To See and to Follow

Moving to Wordpress

2010-08-30T08:00:00.002-06:00

For some time now I've been wanting to move my blog over to Wordpress. This is partly to do with the fact that I like a lot of the feature of the Wordpress blog hosting service, and partly because I don't want to give Google total control of my online life.

I have now moved everything from 'To See and to Follow' over to a new site at Wordpress here, and that's where I'll be blogging from now on.

Hope to see you over there!

Good music coming up in Edmonton this winter

2010-08-29T17:39:00.002-06:00

The Northern Lights Folk Club has a stellar season coming up in Edmonton this year. Everyone will have their own favourites, of course, but the ones I'm especially looking forward to are Martin Simpson (Oct 2nd), Dennis Lakusta with Alannah Dow (Nov. 6th), Karla Anderson, Rob Heath, John Wort Hannam and John Mann (Jan 15th), and Lennie Gallant (April 2nd).

Check out the entire lineup at the club's home page here. Most tickets run between $18 and $25, and season tickets are a steal at just over $200. I bought my season ticket this afternoon.

What's in it for Me? (a sermon on Luke 14:1, 7-14)

2010-08-29T17:27:00.001-06:00

As I began my Bible study in preparation for this sermon, I was confronted with this question in the ‘Serendipity Study Bible’: ‘If you could have the best seats in the house, what would you choose: Super Bowl? Rock concert? Philharmonic orchestra? Indy 500? Royal Wedding?’ For me, having recently attended the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, that was an easy question to answer: I’d like the Golden Tarp at the 2011 Festival!

For those of you who haven’t been initiated into the mysteries of the Folk Festival, seating at the main stage is rather rustic: we bring tarps and low chairs and set them up on Gallagher Hill. If you want a seat really close to the front at the main stage, you probably have to line up at about seven o’clock in the morning, and most of us don’t have the time to do that. However, there’s a way of jumping the lineup. Each year there is a raffle, and one of the prizes is the ‘Golden Tarp’ for the following year: the winner gets to be the first person on the hill every day and can put down his or her tarp wherever they want, before anyone else gets a chance!

I’ve never had a lot of success myself getting close to the main stage, but I’ve done quite well at some of the smaller stages – usually by going to them quite a bit ahead of time. Fortunately for me, no one has ever come up to me and said “Someone more important than you is here: give them your place!” With some of the more popular smaller stages, that would probably mean going an awful long way back!

In today’s Gospel Jesus has a lot to say to people who always want the front seats – in other words, to people who want the best deal for themselves and don’t care who they displace in order to get it. Whether they are going to a dinner party put on by others, or throwing a party themselves, these folks are not actually thinking about the other people at all. Rather, their first question is always “What’s in this situation for me?” Let’s refresh our memory of the story.

Read the rest here.

A Folk Song a Day

2010-08-28T17:21:00.003-06:00

Jon Boden has an impressive pedigree in traditional folk music, including 'Spiers and Boden', 'Bellowhead', and Eliza Carthy's band 'The Ratcatchers'. A few months ago he started a new project called 'A Folk Song a Day'. It's exactly what the title says; if you subscribe to his podcast, you will receive a traditional folk song (sung by him) every day. Jon has a very fine singing voice, and many of the songs are unaccompanied; a few have a fiddle or accordion in them, but that's about it.

I subscribed yesterday, and was able to download all the songs released in the month of August. At the end of each month, Jon seems to take the songs down and release them as a CD which you can get from iTunes and a few other places.

So far I'm really enjoying them. A few of the songs are already familiar to me, but many of them are not, and I'm finding that hearing them performed unaccompanied is a great way to put the spotlight on the song itself, rather than on anyone's musical expertise.

If you want to try them out without subscribing to the podcast, just go to the website where all the songs for August are available in streaming audio.

All Things are Quite Silent

2010-08-27T23:09:00.004-06:00

Today my copy of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Bert Lloyd's classic book 'English Folk Songs' arrived. Trying to learn to sing and play the first song in the book, 'All Things Are Quite Silent', has involved learning to play in Dorian mode (it's like playing in a minor key except the 6th note is raised a half tone). Apparently a lot of old English folk songs were in this mode. It's not easy to set a guitar accompaniment to - and in fact Williams and Lloyd say that it's best to sing these old folk songs unaccompanied.

After learning the song from the music in the book I found this unaccompanied version on YouTube. This singer alters the tune slightly from the version that Williams and Lloyd collected, but I think he does a great job.

I've heard of Dorian mode before, but before tonight I've never really understood it or consciously tried to sing or play in it. So thank you to these two dead guys, Bert Lloyd and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who've given me a brand new musical experience!

Love in pastoral ministry

2010-08-27T09:04:00.003-06:00

All through this week, in our Canadian Anglican daily prayers, we've been praying this prayer:

Almighty God, we are taught by your word that all our doings without love are worth nothing. Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

It's my habit to drive down to the church (where my office is located) just after eight each morning and begin my day by praying Morning Prayer. As I was doing so this morning, it really hit me how appropriate this prayer is for a Christian pastor about to begin his or her 'working day'.

You see, there's a growing tendency for Christian ministers to carry out their work in the spirit of the coffee mug message I once saw: 'Jesus is coming - look busy!' At this time of year, my temptation is to fill up my Fall calendar with workshops and conferences and programs of every conceivable variety to meet the needs of every conceivable group of people. I do this year by year, and then wonder why I'm exhausted by the end of November, with very little sense of having accomplished anything worthwhile for the gospel and the kingdom.

'All our doings without love are worth nothing'. If I'm so busy that I don't have time for people, then I'm too busy. Relationships are what it's all about - helping people build relationships with God, with each other, and with the world around them. Nowadays the world moves at such breakneck speed, and the idolatry of productivity is so powerful, that many people literally have no time for the slow, quiet conversations that are so crucial to building those relationships. Sadly, that includes conversations with God; many people feel so rushed that they just don't seem to be able to make time for listening to God and talking with him.

Notice the language we commonly use: 'make time'. That's deceptive; no-one gets to 'make time'. The time has already been made; all we get to do is choose how we will use it. And if we're busy people and some enticing new activity comes along, the only way to 'make time' to do this new thing is to stop doing something that we're already doing. Hence the cost of relationships and the cost of discipleship; you can't add them on to a busy life. you have to stop doing something else in order to make room for them.

So what am I, as a busy pastor, prepared to 'stop doing' in order to make more time for loving people and building relationships with them?

Of course, there's a vocabulary problem here too; we live in a society where the word 'love' is almost always a description of an emotion, and so when we hear that 'all our doings without love are worth nothing' we may well understand it to mean 'If you don't feel it from the heart, it's worthless'. But in the Bible love is not a feeling, it's an action - a decision to live your life to bless and serve other people, whether you feel like it or not, whether it's convenient or not, whether it's costly or not.

This is a tall order - hence the second part of the prayer, calling on God to send his Holy Spirit to 'pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love'. The 'heart', in the Bible, doesn't mean the feelings (the Greeks thought that the bowels were the seat of the emotions, not the heart!!!). It means the whole person, especially as expressed in the choices we make, the decisions of our will. So we're asking God to fill us with the Holy Spirit and give us the strength to love other people, not just in words but in actions. As John says, 'Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action' (1 John 3:18).

One of my favourite pastoral authors, Dave Hansen, likes to quote a former pastor of his: 'Do the right thing, the loving thing. People before programs. Faithfulness to Christ above all'.

Amen.

Faith and Reason

2010-08-26T02:30:00.003-06:00

Over the past few months I've been on a reading-fest with regard to the new atheists and the authors who have critiqued their arguments. Some of the books I've read have included:

Karen Armstrong: The Case for God
Francis S. Collins: The Language of God
John Cornwell: Darwin's Angel
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
Daniel Dennett: Breaking the Spell
Terry Eagleton: Reason, Faith, and Revolution
Anthony Flew: There is a God
Sam Harris: The End of Faith
Sam Harris: Letter to a Christian Nation
Chris Hedges: When Atheism Becomes Religion
Christopher Hitchens: God is Not Great
Peter Hitchens: The Rage Against God
Bruce Sheiman: An Atheist Defends Religion

I have to say that it was rather weird, in the midst of all this reading about whether or not God exists, to see parts of the Anglican world taken up with the issue of whether or not the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church should have been required to forego the wearing of her mitre when she presided at the Eucharist and preached at Southwark Cathedral. It was actually rather refreshing to turn from the blogs of those who thought that this was an Earth-Shattering Issue to the arguments of atheists who were trying to find ways of grounding the search for human significance and a genuine sense of ethics and morality in something other than belief in God. I may have disagreed with their arguments, but at least they were arguing about something that really mattered! As I said in an earlier blog-post:

The people of the world are fascinated by Hitchens and Dawkins, Dan Dennett and Sam Harris (so, at least, their book sales would lead us to believe), who are doing a pretty good job of convincing people that we are medieval ignoramuses, desperately clinging to the last vestiges of our long-lost power and influence in the face of mounting scientific evidence that our faith is a delusion. Of course, the spectacle of high priests in pre-medieval ceremonial robes waving incense around altars in huge ancient stone temples wasn't exactly helping our case before - and the fact that now the international Anglican community seems to think it's hugely significant in the eyes of God that one of the high priests wasn't allowed to wear a part of her weird costume is just making it worse.

Of the so-called 'four horsemen of the apocalypse' (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens) I found the first two by far the best and most compelling. Hitchens is an ideologue and the subtitle of his book ('How Religion Poisons Everything') illustrates the fatal flaw in his approach. Now, I am quite prepared to believe that some religion poisons some things, or even that a lot of religion poisons a lot of things, but the blanket statement that 'religion poisons everything' seems rather absurd to me. Everything? My wife and I have been married for over thirty years, and most of my non-Christian friends seem to think we have quite a good marriage; they don't think that our religion has poisoned our marriage. There - I have disproved the premise of Christopher Hitchens' subtitle - religion does not poison everything. I also found Hitchens woefully ignorant in the chapter in his book about the one thing I do know a lot about: the New Testament. I found a large number of basic factual errors in that chapter, and an almost equal number of what seem to me to be wilful misinterpretations. This did not improve my opinion of the quality of Hitchens' research.

As for Harris, his defence of torture, and his statement that there are some ideas that are so dangerous that we should be prepared to kill people just for holding them, seemed so outrageous to me that I had difficulty taking anything else he said seriously. He has also been accused by serious students of the Middle East of being woefully (and perhaps wilfully) ignorant of the political, economic, social and religious complexities of the situation there.

It was a relief to turn from these two to Dawkins, who is a real scientist - a biologist, in fact - at the top of his game, and who really knows what he is talking about when he talks about evolution, natural selection and the whole Darwinian approach. And as long as he stuck to science, I thought he was on very firm ground. It was when he ventured into philosophy (i.e. the question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'), ethics (his attempt to explain ethics and morality on the basis of Darwinism) and history (his rather naive opinion that the whole world is gradually getting better and better, from a moral point of view), that I thought he was weakest. Dennett, too, seemed to really know his stuff, and I found his book quite forceful.

