A factfinding visit to the Middle East has led to a blogging break. As normal service resumes, my eye caught
the Times obituary of
Admiral Peter Branson (
here, behind paywall).
In 1941 the young Midshipman Branson’s transport ship was
torpedoed by U-1107 and he spent several days in tropical heat on half a pint of water a day in a lifeboat. He recorded an interesting tendency of men in lifeboats: “
everybody was giving orders and nobody was listening.” As leaders in conventional Churches begin to see themselves as minorities in lifeboats, fed by a lot of twaddle about being persecuted in England, I wonder if this tendency is beginning to spread among us. He went on to conclude:
the best morale in the world is useless without discipline to back it up in such a case as this. Our morale was high but rendered useless through lack of discipline
This gives me a queasy feeling about the lack of alignment in a lot of what we do. Like Woody Allen’s joke description of God, the Church is often “someting of an under-achiever.” At every level, including Primatial shenanigans among people who should know better, there is a profound gap between sincere faith with enthusiasm and the discipline to turn the high energy, love and prayer among Christians into something transformational for the world.
Discuss?
In 1941 the young Midshipman Branson’s transport ship was torpedoed by U-1107 and he spent several days in tropical heat on half a pint of water a day in a lifeboat. He recorded an interesting tendency of men in lifeboats: “everybody was giving orders and nobody was listening.” As leaders in conventional Churches begin to see themselves as minorities in lifeboats, fed by a lot of twaddle about being persecuted in England, I wonder if this tendency is beginning to spread among us. He went on to conclude:
