and the growth appropriate to who we are. Since World War I, Dick Shepherd and others, The C of E has increasingly had to realise this is an exam in which we cannot cheat, and about which the punters sometimes, pretty much have our number! If we want people to become disciples, we need to be disciples!