Theist attempts to rebuff the new atheists tend to fall into two categories. Some (Collins, Tim Keller, Alister McGrath, Anthony Flew) debate the atheists on their own ground - rational reasons for or against the existence of God. Others (Armstrong, Eagleton) step back a little and question the hegemony of reason in the worldview of these new atheists. Armstrong in particular argues for the so-called apophatic tradition in Christianity - the view that, given the fact that God is the ground of all being and I am simply one of God's tiny, limited, creatures, the idea that I can say anything at all about God that makes sense is rather unbelievable. God is far beyond the ability of human reason to comprehend or describe.

I found the following passage from Terry Eagleton's book 'Reason, Faith, and Revolution' particularly compelling:

'The Christian way of indicating that faith is not in the end a question of choice is the notion of grace. Like the world itself from a Christian viewpoint, faith is a gift. This means among other things that Christians are not in conscious possession of all the reasons why they believe in God. But neither is anyone in conscious possession of all the reasons why they believe in keeping fit, the supreme value of the individual, or the importance of being sincere. Only ultrarationalists imagine that they need to be. Because faith is not wholly conscious, it is uncommon to abandon it simply by taking thought. Too much else would have to be altered as well. It is not usual for a lifelong conservative suddenly to become a revolutionary because a thought has struck him. This is not to say that faith is closed to evidence, as Dawkins wrongly considers, or to deny that one can come to change one's mind about one's beliefs. We may not choose our beliefs as we choose our starters; but this is not to say that we are just the helpless prisoners of them... Determinism is not the only alternative to voluntarism. It is just that more is involved in changing really deep-seated beliefs than just changing your mind. The rationalist tends to mistake the tenacity of faith (other people's faith, anyway) for irrational stubbornness rather than for the sign of a certain interior depth, one which encompasses reason but also transcends it. Because certain of our commitments are constitutive of who we are, we cannot alter them without what Christianity traditionally calls a conversion, which involves a lot more than just swapping one opinion for another. This is one reason why other people's faith can look like plain irrationalism, which indeed it sometimes is'.

This rings true with my experience. Why am I a Christian? There are all sorts of reasons, only some of them rational. But then, why am I married to Marci? Did I sit down, write down a list of the arguments in favour of marrying her and the arguments against? Do I sit down on our wedding anniversary every year, update the list, and then make a decision about whether or not my faith in her and love for her is still valid? Of course not. That whole (central) part of my life is based on entirely non-rational factors. The same is true for my love for traditional folk music, or my preference for the sound of acoustic over electric guitars. I suspect, in fact, that many of the areas of our lives that make us the most human may also be the areas that are least susceptible to the hegemony of reason.

There are some huge questions which theism has traditionally addressed, and although I think the arguments of the new atheists have exposed some holes in the traditional Christian answers, I have yet to see what I regard as a convincing atheist answer to these questions. They include,

Why does anything exist at all? Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why does the universe seem to be intentionally designed in such a way as to favour the emergence of beings like us (and please, Professor Dawkins - the 'multiverse' is at least as irrational an idea as belief in God!)?
What is consciousness, and where does it come from?
What is evil and why does it exist?
Why aren't right and wrong just a matter of opinion? What is the ground of an objective system of morality (one that we can appeal to, for instance, on issues of human rights)? How do we make responsible ethical decisions in a way that goes beyond opinion-polls and personal preference?
Why has humanity, historically, found materialism such an unconvincing and unsatisfying answer to human existence?
Why is my life significant in any way that will survive my death?
How can I be the sort of person I want to be? Why, so often, is a sense of failure the dominant human condition?

To me, these are some of the big questions of human existence. I find some of the traditional theist/Christian answers to these questions rather shallow and unconvincing, but I've yet to see what I regard as adequate atheist alternatives. And so the reading and thinking continues...

Nic Jones: 'The Warlike Lads of Russia'

2010-08-25T23:19:00.002-06:00

This is a fine track from Nic's double CD set 'Unearthed', a collection of live recordings. If you like it, please buy the CD from Nic's website here. Nic was terribly injured in a car accident in 1982 and has been unable to perform ever since, and I'm guessing he's not very rich. Also, a certain less than ethical record company owns the copyright on his first four albums and Nic has not received a penny from them since that company bought up his catalogue. The only recordings Nic receives money from are 'Penguin Eggs' and the other recordings advertised on his web site here.

Nic Jones : 'CLYDE WATER'

2010-08-25T03:56:00.002-06:00

This is a very fine live version of 'Clyde Water' by the great Nic Jones (he later recorded it on his classic album 'Penguin Eggs' under the name 'The Drowned Lovers', but this live version, found on the CD 'Game, Set, and Match', is far superior, in my view). Many others have recorded versions of this song, including Kate Rusby and Martin Carthy; other versions of the lyrics can be foundhere, here, here, and here. I'm currently making my own arrangement of this song, using Nic's version as my basic source.

Unfortunately this is audio only; I have not been able to find any surviving movie footage of Nic Jones' performances. Information about Nic (and the reason he stopped performing in 1982) can be found at Wikipedia here and at his own website here.

Note that embedding has been disabled for this video, but when you click to play it, it will give you a link to find it on YouTube.

Baptism and Discipleship

2010-08-25T02:22:00.001-06:00

Today as we gather to celebrate the baptism of Neveah and Noah, I’d like to begin by asking you a question. This is a real question, which is to say that I’d like some people to answer it out loud for all to hear! Many of you here have brought children to be baptized – some of you fairly recently, some of you a very long time ago. What were some of your reasons for doing so?

There are many different reasons why people bring children for baptism. Baptism is like a diamond with many facets; as we hold it up and turn it around, the light strikes different surfaces and we see different aspects of it. Even in the Bible there are a number of different images used for baptism. We’re told that being baptized is like dying on the cross with Jesus and rising again with him on Easter Day. We’re told that it’s like being adopted into God’s family as sons and daughters of God. We’re told that just as God made a covenant with his Old Testament people and gave them circumcision as the sign and seal of it, so baptism is a sign and seal to us of God’s new covenant with us. And we’re told that being baptised is like being born again.

Some of these images of baptism make more sense in the New Testament setting where most people coming to be baptized were adults who were consciously leaving an old way of life behind and starting a new life with Jesus. But Neveah and Noah are not in that category, and so I want to share with you this morning a way of looking at baptism that makes more sense for those of us who are bringing children to be baptized. And I want to start with a story from the end of Matthew’s gospel, from the time after the resurrection of Jesus but before he ascended into heaven. Listen to what Matthew says:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:16-20).

In this passage I want to briefly point out to you three things: a statement about Jesus, a statement about us, and a statement about baptism.

(Read the rest here).

Jesus Brings Freedom

2010-08-25T02:19:00.002-06:00

On the night of December 16^th 1773 a small group of men banded together, boarded three merchant ships in Boston Harbour and dumped 342 chests of tea over the side. This group of men, who called themselves the Sons of Liberty, took this action because of their anger at the tax policies of the British Government.

But it’s only as we look at this act in the context of history – in other words, it’s only as we look at it against the backdrop of the big picture – that we see its true significance. The ‘Boston Tea Party’ was not just an isolated incident; rather, it was the first act of what became known as the American War of Independence. And unless we see this act against this bigger picture, we’ll never understand its true meaning and significance.

We need to see the story in today’s Gospel in the same way. What does this story mean? If we look at the small picture, this is an act of love and grace in which Jesus healed a woman who had suffered for eighteen years from some form of curvature of the spine. In itself this is wonderful enough, but Luke is inviting us to see it in terms of the big picture too. This is not just an isolated healing; rather, it’s a significant victory in Jesus’ war of liberation against the forces of evil. Jesus invites us to see this woman’s illness against the background of a larger picture, the picture of Satan’s work of binding people up. He invites us to see his healing of this woman as a sign of how the Kingdom of God works to transform the world and set people free.

(Read the rest here).

Memorable moments in Jasper National Park, August 10th-14th 2010

2010-08-23T00:45:00.010-06:00

Getting to the top of Whistler's Mountain again (with a little help from the tram and then a real climb at the end!)...

Discovering some lovely scenery on a rainy day on the town loop...

Reacquainting ourselves with the majestic Athabasca Glacier (also on a rainy day)...

Climbing higher than we ever have on the Edith Cavell Meadows trail...

Stopping for a paddle in Jasper Lake on the way home...

Favourite moments at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival 2010

2010-08-23T00:19:00.005-06:00

Finally getting to hear Kate Rusby live (several times!), and to briefly chat with her.

Finally getting to hear the great Ian Tyson - what a fine songwriter, and what a classy performer too!

Discovering a new favourite - the Quebecois band 'Genticorum'.

Summertime and the living is - well - outdoors!

2010-07-07T18:33:00.003-06:00

We're into July now; the vegetable garden is blooming, and I'm less than two weeks away from a four week break. We plan to make a couple of trips (including our customary visit to Jasper National Park) as well as taking in the music at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival where Kate Rusby will be gracing our stages this year. In the more immediate future, the weather outside is apparently going to be lovely and warm for the next week or so, and it's long past time for me to shut this machine down. So, starting tomorrow, this blog - and my reading of other blogs - is going on hiatus for the rest of the summer. Talk to you in September.

Losing comments

2010-07-06T13:46:00.003-06:00

Like many people on Blogger, I'm having comment problems today. Not that I get that many comments anyway, but I seem to be losing some of them! I like your comments, I'm not deleting them, they just seem to be disappearing with no rhyme nor reason to it all...

Much Ado About Quite A Lot, Actually!

2010-07-06T13:44:00.001-06:00

One of Edmonton's many 'best kept secrets' is the Free Will Shakespeare Festival. This is the twenty-second year that the 'Free Willies' have been using the Heritage Ampitheatre at Hawrelak Park to bring us their outstanding open-air productions of the plays of the Bard. Marci and I have been going down to the park to watch them since long before we moved to Edmonton in 2000; I think the mid-nineties might have been the first time we took in one of their plays while we were on a holiday trip. Over the years they've been getting better and better; some of the more memorable productions included Julius Caesar in 1998, Richard III in 2001, and the Merchant of Venice in 2004.

The man who gave one of the best ever performances as Richard III in 2001, John Ulyatt, is back this year as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Plying opposite him as Beatrice is Belinda Cornish, who is fairly new to the Free Will Shakespeare Festival, but who is obviously destined to be one of its stars. In order to be believable, these two need to be played with just the right combination of biting wit and sarcasm on the one hand, and obvious attraction and affection on the other, because they start the play at each other's throats and end it in each other's arms (well - more or less!). They are the archetypical 'anti-romantic' couple, whose love conversation later in the play continues to include playful little intimate put-downs and whose stubbornness at the end almost - but not quite - derails their own wedding! Ulyatt and Cornish have these two down to a tee; definitely the best portrayal of Benedick and Beatrice I've ever seen (and miles above the well known Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson movie portrayal).

Artistic director Marianne Copithorne has done a wonderful job bringing Shakespeare's script to the stage, with clever production details and the odd non-Shakespearean line thrown in for good measure ("These are the dogberry days of summer", says Dogberry as he lounges by the centrepiece of the stage). Her only questionable decision, in my view, was eliminating Leonato's brother Antonio entirely from the script and having Friar Francis take over his few spoken parts. This leads to one confusing moment later in the play, where Leonato invites Claudio to marry 'his brother's daughter' and everyone who is unfamiliar with the story thinks he is talking about Beatrice, as her (presumably dead) father is the only brother of Leonato who has been mentioned in the play to this point.

But this is a minor mistake in an otherwise brilliant production. If you live within easy distance of Edmonton, I strongly recommend that you get down to the park to see Much Ado before the season ends on July 25th. Individual tickets are $22.50 and a season pass (for both Much Adoand Macbeth) is $35. The schedule is available online here.

Can We Change Ourselves?

2010-07-05T13:11:00.003-06:00

I’ve been pondering for a few days on the question of whether or not we can change ourselves.

The thoughts got started because of a series of conversations over at Limpet's Folly. There, Tess shares her own experience of trying all kinds of self-help methodologies for years and being completely unable to make any changes as a result. She has found the answer in a Reformed theological understanding of the total depravity of human beings, in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, and in the power of God to bring the changes in us that we cannot bring about ourselves. As a result of this experience she is very doubtful about the value of self-help techniques or of anything in Christianity remotely resembling them.

Ironically, this testimony harmonises very well with the theology of one of the most successful self-help movements in history, Alcoholics Anonymous (if A.A. can claim to have a ‘theology’ at all!). The first of the famous ‘Twelve Steps’ of A.A. is to admit that ‘we are powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable’. Alcoholics then go on to believe that a power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity, and to call on the help of God ‘as they understand him’ to do for them what they cannot do for themselves. Millions of alcoholics have found freedom through these steps - or rather, through the power of God coming into their lives as they opened themselves up to him through these steps.

However, this is not the whole story. While A.A. is the most successful approach for the treatment of alcoholism the world has ever known, it is not anywhere near 100% successful. A recent newspaper column claimed that the majority of people who go to A.A. meetings are not, in fact, delivered from their alcoholism. The minority that are delivered are a larger minority than in other programs, but they are still a minority.

I also think of the experience of a friend of mine who as a teenager and a young adult drank heavily, got into drugs and lived on the street for a while. He has often recounted the story of how he was close to committing suicide when he looked at himself in the mirror, didn’t like what he saw there, and decided to make a change. He gave up drinking and doing drugs, moved off the street, and took up gainful employment. Today, thirty years later, he is a very successful businessman who believes very strongly that if you don’t like what you see in the mirror, it’s up to you to make the necessary changes.

What about my own experience? My early Christian nurture took place in charismatic/evangelical Christianity, where there was both a strong sense of our inability to help ourselves and a strong expectation of the power of God to make the changes that we cannot make. But I have to say, over the years, that I have not generally experienced this miraculous help. I have prayed many times that God would deliver me from besetting sins, but, quite frankly, the deliverance has rarely come ‘on the hot line’. Generally speaking, I have been required to do something about it as well.

I have come to see that my major besetting sin is not what I thought it was. My major besetting sin is actually lethargy: good old-fashioned laziness. I’m the sort of guy whose natural approach to a day off is to lie around doing nothing and then end the day with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. I’ve yet to meet a project that I couldn’t happily put off until tomorrow. And I’ve taken this approach to my own spiritual transformation as well; I’ve asked God to do it, but I haven’t actually taken much responsibility for my part in it.

I have no question that ultimately it is God who delivers us; the question is, how does he do it? Do we simply put our trust in him and then wait passively? Or do we ask his strength and then work hard ourselves, making full use of all the resources of psychology and counselling and support groups and good old sanctified common sense?

I believe the true biblical answer is the second. To begin with, in the Old Testament there is no sense at all that God’s people can’t change themselves; it is everywhere assumed that they can, and the prophets call them to repentance on the assumption that this is in fact possible for them. In the synoptic gospels, too, Jesus gives his disciples instructions about the sort of life they are to live, on the assumption that they will be able to live it. It is true that the Jesus of John’s gospel tells his followers ‘Apart from me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5), but surely, in the context of the whole chapter, the corollary is that ‘if you abide in me you can do what I want you to do’. And how do we abide in him? Jesus says later in the chapter, ‘If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love’ (v.10). So, in a peculiar sort of circular logic, keeping Jesus' commandments is both the way we abide in him, and also the result of abiding in him!

Surely Paul gets the balance right in Philippians 2:12-13: ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure’. And in Colossians he stresses both human effort and God’s power: ‘For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me’ (Colossians 1:29). All of this work, of curse, is based on faith in Christ, or what he calls in Galatians 5:6 'faith working through love'.

Another friend of mine once said to me “I don’t identify with all those testimonies about how people came to God as a result of all sorts of trouble in their lives. Actually, when God first came into my life things were going pretty good for me!” I’ve often pondered the significance of these words. We Christians are fond of making blanket statements. We talk about there being ‘a God-shaped hole in people’s lives, and only God can fill it’, but many unbelievers, when they read this, respond that, in fact, their lives are quite full, thank you very much, and they aren't aware of any hole! Others, of course, are well aware of that empty space, and it’s a great motivator for them to seek a genuine relationship with God.

But people are different, they experience life differently, and they come to God for different reasons. Some may indeed have experienced the despair of trying to change themselves and failing over and over again. Others, however (including many who have been in desperate circumstances) have proved quite capable of making the necessary changes. Some will come to God with a strong sense of need for the help that only he can give; others will come to God out of a deep conviction that he is there, that he is the author of all the glory we see around us, and that the most fitting thing in the world is to worship him.

‘Know yourself’ is wise counsel. Some will follow it, discover that self-help is not for them, and take refuge in a strong theology of human inability and God’s power. Others will follow it, discover their own habitual laziness, repent of it and make use of all the resources human beings have designed for change, all the while calling on the help of God to work through the whole process. I have to say that, for me, the latter approach seems to work better.

Sermon for Sunday July 4th: Luke 10:1-20

2010-07-05T09:11:00.001-06:00

Sent out by Jesus
It’s a happy co-incidence that the week after we launched our ‘Back to Church Sunday’ initiative, Luke 10:1-20 is our gospel reading for today. I swear that I had nothing to do with it; sometimes these things just seem to happen at the right time! Today’s passage, you see, is about Jesus sending out seventy of his followers on a missionary journey to share his message and heal the sick. These seventy were not the inner circle, ‘the Twelve’; they were a wider group, who may or may not have had the same sort of intimate contact with him that the Twelve enjoyed. But he had a message that he wanted to communicate to the world, and he had a sense that the time was short; conflict with the authorities had already begun, and he could already see the shadow of a cross looming over his future. So he sent out this group to prepare the way for him in all the towns and villages he was planning to visit.
Nowadays, as I’ve often said, we Anglicans tend not to be too comfortable with the thought of being sent out to share the Christian message with people who are not Christians. It smacks of the idea that there is only one true religion, and that doesn’t sit easily with our Canadian ethos of multiculturalism and respect. And so we tend to say things like, ‘Some people talk about their faith; I just live mine out, and let people draw their own conclusions’.
It sounds very spiritual and respectful, and it has a grain of truth about it: of course we’re called to live our faith out, and if we don’t put it into practice – if we don’t live lives that remind people of Jesus, in other words – the chances are that we won’t get very far in trying to talk to people about the gospel message. But we should not draw from this the conclusion that we don’t need to talk about our faith at all. After all, the early Christians didn’t just invite the world around them to watch while they silently lived out the teachings of Jesus! If they had done, we’d probably be painting ourselves blue with woad and worshipping oak trees today! No, at the beginning of the gospels Jesus went into Galilee with a message to proclaim; he proclaimed it and invited people to become his followers. At the end of the gospels, he sent those followers out into all the world to share the message with others, and in between those two bookends he was teaching them how to live it out and how to share it. Mission – sharing the love of Christ, not just in actions but also in words – was an integral part of Christian discipleship, right from the beginning.
Now as we read this gospel passage today, some of the things we find in it don’t apply so readily to our situation. Jesus was sending out seventy mission volunteers on a project that would require them to leave their homes and families for a while and give their whole time to the work of sharing the gospel. And the setting was urgent, because the cross was looming and Jesus wanted to reach as many people as possible before he went to his death. Our situation is also urgent, but for a different reason – none of us knows the day of our death, and, as Jesus says in the gospels, this night our life may be required of us. But most of us are not contemplating leaving our homes and families and going on a short term evangelism trip; our witness is taking place in the context of our normal everyday lives, at work, amongst our friends and families, in the coffee shops we frequent and so on.
So there are some differences between our situation and that of these early disciples. But this doesn’t mean the passage has nothing to say to us. I want to point out to you very briefly four connections we can make between the message of this gospel reading and our own call to be witnesses for Christ today.

Read the rest here.

Greetings to our American friends

2010-07-04T13:08:00.002-06:00

Best wishes to all our American friends on their special day.

Joy will find a way - Bruce Cockburn.mp4

2010-07-02T23:19:00.000-06:00

This is one of my favourite Bruce Cockburn songs from the 1970s, and I haven't heard him play it live since about the mid 1980's, so even though the video quality isn't all that great, it was lovely to find this on YouTube. This was the title track from Bruce's 1975 album 'Joy Will Find a Way'.

Terry Eagleton on Capitalism

2010-07-01T23:02:00.000-06:00

'Advanced capitalism is not the kind of regime that need exact too much spiritual commitment from its subjects. Zeal is more to be feared than encouraged. As long as the populace get out of bed, roll into work, consume, pay their taxes, and refrain from beating up police officers, what goes on in their heads and hearts is for much of the time a strictly secondary affair'.

Terry Eagleton: Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2009), pp.145-146.

Happy Canada Day!

2010-07-01T08:36:00.001-06:00

No country is perfect, and I'm not a rah-rah 'my country right or wrong' patriot, but I'm still very happy to live here...

Terry Eagleton on Faith, Thought, and Choice

2010-06-30T22:42:00.005-06:00

'Faith - any kind of faith - is not in the first place a matter of choice. It is more common to find oneself believing something than to make a conscious decision to do so - or at least to make such a conscious decision because you find yourself leaning that way already. This is not, needless to say, a matter of determinism. It is rather a matter of being gripped by a commitment from which one finds oneself unable to walk away...'

'The Christian way of indicating that faith is not in the end a question of choice is the notion of grace. Like the world itself from a Christian viewpoint, faith is a gift. This means among other things that Christians are not in conscious possession of all the reasons why they believe in God. But neither is anyone in conscious possession of all the reasons why they believe in keeping fit, the supreme value of the individual, or the importance of being sincere. Only ultrarationalists imagine that they need to be. Because faith is not wholly conscious, it is uncommon to abandon it simply by taking thought. Too much else would have to be altered as well. It is not usual for a lifelong conservative suddenly to become a revolutionary because a thought has struck him. This is not to say that faith is closed to evidence, as Dawkins wrongly considers, or to deny that one can come to change one's mind about one's beliefs. We may not choose our beliefs as we choose our starters; but this is not to say that we are just the helpless prisoners of them... Determinism is not the only alternative to voluntarism. It is just that more is involved in changing really deep-seated beliefs than just changing your mind. The rationalist tends to mistake the tenacity of faith (other people's faith, anyway) for irrational stubbornness rather than for the sign of a certain interior depth, one which encompasses reason but also transcends it. Because certain of our commitments are constitutive of who we are, we cannot alter them without what Christianity traditionally calls a conversion, which involves a lot more than just swapping one opinion for another. This is one reason why other people's faith can look like plain irrationalism, which indeed it sometimes is'.

Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 137-139.

Recent reading

2010-06-29T11:31:00.003-06:00

I don't get a lot of time for reading from about the middle of September until the end of April, as churchland gets really busy during that time. However, if I'm lucky enough to get a summer relatively free from pastoral emergencies I can usually count on getting some good reading done during the warm months. Here's what I've been reading lately:

Stuart Murray: The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith. This book is based on the question 'What would Anabaptism look like with its Mennonite/Amish/Hutterite clothing stripped away?' The lion's part of the book is based around the seven core convictions of the Anabaptist Network in the UK, with a historical chapter toward the end for those who are new to the Anabaptist story. Since (despite Doug Chaplin's objections) I'm happy to identify myself as an 'Anabaptist Anglican', this book was a great read for me.

Christopher Hitchens: God is Not Great. This summer I'm especially interested in reading about atheism (pro and con), and so the amalgam known as 'Ditchkins' (Hitchens and Dawkins)is of course particularly important right now. I found this book to be far too 'over the top' for me. The subtitle tells it all: 'How religion poisons everything'. Really? Everything? I also have serious questions about the accuracy of the book. I'm not an expert in many of the areas Hitchens writes about, but I do know a fair bit about New Testament scholarship. In his chapter on the New Testament I identified at least fifteen glaring errors. This does not bode well for the accuracy of the rest of the book. Hitchens is a journalist dabbling in science, philosophy, theology, biblical scholarship etc., but he needs to do his homework better if he wants to make a convincing case.

Peter Hitchens: The Rage Against God. The subtitle of this book is 'How atheism led me to faith', and it is the autobiographical sections of this book that are the most enjoyable reading. But Peter is of course Christopher's brother, and the tension between them on the subject of Christianity is never far from the surface. In the middle of the book Peter details three areas where he thinks atheism's arguments (read, 'Christopher's arguments') fail: (1) 'Are conflicts fought in the name of religion really about religion?' (2) 'Is it possible to determine right and wrong without God?' and (3) 'Are atheist states actually not atheist?'

Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion. This is a far more formidable book than Hitchens' 'God is Not Great'. Dawkins is a scientist at the top of his game, and when he argues on the basis of things he really knows about (biology, evolution, natural selection etc.) he is extremely persuasive. However, for large parts of the book he strays into philosophy (eg. in discussing 'Why is there anything at all?' and the question of right and wrong and where it comes from), and there his arguments are far weaker. Still, I found this a very enjoyable read and I learned a great deal about science.

Francis S. Collins: The Language of God. Collins was until recently director of the human genome project and is a world class geneticist; the title of the book is taken from a remark Bill Clinton made with regard to those who had mapped the human genome learning 'the language of God'. The book is partly biographical, partly philosophical, and partly scientific. Collins is concerned, firstly, to defend belief in God from the arguments of atheism, and secondly, to defend the theory of evolution from the arguments of fundamentalism. In the process he teaches us a great deal about DNA and human genetics. I found this a very enjoyable book.

I've now started to read Terry Eagelton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution. Other books in my pile for the summer include Sam Harris' The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Anthony Flew's There is a God, Lucy Moore's Messy Church, James Alison's On Being Liked, and Andrew Marin's Love is an Orientation. We'll see how far I get!

Emergents, Anglicans, Transcendence, and the Tickle Trunk

2010-06-26T14:29:00.004-06:00

This past week, as I noted before, I was at the clergy conference of the Diocese of Edmonton. This sounds grander than it actually is; it's a group of about fifty clergy, most of us well-known to each other, which happens once a year at a local retreat centre. This year our keynote speaker was Phyllis Tickle, well known author of books like 'The Divine Hours' and 'The Great Emergence'. Phyllis is almost an octogenarian, but she's full of beans and a delight to listen to.

Phyllis' book 'The Great Emergence' outlines her view that (in words she attributes to retired Episcopal bishop Mark Dyer) 'Every five hundred years the Church has a rummage sale, gets rid of a lot of stuff it doesn't need any more, and takes on a bunch of new stuff'. Each of those five hundred year changes, in her view, has involved a fresh grappling with the issue 'What is our authority?' (the Bible, the Pope, reason. etc. etc.). The current change, which she calls 'the great emergence', has been brewing for a hundred years or so, fuelled by the enormous scientific advances and social changes of the last century. I'm not going to go into detail on her theory; it's outlined well by Duncan McLeod here.

I have to say that I have a great suspicion of systematisers; I'm sure there's a grain of truth in their systems, but I'm also sure that from then on they notice the things that agree with their schematics and overlook the rest. So I'm probably predisposed to be skeptical about Phyllis' theory (although I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed her explanations and connections of the various historical events that have made the last hundred years so interesting and challenging for the Church). Her particular interest is the various strands of what she calls 'Emergence Christianity' (apparently there are now variants on this - including emerging Christians, emergent Christians, emergence Christians etc. etc. - it all seems very confusing).

One idea that did give me pause, however, was her bold statement that, despite all its strengths, emergence Christianity 'can't do transcendence'. 'Transcendence', as I understand it, means the sense of connection with the Other, with the majesty and mystery of God. For that, she says, you need holy places - dedicated sanctuaries in which people have been praying for years, full of holy objects and the smell of incense. She claims that many emergence Christians recognise this shortcoming - which is not being met by beer and theology sessions in pubs - and are looking for help from inherited forms of church. She suggested that we mainline Christians gather the little emergence pods around us like a hen gathering her chicks under her wings and let them use our buildings from time to time.

Now, I question this argument on two points. First, I'm not sure that the emergent church is beating a path to our door, crying out to use our buildings to recover the long-lost experience of transcendence. Most of the emergent Christians I'm in contact with know exactly why they left the traditional Church, and our expensive buildings, and the way (in their view) that we disconnect Sunday worship from real practical Christian living, both loom large in that decision. They aren't looking for us to fill a gap in their Christian experience; they think we're the ones with the gap (and, in some ways, they're probably right).

But second, and even more fundamental, I deny the idea that you can't 'do' transcendence unless you have a large ancient dedicated holy space to do it in. I would say that you can't 'do' transcendence at all - if it's real, then it's God's doing, and he can do it anywhere he likes. The early Christians certainly experienced it, and they didn't have any ancient buildings to 'do' it in. God, however, was definitely among them, working his miracles and changing people's lives, even when they met for worship in living rooms (after all, if the New Testament is true, everything essential to church life should be doable in a living room!).

What do you think? When have you had the experience of transcendence, and how did it come about?

Messy Church

2010-06-25T16:30:00.005-06:00

I must be the last person in the world to discover that Lucy Moore is brilliant and so is her creation, Messy Church! She was the Tail-End Charlie at our clergy conference, coming in for twenty-four hours Thursday night and Friday morning, at a point in time when I was really tired and quite ready to go home. Nonetheless, she succeeded in firing me up and getting me interested in something I was definitely not interested in beforehand. We're looking at starting something new for young children and their parents in the Fall at St. Margaret's, and we're definitely going to take a look at the 'Messy Church' approach.

My week

2010-06-22T08:24:00.003-06:00

I'm off to the clergy conference of the Diocese of Edmonton today, until Friday. Our speakers are Phyllis Tickle and Lucy Moore. Maybe, if I get really ambitious, I'll blog some notes on their presentations. Or - maybe not!

Origins of the mitre

2010-06-21T09:20:00.004-06:00

In case anybody's curious about this rather strange episcopal headgear, here are a couple of links:

The Wikipedia article is quite informative, and for my money this is the important line:

The camelaucum (Greek: καμιλαύκιον, kamilaukion), the headdress both the mitre and thePapal tiara stem from, was originally a cap used by officials of the Imperial Byzantine court.

The whole thing, in other words, is a Christendom innovation to do with power, pomp, and circumstance. Apparently it's not all that old (as church history goes), either; the Catholic encyclopedia dates it to the tenth or eleventh centuries.

This article is I suspect a spoof, but even so, it's a hilarious one. I will now never be able to shake the idea of a bishop wearing a fish's head...

Even today, mitres are by no means universal in the Anglican Church, and a hundred years ago only Anglo-Catholics wore them. The bishop who ordained me a deacon, Jack Sperry, never wore one, and I don't think he was any less a bishop for it. In my view, it's long past time for us to rethink the wearing of ceremonial robes based on the dress of civil officials in the Roman empire (in other words, adopted as a sign of Christianity's growing temporal power). Even Dom Gregory Dix admitted that in the early church a bishop probably presided at the Eucharist in ordinary clothes (The Shape of the Liturgy, A & C. Black, 1945, reprinted by Seabury Press, 1983, p.142).

I May Have Been Right

2010-06-20T23:34:00.003-06:00

I briefly explained to my twenty-one year old son today the firestorm over the Presiding Bishop's mitre.

He replied, "That sort of thing is why I can't take organised religion too seriously".

I suspect he's not alone.

(We did, however, have a very good discussion about God, science, and the origin of the universe.)

Sermon for June 20th: 1 Kings 19:1-15a

2010-06-20T13:28:00.000-06:00

God’s Care for Burnt-Out Disciples
Let me tell you the story of Jack. Jack committed his life to Christ when he was a teenager. He wasn’t brought up in a Christian family and he didn’t get any encouragement from them when he started attending a church and going to midweek youth group meetings. But he loved Jesus passionately and was very enthusiastic about his new faith, so he barely noticed the opposition. He got involved in a small church that had to struggle to survive, and it was only natural that as he got older he became one of the leaders of the youth work.
Jack went to university and then went out into the business world. He found very few Christians in the company he worked for, and the values assumed by the people in his office were very different from his own. Money was the bottom line. Everyone was aiming for a comfortable lifestyle and lots of them were willing to cut quite a few ethical corners to get it. Jack wasn’t backward about his faith, and gradually he got used to being an object of jokes around the office. He continued to attend church and was now the leader of the youth work. He really wanted to make a difference for Christ and lead others to know and love him, but he was getting more and more discouraged. Not much seemed to be happening; so little was changing.
At a certain point in Jack’s mid-twenties, the pressure just got to be too much for him. So many family gatherings began on Sunday mornings, and he got tired of always being the one who had to be late. He got tired of being the one who was always different at the office, the one everyone else made jokes about. He got tired of all the responsibility of the youth work at church; everyone wanted to see it happen, but no one else was willing to lend a hand. He just lost his enthusiasm for it. He didn’t complain about it; he just gradually discovered that it was a lot easier to sleep in on Sunday mornings, and to blend in at the office. It’s ten years now since Jack went to church, and although he misses it and feels guilty about it, in some ways life is a lot easier for him now.
It must have been about twenty-five years ago that I first heard the phrase ‘burnout’ used to describe the experience we go through when the gap between our ideals on the one hand and reality on the other just becomes too great for us, and our inner flame dies out. As soon as I heard the phrase explained, I recognised that I’d already been close to it several times. I’d been working as a minister in small rural churches with few members, always struggling with financial problems and wondering if the church would survive, and because I was the minister it was always my fault when things went badly. In this context it was easy to lose one’s enthusiasm for Christ, for following him and for leading others to him.
Our Old Testament reading today is obviously a burnout story. It’s the story of a burnt-out prophet, the prophet Elijah. Let’s think about his story together.

Read the rest here.

For the Mitregate crowd: 'All Around My Hat'

2010-06-20T01:30:00.001-06:00

A bit of irreverent commentary on my last post:

Perspective

2010-06-18T19:55:00.006-06:00

This week I finished reading Christopher Hitchens' influential book 'God' (excuse me, I mean 'god') is Not Great'. and his brother Peter's counter argument 'The Rage Against God'. I'm now about a third of the way into Richard Dawkins' brilliantly argued and written 'The God Delusion'.

Christopher Hitchens makes some good points, but he's also an enfant terrible who loves to be provocative, and in his one chapter on the New Testament he makes numerous elementary factual errors and wilful misinterpretations (well documented by Mark Robarts here). Nonetheless, his subtitle 'How Religion Poisons Everything', and his exhaustive list of the misdeeds of Christianity and other religions, should certainly make us pause for thought.

Dawkins is in a different category. He's a real scientist at the top of his game, and his arguments seem to me to be formidable. I know that they have been countered by able Christians of equal scientific standing to him, but it is impossible even for a convinced Christian to read this book without feeling at least a twinge of doubt. The finest theological and philosophical minds in Christianity need to be addressing his arguments in a patient, clear, and rational manner, so that people who are attracted to atheism are given a compelling alternative.

Unfortunately, that's not what the Anglican world is concerning itself with this week. Instead, the Anglican blogosphere is consumed by an apparent slight committed against the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (which, for those millions of people unaware of this since TEC unhelpfully changed its title, is based in the USA) by (we think) the Archbishop of Canterbury (it's not clear to me whether it came from the Archbishop personally or from that faceless entity called 'Lambeth Palace'). The Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori (who is apparently a fine scientist, by the way) was invited to preach and to preside at a service of Holy Communion at Southwark Cathedral in London. As she is a foreign priest, Church of England canon law requires that she get permission from the Archbishop of Canterbury and provide proof of ordination - a little bizarre, since she is one of the three or four most well-known Anglican clergy in the world right now, but there it is!

But the sub-text is that (a) she's a woman, and the Church of England is currently trying to get legislation passed that will permit women to become bishops while at the same time continuing to make provision for those opposed to their ministry, and (b) she's the primate of the province which is the lead advocate for gay rights in the Anglican world - and therefore a very controversial person in the eyes of many, perhaps the majority, in the Anglican Communion. It therefore transpires that she was required not to wear her mitre (to the uninitiated, that's the absurd-looking ceremonial hat that many bishops wear) at the service at Southwark (there is no agreement on precisely what the symbolic meaning of this might be, but undoubtedly it's not a particularly friendly act toward the Presiding Bishop). She complied with this, but appears to have carried it under her arm in procession, to make a point.

Now, predictably, the Anglican world is up in arms. A number of evangelical clergy in Southwark diocese have written to complain that she was even allowed in the place at all, given the fact that (in their view) the province under her leadership has thumbed its collective nose at the rest of the Anglican world. Conservative Episcopalians can't resist saying 'I told you so', and liberal Episcopalians are predictably outraged at this snub and are demanding that the Archbishop of Canterbury apologise to their Presiding Bishop.

I've said a couple of times today that I don't think Jesus is all that interested in the question of whether or not someone is allowed to wear a rather ridiculous ceremonial hat. In response, people have accused me of being simplistic and refusing to see that it's about more than just the hat; it's about hospitality and rudeness and sexism and power games etc. etc. etc.

Yes, yes, yes; of course it's about those things. But that's not how it's going to get written up in Christopher Hitchens' next book, folks! It's going to be all about who gets to wear ridiculous looking hats! And that's why I find this incredibly frustrating. Yes, it's not a particularly Christlike act to tell the Presiding Bishop that she can't wear her mitre, but is it a Christlike act to wear one in the first place? Is it Christlike to wear expensive ceremonial robes and to participate in processions where rank and precedence are clearly indicated? Is it Christlike to engage in turf wars and worry about who has jurisdiction over (rapidly shrinking and aging) groups of Anglicans? Seems to me that Jesus had some things to say about the attitudes behind that sort of thing (see, for example, Mark 10:32-45).

But the wars go on. Many Anglicans from Africa, Southeast Asia and other parts of the 'global south' are offended because they feel American Anglicans are ignoring the plain teaching of the Bible and refusing to listen to the counsel of their fellow Anglicans around the world. Many of them have sent bishops into the United States to provide pastoral care for Anglicans who feel they can't go along with what they see as the liberalism of the Episcopal Church. To the Africans, this is responsible Christian pastoral care and a way of preserving the truth of the gospel. To the Americans, it's unpardonable interference in the internal life of their province and a violation of the canons of the Council of Nicaea (bet you never heard of those before, eh?) to boot.

American Anglicans claim that the teaching of the Bible isn't all that plain after all, and that they have an obligation to deal with the pastoral realities of living in a societywith much more liberal attitudes toward homosexuality. To them, the Africans are homophobic, misogynistic fundamentalists with an impossibly simplistic attitude toward the Bible and toward human sexuality (and in fact are barely Anglicans at all; they're really more like Pentecostals or Baptists); quite simply, they need educating. To the Africans this attitude is insufferable arrogance; to the Americans, it's just self-evident common sense. Both groups, of course, see it as self-evident that they are right and that their opponents are deluded, or evil, or both.

So, there's a lot of bad history between these two groups. And every marriage counsellor knows that when there's hurt going back a long way on both sides, every little disagreement gets blown out of all proportion, because it's tapping into all the resentment and hurt that came before. And one of the things that marriage counsellors have to help couples see is that, yes, there is a lot of hurt that came before, and we need to address that hurt, but for the moment we need to keep it from inflaming what is, after all, a fairly small issue that's before us right now.

So I repeat my statement: it's just a hat, folks! Jesus apparently didn't think it was important enough to mention it; what he did do was to warn us against wearing long robes and desiring places of authority and respectful greetings (Luke 20:46). He also told us to love our enemies, and he said that the world would know that we were his followers if it could see that we loved one another as he has loved us.

At the moment, the world is not seeing much love among us; in fact, it finds us largely irrelevant. The people of the world are fascinated by Hitchens and Dawkins, Dan Dennett and Sam Harris (so, at least, their book sales would lead us to believe), who are doing a pretty good job of convincing people that we are medieval ignoramuses, desperately clinging to the last vestiges of our long-lost power and influence in the face of mounting scientific evidence that our faith is a delusion. Of course, the spectacle of high priests in pre-medieval ceremonial robes waving incense around altars in huge ancient stone temples wasn't exactly helping our case before - and the fact that now the international Anglican community seems to think it's hugely significant in the eyes of God that one of the high priests wasn't allowed to wear a part of her weird costume is just making it worse.

For the record, I think that 'Lambeth Palace' made a bad call on this one. But I think all sides of this disagreement need to take a deep breath and ask some serious questions to do with straining out gnats and swallowing camels. Meanwhile, I'm going back to Dawkins. He, at least, is talking about issues that are really important, and I need to focus on finding answers to his arguments so that I can help the people in my congregation who are afraid to even open his book.

Thinking about Baptism

2010-06-17T09:26:00.008-06:00

I want to do some online ruminating on the subject of Christian baptism.

Baptism is a divisive subject in the Christian community. Some Christians think that it should be reserved for people who are old enough to make a mature commitment to Christ (usually described as 'the believer's baptism tradition'). Others believe that it is legitimate for the children of Christian parents to be baptised as a sign that the family is united in following Christ (the 'infant baptism' tradition). Most of the denominations that practice infant baptism also have a rather woolly definition of 'Christian parents', and in the past most of them practised indiscriminate baptism (any parents coming to the church and asking for the baptism of their children could have it); many still do.

Through my years as an Anglican pastor I have struggled with the issue of what exactly infant baptism means, and what should be required of those who bring children for baptism. My wife and I had all four of our children baptised; however, I have to say that the most moving baptisms I have administered have all been adult, believer's baptisms, when the candidate was making a conscious profession of faith in Christ.

Here's the issue in a nutshell. In the New Testament, baptism is about conversion and discipleship. The church is seen as a separate entity from the world, and faith and baptism are the distinguishing marks of followers of Christ. Baptism is the sign of becoming a disciple of Jesus (Matthew 28:18-20); it is dying to the old, pre-Christian way of life and rising again to a new life as a follower of Jesus (Romans 6:1-11); it is new birth into the Kingdom of God (John 3:5).

But in the Christendom era, when church and society were seen as one, baptism was seen differently. The whole society was seen as Christian, so that the idea of making a decision to follow Christ was strange. It was also not in the best interests of the empire to have a distinction between Christian and non-Christian citizens; the emperor needed a united religion around which he could gather his subjects. And so the baptism of all children born into the Christian empire became the norm. Of course, infant baptism predated the Christendom shift (there has always been a controversy in the Christian Church as to whether it can be found in the New Testament and the early post-apostolic church; the most honest conclusion, I think, is that your answer depends on whether you give more weight to the analogy between baptism and circumcision - which was of course administered to children - on the one hand, or to the conversion language most often associated with baptism in the New Testament, on the other). But it is fair to say that infant baptism did not become widespread until after the time of Constantine, and it is rather telling that it was in the Christendom era that it was made illegal for citizens of the empire not to have their children baptised.

Today, of course, Christendom is either dead and buried, or in the last stages of life support (depending on where you live). But old habits die hard; there are still grandparents who lose a lot of sleep over the issue of whether their grandchildren are baptised because 'something might happen to them, you know' (it's worth pondering what sort of god these grandparents believe in, a god who would torture little babies because their parents didn't baptise them - but that's a different subject), and there are still parents who don't come to church but still want their child baptised because they 'believe in God and want to give the child a good upbringing'.

And so, many times, we clergy still stand in front of congregations and ask parents to make baptismal promises we're pretty sure they are not going to keep, because to do otherwise would be to 'exclude' someone - and excluding someone is the one unforgivable sin. And it's very interesting to me that we see baptism as being about inclusion, whether there is faith in Christ or not, whereas in the early church it was intimately bound up with faith in Christ, not just 'belief in God' (see Galatians 3:23-29), and was all about commitment to a life of discipleship and learning to obey the commands of Jesus (see again Matthew 28:18-20).

I have said on a number of occasions, tongue in cheek, that I think the Anglican Church could benefit from a one-generation moratorium on infant baptism. The fact that this issue is such a sacred cow is a consequence of the fact that it is so tied up with the Christendom system, and the Christendom toxins (Stuart Murray's phrase) are still at work in our church's bloodstream, even today.

I think we need to ask ourselves the following questions:

When we compare our present practice with the teaching about baptism, and about the difference between the church and the world, in the New Testament, why are we not bothered by the contradictions we see?
How could we bring our baptismal practice more in line with something that was more obviously based on New Testament teaching and practice? And if we are going to retain the practice of infant baptism (and I think there is a good argument for doing so), how are we going to restore it to its rightful place as a sign that a family is united in following Jesus, rather than a private family rite of passage which is barely connected to real Christian faith and participation in the Christian Church?
How could our baptismal services more obviously reflect New Testament teaching about the significance of baptism, and the relationship between faith, baptism, and discipleship, than they presently do?

More anon...

Recording

2010-06-14T16:29:00.000-06:00

Tonight I'm going to start the process of recording my next CD; I'm going up to a friend's studio to start laying down guitar and voice tracks. This will probably take a while, because of course I want to get it just right! My good friend Alex Boudreau will be at the controls. I expect we'll be working at it on and off over the summer and into the early Fall. Once the guitar and voice tracks are done, we'll add extras to the ones that need it: lead guitar, bass, and so on.

The big question is, 'What to record?' I've got about forty presentable songs that I haven't recorded, and I want to have about thirteen or fourteen on the CD. I've pared the list down to twenty, which we're going to record, and we'll then decide which are the best thirteen or fourteen tracks to actually make it onto the CD.

My past two CDs have been literally 'home-made'; i.e. not only were they recorded in someone's home but I also burned the copies on my own computer - easily done, but you don't get the same quality as a professionally-produced disk. So this time I'm going to pay a bit of extra money to get the CD professionally mastered and manufactured. That will probably mean you'll be able to buy it on iTunes as well!

In case you're interested, the list of twenty songs we're going to record is about 60% original and 40% traditional songs. That lack of balance surprised me (my gigs are usually 50/50), but then my first CD was almost all traditional, so I guess I've already recorded a higher percentage of my traditional repertoire. It does give me a heads-up, though, that I need to learn a few more traditional songs as well as just writing my own stuff.

I'll let you know how things go!

Happy birthday,Rowan!

2010-06-14T10:40:00.000-06:00

Archbishop Rowan Williams turns 60 today. I hope he gets some time off to celebrate.

Confirmation at St. Margaret's, June 13th 2010

2010-06-13T23:39:00.001-06:00

Battle of the brothers

2010-06-11T18:03:00.001-06:00

My current reading...

Is this the way forward? (updated)

2010-06-10T21:40:00.008-06:00

Like the Anglican world as a whole, our Canadian Anglican Church is divided on the subject of homosexuality. We have a minority who feel very strongly that any move at all toward blessing gay marriages or same-gender unions is tantamount to apostasy and grounds for leaving our Church (some have already done so, so the group that's left is smaller than it used to be). A larger minority on the other side thinks that we should move ahead with what they call 'full inclusion': full acceptance of gay marriage and ordination of partnered (or married) gay and lesbian people.

And I suspect that there are a lot of people, like me, who find ourselves in the middle. Some of us are gay or lesbian or have gay or lesbian people in our families. Some of us have deep and valued friendships with people with whom we disagree on this issue. Many of us feel that for a church like ours, which accepts diversity of viewpoints on such issues as war and peace (in the Anglican Church we have pacifists and military chaplains!), to divide over sex would be a tragedy. We want to reach out with the love of Christ to all people, but we want to be faithful to our understanding of scripture as well. We want to recognise the enormous contribution that gay and lesbian Christians make to our church, but we also want to recognise the contribution of conservative evangelicals and traditional Anglo-Catholics. We want to be faithful to the Canadian context in which we do mission, but we don't necessarily think that means we have to automatically change our minds about issues every time Canadian society changes its mind.

We have tried to deal with this issue before in the old, adversarial way. I have been a delegate to our General Synod (in 1995 and 1998) and have witnessed the limitations of the Roberts' Rules of Order approach. Someone proposes a motion, it is debated, a vote is taken, someone loses and someone wins. What does that mean for the ones who lose? Many of them feel strongly about what sort of community their church ought to be. Too often, our attitude is 'Well, you lost - if you can't live with it, go find another church'. I confess that I have said this myself, in my more conservative days. I've said, 'There's already a church in Canada that does gay marriages; why don't these people just go and join the United Church and leave us in peace?'

Well, this time our General Synod tried something different. In a gradual process of conversation in small groups, Synod decided to listen to the diversity of opinion in the Church and allow any motion or pastoral statement to come from the floor. And the result, I believe, was remarkable. While some felt it went too far and others felt it did not go far enough, the motion that came out of this process was supported by a large majority of synod delegates. One witness spoke of seeing an amazing sight: the most liberal voices in the church joining together with the most conservative voices, speaking in favour of this motion. The Anglican Journal report on the motion and the conversation around it is here; another report is here, and the motion is here (follow the link to the statement itself).

People on the extremes are predictably annoyed. Mad Priest thinks we're walking all over gay and lesbian Christians to get peace in the Church (although, strangely, the leading voice of gay and lesbian Christians in the Church, Chris Ambidge of Integrity Canada, is positively glowing about what Synod did). But the comments on the report on the Anglican Essentials blog shows that the conservatives are also mad and think their delegates have sold them out.

What happened? Well, I wasn't there, so of course I don't know, but I'm guessing that as people of different opinions talked together in their groups over the past week, they built relationships with each other and recognised each other as people who were faithfully trying to follow Christ. I think they got past the stereotypes like 'liberal', 'conservative', 'revisionist', 'reasserter', 'apostate', 'Nazi' etc. and discovered that they wanted to stay together. And so they decided to take a slow and messy road.

What exactly does their statement say? Some think it says nothing and commits the Church to nothing. I disagree.

It says that they had made a real effort to listen to each other's perspectives with openness and transparency, and that they found this dialogue to be positive and helpful and want it to continue.
It says that they were not prepared at this time to make a legislative decision.
It says that they recognise diverse pastoral practices as individual dioceses 'respond to their missional contexts'. In other words, we accept that 'local option' is happening and will continue to happen - i.e., individual dioceses are deciding for themselves about whether to proceed with the blessing of same sex unions. Some will do that, because they feel that this is a faithful way to respond to the situation in which they find themselves. Some will come to a different conclusion. And they recognise that 'these different approaches raise difficulties and challenges'. In every diocese there will be some who disagree with the majority decision. 'There can be no imposition of a decision or action, but rather we are challenged to live together sharing in the mission of Christ entrusted to us, accepting that different local contexts call at times for different local discernment, decision and action.'
It says that there is a deep sadness at synod that at this time we are not of one mind on this issue. We would like to be together and be able to move together, one way or the other. But the reality is that we are not, and we have to accept that.
It recognises that there is a price to pay for this. An inability to make a decisive move as a united national church is hurtful to people who desperately want their church to recognise the legitimacy of their relationships. But synod recognises the hurt on the other side, too. 'For some, even this statement represents a risk. For some the statement does not go nearly far enough.'

What do I think is happening? I think that we are moving, very slowly, away from the question 'What should we do as a national Church?' (because we recognise that there is no answer to that question that doesn't leave some people out) and toward the question 'Is a diversity of practice around same-sex blessings and/or marriages an acceptable compromise that will allow us to keep walking in partnership with people we love in this Church of ours? And if it is, what might it look like in practice?' At the moment we don't have an answer to that question, but I think we need to start looking for one.

We Canadian Anglicans are often criticised in the Anglican Communion because we're so obsessed with process that we never get anything done. Politeness, some feel, is our true religion. Well, maybe so, but this has not been a very polite week in the Anglican Communion. Early in the week the General Secretary of the Anglican Communion sent letters to the Episcopal Church (based in the USA) kicking its members off some of our international committees because TEC has thumbed its nose at the Communion as a whole and gone ahead with the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian bishops. The response to this from the American Church has, understandably, been outrage. Conservatives and liberals routinely anathematise each other, in the name of Christ, around the Anglican world.

This week, we Canadian Anglicans did something different; we managed to find some common ground that both liberals and conservatives could cheer for. Is that really something that the less polite parts of the Anglican world should dismiss as insignificant? Rather, might it not be a gift that we Canadians can offer to the Anglican Communion?

Perhaps; perhaps not. I would like to think so, but maybe I'm just being a typical dithering Canadian who loves to sit on the fence. One thing I do know, though; tonight I am very, very proud of our Synod delegates, and they have made me proud to be a Canadian Anglican.

(Update: Neale Adams has a useful and sober summary of the whole synod here).

A Testament - Part Two

2010-06-09T10:00:00.000-06:00

I first posted this item two years ago, but am reposting it now to follow my previous piece in the same series.

People sometimes ask me ‘How did you decide to become a minister?’ I sometimes wonder how it happened myself! It certainly wasn’t something I thought about a lot when I was growing up. In my early teens I loved sea stories and thought I might grow up to ‘join the Navy and see the world’, as the saying went in those days. Later on, when I became a musician, I dreamed about a musical career. Being a preacher certainly wasn’t on my radar screen.

In order to tell this story, I have to go back and explain how God became real to me. That will likely take up a whole post, so I might not get back to ‘How did you decide to become a minister?’ until later!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I was a boy my Dad was a commercial artist, but when I was still very young he went away to theological college for two years and was ordained in the Church of England. At that point our life changed; we left the little working class street in Leicester where we had lived since I was born, and moved into a suburb where my Dad became a ‘curate’ – an assistant minister in a parish. My Dad was the sort of minister who moves around a lot – three years here, four years there – so from then on I lived an unsettled sort of life. He served his curacy in Kirby Muxloe, just outside of Leicester, and then we went for a year to the Canadian Arctic. My Dad thought God was calling him to be a missionary there, but it soon became evident that it wasn’t to be, because he had no linguistic ability, and that was rather crucial in those days. So after only a year we returned to England, to spend eighteen months or so in Lytham St. Anne’s before Dad was appointed as vicar of Southminster in Southeast Essex in December of 1969.

Up until that time I’d had the standard churchgoing family experience of Christianity. I was baptized as a baby, and my parents took me to church every Sunday from before the time when I could walk; I suppose I must have gone to Sunday School, although I have no memories of it at all. At home, my parents said prayers with me at night, and we had Bible story books that we read from regularly. I have always known the Christian story and have never in my life been an atheist. As I got older I found that I enjoyed singing and so joined the church choir (we were a musical family anyway so this was not unexpected).

But my relationship with God was purely institutional. I very rarely said personal prayers, and I don’t remember ever having a sense of ‘knowing God’ as a child the way some people do. I never rebelled against church; I just wasn’t that interested in it. I got confirmed in Southminster at the age of twelve, but this was purely because my parents thought it was a good time for it. I have very little memory of the confirmation classes and certainly didn’t see the service as my adult commitment to Christ.

Nonetheless, confirmation did have an impact on me, in a roundabout sort of way. There were about twenty of us in that confirmation class, and after the confirmation we decided to stay together as a youth group. We met on Sunday evenings after the evening service, and for about a year this continued. Gradually people fell away, as was common in those days; confirmation was often a sort of ‘passing out parade’. And so as the year went by the group got smaller and smaller.

One of the people who remained was Jane, a girl about five years older than me. Jane knew Christ in a personal way, and I could see it in her. I couldn’t articulate exactly what the difference was, but I knew that the way she was experiencing her Christian life was very different from my own experience. That intrigued me.

During that period of my life (I was twelve when I was confirmed), my Dad lent me religious books from time to time. I wasn’t that interested in them, but I read enough to be able to make what I thought was an intelligent comment and then gave them back to him. I don’t think he was fooled.

Not long after my thirteenth birthday he lent me Dennis J. Bennett’s book Nine O’clock in the Morning. This was the first religious book I read all the way through. In fact, I couldn’t put it down. I started it at eight o’clock at night and read it ‘til the small hours of the morning. That book changed my life.

Dennis Bennett was an Episcopal priest from the USA, and in 1960 had experienced what Pentecostals called (and still call) ‘the baptism in the Holy Spirit’. In other words, he had experienced for himself the sort of thing the early Christians experienced on the Day of Pentecost, when we read that ‘All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability’ (Acts 2:4). As Dennis pointed out in the book, this was a definite, datable experience for these early Christians; when someone asked them, ‘Have you received the Holy Spirit?’ they could answer that question without any doubt, one way or the other! In his book Dennis described his experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and how it had transformed his life, giving him a sense of closeness to God and also introducing him to the supernatural. He had experienced ‘speaking in tongues’ – praying in a language he didn’t understand – and had also been introduced to the ministry of healing, and had seen sick people healed as he and others prayed and laid hands on them.

This was revolutionary to me. This was a million miles away from the staid Church of England with its totally predictable worship and spirituality. This was a real God who did real things in the real lives of real people. When I finished reading Nine O’clock in the Morning, I knew I wanted to know this God. But I didn’t know what to do next, and I was a shy sort of boy and was too scared to ask.

I’m not sure how much time elapsed between my reading of Nine O’clock in the Morning and what happened next. I do know that things came to a head for me on the Sunday evening of March 5th 1972, when I was thirteen years old. At our youth group meeting that night Jane and I were the only ‘youth’ there; my Dad was leading the meeting. At a certain point (I have no idea what the topic was and how this question fit into it) he turned to me and said, ‘You’ve never given your life to Jesus, have you?’ I had to agree that I had not. Then Jane said, ‘I have – although I seem to keep taking it back from him!’ In a flash two of my questions were answered. I knew what made Jane’s Christian life different from mine – she had ‘given her life to Jesus’. And I knew what the next step was for me.

So I did it. After the meeting was over I went up to my bedroom in the vicarage in Southminster, closed the door, sat down on my bed and prayed a prayer. I don’t remember the exact words, and they probably aren’t very important anyway. I simply gave my life to Jesus, as Dad had suggested. I didn’t have a dramatic spiritual experience – I certainly didn’t experience anything like the sort of ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’ that Dennis Bennett described, and I certainly didn’t speak in tongues or anything like that. Nonetheless, there was a quiet sense of connection with God that hadn’t been there before. I went to sleep that night with a sense that something new had happened to me. And I was right.

I told my Dad what I had done, and he was very pleased, of course. A few days afterwards, he gave me a little booklet called ‘Seven Minutes with God’. It was a book about how to have a daily time of prayer and Bible reading, for people who had never done it before (it’s now available on the Internet here). It was actually very regimented. It suggested starting with half a minute of silence to prepare your soul to meet with God. This would be followed by four minutes of Bible reading, and then two and a half minutes of prayer. The traditional ‘ACTS’ formula for prayer was followed: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. The booklet ended by admitting that although seven minutes was a good starting place, it was unlikely that it would be long enough; anyone who started would soon find themselves taking more time.

So I started, and a habit was born. I was always a morning person, so I got up early and had my seven minutes with God. I soon found, as the book suggested, that seven minutes was not enough. And not long after that my Dad gave me a copy of Ken Taylor’s The Living Bible – a thoroughly unreliable paraphrase, but so easy to read that it definitely made a Bible reader out of me. I’m sure I read it from cover to cover two or three times in the next few years.

So I grew in my newfound relationship with God, but it wasn’t an individual thing. Something was happening in our church, and I was soon a part of it.

I later discovered that my Dad had experienced a personal Pentecost of his own a few months before that night when I gave my life to Jesus (he later astounded me by telling me that he had been praying for this for twelve years!). He had experienced it at a prayer meeting in a home of some Pentecostal Christians (some of whom were members of a Pentecostal church, others the local United Reformed church). He had continued to attend that prayer meeting, and I was curious and asked if I could go along with him.

This was my first experience of informal group prayer. And boy, did these people pray! The meeting lasted for about two hours, and most of it was prayer. In the middle they might stop for a bit of Bible reading and discussion, but it was never (to my memory) a planned and formal ‘Bible Study’. The rest of the time, people prayed – at great length. Some knelt in front of their chairs, some just sat and prayed - out loud, prayers they were making up as they went along – ‘extemporaneous’ prayers, as they are technically called!

Here for the first time I heard ‘speaking in tongues’ in public. From time to time, someone in the group would start speaking in another language (I’d read about it in Bennett’s book, so I wasn’t surprised!). Usually this was followed by someone else speaking in English; God was giving them the ‘interpretation’ of what was being said (see 1 Corinthians 12:10). At times someone would speak out with a message from God to the group, which was understood to be the ‘prophecy’ mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:10. Some of these ‘words of prophecy' had quite a personal application to some of the members of the group. There was a strong sense of immediacy, of God being at work. I was only a young teenager, and the rest were all adults (some of them a lot older than me), but I found it thrilling.

At some point during this time, I also prayed (on my own) to be filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. I have very little memory of this event, and it certainly was not as dramatic as Dennis Bennett’s story. I learned the important lesson that God does not work the same way in everyone’s life! Nonetheless, I certainly experienced the sense of closeness to God that Bennett had spoken about, especially when I went to the Tuesday night prayer meetings. I have continued to use the gift of praying in tongues throughout my Christian life, and have often found it very helpful in maintaining a sense of immediacy in prayer.

Gradually the blessing started to spread to our church, St. Leonard’s. My Dad was always a gifted evangelist, and his one-on-one ministry with people was very fruitful. He was a tireless visitor and also used baptism preparation to the full as a chance to share the gospel and invite people to give their lives to Christ. He also talked about the Holy Spirit and invited people to experience for themselves the blessing of Pentecost. And people started to take him up on that invitation.

Eventually we started ‘house groups’ in our own church. There were four at first, I remember, although they didn’t all survive. They were a bit more cerebral than the Tuesday night prayer meeting, but still the study and the prayer was very good. We were encouraged to go to the one closest to us, so I dutifully attended the one held at the vicarage (which, however, was not led by my Dad but by a layperson). However, I think it must have fizzled out after a while (my memory is a bit hazy here), and I ended up going to the one held on Thursday nights at 39 Ely Close, the home of Ken and Kath Dunstan.

I loved those Thursday nights! I remember when I was about sixteen going to school on Thursday mornings feeling excited, because ‘tonight was the night!’ What was so exciting? It was simple – God was there, and God was at work. We read the Bible and applied it to our lives. We prayed together (quite like Tuesday nights, actually). And God spoke, through words of prophecy, or tongues and interpretation. Sometimes those words spoke directly to me. We prayed for each other, too, and saw answers to our prayers.

And we sang. In those days we didn’t have any song books or overhead projectors; someone would come back from a conference with a new song, and they would teach it to us by rote until we’d got it memorized. Fortunately, the choruses we sang in those days were short and easily memorable! Later on as I began to learn to play guitar I learned to play some of these songs, along with John Thain, who also went to the group and had been playing guitar for a lot longer than me (he’d also been a committed Christian for longer than me and he helped me grow in the Lord a lot).

Then along came the Fisherfolk! This group of American charismatic Episcopalians (‘charismatic’ became a code word for people who had Pentecostal-type experiences but didn’t belong to Pentecostal churches) had moved to the UK in the early seventies, and their records of simple folk-worship songs were enormously influential. To this day, I love those songs! ‘Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia Sons of God Arise!’, ‘Alleluia, Alleluia, give thanks to the Risen Lord’, ‘The Bell Song’, ‘The Holy Ghost will set your feet a-dancing’, ‘Fear not, rejoice and be glad’ and so on. I wasn’t a big fan of traditional hymns in those days; Fisherfolk songs were my sort of worship music.

I wish I could adequately communicate a tenth of the excitement and joy I felt as a young Christian in those heady early days of the charismatic renewal. In many ways it was actually quite Anabaptist! There was a lot of emphasis on every Christian having a ministry, rather than just ‘the vicar’. Simplicity of life was stressed (A few years laterRon Sider, a Mennonite, wrote‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’, and it was well received in English charismatic circles, where people never embraced right-wing politics as enthusiastically as their American cousins). I read the Bible very simply – especially the teaching of Jesus – and just assumed I was supposed to do what I found there (no theologian had yet talked me out of being a disciple!). So, from being an enthusiastic reader of military history I became a pacifist, and I also found I couldn’t justify infant baptism from the New Testament, so decided I didn’t believe in it (although for some reason, it never occurred to me to get rebaptized!).

My Dad had a lot of books and I read some of them. I was much influenced by Anglican charismatic writers like Michael Harper, David Watson, and Colin Urquhart. But some of my reading was a bit heavier; I remember reading Dad’s copy of Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleshipand being much moved by it.

At St. Leonard’s Southminster we always suspected that the rest of our Anglican deanery were looking askance at us! We were a growing church, full of young families, using contemporary worship services and music and sitting a bit lightly to some of the Anglican traditions which were still very important to the rest of the deanery. We still had sung evensong and an 8.30 a.m. early communion service from the Prayer Book, but our main 10.30 service alternated between Family Service and Series 3 Communion (one of the early modern language rites in the Church of England). And we sang those Fisherfolk songs, and others like them, and people clapped along and banged tambourines and acted as if they were having a good time in church. Rather suspicious behavior, as Dennis Bennett had once remarked!

One good thing the Diocese of Chelmsford was running in those days was called ‘Seventy for the Seventies’. It was a diocesan youth movement, and if you joined it you committed yourself to a year of training for mission, including regular regional gatherings on a monthly basis and two or three gatherings of the whole group, including a week at the Othona Community outside Bradwell, and a spectacular all-night vigil at Chelmsford Cathedral at the end of the year, at which the Seventy were commissioned and received a special cross. I remember that at one point in that all-night vigil we danced around Chelmsford Cathedral at about 4 a.m. and sang‘Lord of the Dance’ about seven times!

Looking back, though, I’m glad that I had my early years as a conscious Christian in the context of a church that was not ‘traditionally’ Anglican. I’m absolutely sure I would have been bored out of my mind by sung Eucharist and Anglican chant week after week after week. This was the decade of informality, and informality was very important to me. In my mind in those days, ‘formal’ meant ‘unreal’ and ‘insincere’; prayers from the heart were better than prayers read from a book, and simple worship songs were better than complicated anthems. And of course, that stuff was old-fashioned – another thing I didn’t approve of.

Obviously I’ve grown out of some of the stuff I took on board in those early years, but I’m still enormously grateful for the essential substance of personal Christianity – Christianity as relationship with God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and Christianity as relationship with one’s brothers and sisters in Christ as well. I’m still essentially loyal to the spirit of what I received in those days. And I have to say that, a few years later when I was thinking of becoming a minister, it was because of what I had received from Christ in Southminster. I had absolutely no interest in spreading institutional Christianity or something called ‘Anglicanism’ (I don’t think I even knew that word in those days!). I had come to know Christ, and I wanted to help others to know him as well.

More anon.

What I spent my teenage years doing...

2010-06-08T12:47:00.003-06:00

Many thanks to my partner in crime Jan Barnes for this awesome picture! (She's the one in a skirt!) (I'm the one with the guitar!).

New Song

2010-06-07T00:36:00.002-06:00

Tonight at the Hydeaway I played my new song, I Know You Will Be There, and Chris Martyniuk recorded it for the podcast. I've uploaded his recording to my Reverbnation site - so if you're interested, head on over there and let me know what you think.

What is a 'Fundamentalist'?

2010-06-03T09:22:00.004-06:00

The word 'fundamentalist' is tossed around these days with a lot less precision than it used to be. I'm tempted to say that in most people's vocabulary, 'fundamentalist' serves as a term of abuse for anyone who is more conservative than you are. And because some people who are described as fundamentalists are willing to kill for their beliefs, the implication is that all fundamentalists are potential murderers.

It was not always the case. The word 'fundamentalist' actually has a precise historical meaning. In the early part of the twentieth century a group of conservative evangelical Christians, mainly in North America, published a series of twelve books called 'The Fundamentals'. These Christians were concerned about what they saw as the 'modernist drift' in the mainline denominations of their day, and so they set out to restate what they saw as the classic Christian position (whether or not they were accurate in their restatement of it is another issue altogether). You can find the table of contents of these twelve books, along with a list of their authors, here.

There is no doubt that these authors held very conservative beliefs. The Wikipedia article lists the ideas they disagreed with as follows:

The volumes defended orthodox Protestant beliefs and attacked higher criticism, liberal theology, Catholicism (also called by them Romanism), socialism, modern philosophy, atheism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Millenial Dawn (an early term for a particular Christian Bible Student movement which mostly later became the 'Jehovah's Witnesses'), Spiritualism, and evolutionism (an article by geologist George Frederick Wright).

A rather exhaustive list! But what were these early fundamentalists for? Another Wikipedia article sums up their beliefs as follows:

The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this.
The virgin birth of Christ.
The belief that Christ's death was the atonement for sin.
The bodily resurrection of Christ.
The historical reality of Christ's miracles.

Now I must admit that I have not read much of 'The Fundamentals', but a number of things stand out for me as I read about these books.

First, apart from the first item on the list, this is not a particularly controversial set of beliefs. In fact, I'm tempted to ask 'Is the historic Anglican Book of Common Prayer therefore a fundamentalist document?' All five of these beliefs are demonstrably present in the Book of Common Prayer and the other Reformation Anglican formularies. It's true that the BCP never actually states a position on any theory of the inspiration of scripture, but I think most scholars would admit that what would today be called a fundamentalist position (i.e. that the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit and therefore thoroughly reliable) was assumed by all the main Christian groupings in the Reformation era, Catholic, Protestant, or Anabaptist.

Admittedly, when we look a little more closely at the table of contents we see that the authors applied these principles in ways that many of us today would hesitate to affirm. There is no doubt, for instance, that they were thoroughly skeptical about evolution (some of them were even involved in the famous 'Scopes monkey trial'); they had no use at all for the emerging discipline of biblical criticism, they thoroughly defended the literal historicity of the early chapters of Genesis, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the unity of the Book of Isaiah, an early date for Daniel and so on. But many of the titles seem thoroughly non-controversial to me: 'The Deity of Christ', 'Justification by Faith', 'Christianity no Fable', 'The Certainty and Importance of the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead', 'Observations of the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul', 'Is There a God?', 'The Person and Work of Jesus Christ'. If this is fundamentalism, then the fundamentalist movement is bigger than anyone thought.

Second, I'm interested in the list of authors. Charles B. Williams produced an early modern translation of the New Testament. Arthur T. Pierson was an American Presbyterian, born in a strongly abolitionist family, who followed Charles Haddon Spurgeon as pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London; we're told that 'at the age of forty, while serving as pastor of the largest church in Detroit, he attended a series of evangelistic messages and realized he was prideful and greedy, and had sought the approval of the rich. As a result, he led his wealthy congregation to reach out to the poor of Detroit. He then moved to banish the practice of pew rents and committed to accept his salary on a faith basis' (I note that one of his articles in 'The Fundamentals' is entitled 'Our Lord's Teachings About Money'). R.A. Torrey was a Yale graduate who studied at Leipzig and Erlangen; he became a powerful evangelist and wrote several devotional and instructional books that are still highly valued in evangelical circles today. Charles R. Erdman was professor of practical theology of Princeton Theological Seminary from 1905 to 1936, and served a term as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the USA.

I note a number of Anglicans on the list. Handley Moule had been the first principal of Ridley Hall in Cambridge and Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, and went on to succeed B.F. Westcott as Bishop of Durham. W.H. Griffith Thomas taught Old Testament at Wycliffe College in Toronto and wrote an influential book on the Thirty-Nine Articles entitled 'Principles of Theology'. Dyson Hague was rector of St. Paul's, Halifax and also lectured at Wycliffe College. John Charles Ryle was the leading evangelical in the Church of England at the end of the nineteenth century and the first bishop of the Diocese of Liverpool; while he was bishop, he took the controversial step of raising clergy stipends instead of building a cathedral for his diocese!

Nowhere on this list do you find a person who would defend flying aircraft into tall buildings to murder innocent people. Nowhere do you find suicide bombers or terrorists of any kind. Yes, these men (this was the early twentieth century, and they were all men!) had strong opinions, but so did many other people of their day. Yes, they tried to persuade the Church as a whole that it should adopt their opinions, but they did this in response to what they saw as the liberalist-modernist movement, which had itself successfully persuaded huge sections of the Church to adopt its opinions! Yes, some of these men were thoroughly unattractive personalities - but they did not by any means have the corner on that market!

So I want to speak a word of caution about our use of the term 'fundamentalist'. Of course, I am well aware that the word has shifted its meaning (the term 'Islamic Fundamentalist' would have been a nonsense term when 'The Fundamentals' were first written!), and this is legitimate; all language changes, and we need to be aware of the changes. But when a word that has originally been used to describe people who would have abhorred terrorism then gets used to describe terrorists, it's all too easy for everyone described by the word to get tarred with the same brush. And this would be unjust. The early Fundamentalists were not terrorists. They were conservative Christians who wanted to argue their case before the Church as a whole. Some of us may disagree with some of their opinions, but I don't think we should insult their memory implying things about them that are manifestly untrue.

Single Issue Christians

2010-06-02T18:56:00.003-06:00

All too often, Christians both liberal and conservative see the whole world through the lens of a single issue. Those who agree with them on that issue are kosher. Those who disagree are non-kosher. Furthermore, at every church meeting, 'that' issue becomes to them the most important item on the agenda.

For an example of this, note this post about the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada on the (rather pretentiously-titled) progressive Anglican blog 'Thinking Anglicans'. Of all the issues being discussed at the upcoming General Synod, the only one judged worthy of comment is the consideration of the 'Anglican Covenant' (which is connected to the ongoing fight about homosexuality in the Anglican Communion). Hats off to Fiona Brownlee in the comments, who calls them on this blinkered vision. All too often, it seems as if the Thinking Anglicans only want to think about one thing. Or maybe two.

Fortunately, more and more Christians aren't buying this sort of thing. They're seeing that the mission of Jesus is wider than their own pet agendas.

What more and more of us need to come to grips with, of course, is the fact that while we're debating the issue of who gets to be in charge on the Titanic, the iceberg of a shrinking church with an aging membership is getting closer and closer. And unless we can find a way of addressing this issue, thirty years from now there won't be many of us left to discuss the things we disagree about.

Carrie Hryniw live at the Axis Café, June 12th 2010.

2010-06-01T22:20:00.003-06:00

If you live in the Edmonton area and enjoy the singer-songwriter musical tradition, you won't want to miss my good friend Carrie Hryniw when she plays at the Axis Café on Saturday June 12th 8-10 p.m.

I've known Carrie for a few years now and have had the privilege of sharing a stage with her a few times. As far as I'm concerned, her songwriting keeps getting better and better, and her beautiful voice is a pleasure to listen to. You can get a taste of some of Carrie's more recent songs on her Reverbnation site here.

Tickets for the event are $10 at the door, or you can get them ahead of time for a small service charge at YEGlive here. That's what I plan to do, because I think this event may well sell out.

A Testament, Part One

2010-05-31T21:29:00.004-06:00

I wrote this piece two or three years ago; it is reposted from my old blog.

I was born in the city of Leicester, in the English Midlands, on a street exactly like Coronation Street, cobblestones and all. My family was solidly working class or artisan; my grandfather on my mother’s side was a skilled mechanic and general fix-it man, and on my father’s side my grandfather was a watchmaker. My paternal grandfather had served as an infantryman throughout the entire four years of the First World War; he was gassed in the trenches, and although he survived, his lungs bore the damage for the rest of his life. He died when I was very young.

My Dad, who was the middle child in a family of five siblings, left school when he was sixteen and became a commercial artist, painting and drawing in the advertising department of a local ‘sock and stocking’ company. He met my Mum in the youth group of St. Barnabas’ Anglican Church in Leicester; in those days church youth groups were social groups as much as anything else, and Mum and Dad talk about going dancing there on Saturday nights and taking part in other social activities. Mum was a lot younger than Dad when they got married; she had been a telephonist, but after I was born she spent her time at home as a full-time, stay-at-home Mum. The only time during my childhood and youth when that changed was when my Dad was away at theological college, when she worked to support us.

We lived on Woodland Road in Leicester (a misnomer; there was no woodland in sight!) in a street of industrial revolution row-housing – all the houses joined together, with little passageways at ground floor level leading to the tiny back gardens. Downstairs was a front room that we never used except after funerals and the odd special occasion, a back room which served as living room and dining room, and a kitchen built onto the back. The ‘bathroom’ (or ‘toilet’ as we called it in the less fastidious British dialect!) was joined to the house at the back, but you couldn’t actually access it from the house; you had to go outside. And it wasn’t heated; there was no reading on the loo in my childhood, I can assure you! Upstairs were the bedrooms. Coal fires, and no central heating.

My Mum and Dad and my brother and I lived on one side of Woodland Road, and my maternal grandparents, or ‘Nana and Grandpa’ as we called them, lived on the other. Thus it was inevitable that we would grow up very close to our maternal grandparents. Later on, when my Dad was off at theological college and my Mum was at work, my Nana babysat my brother and I. They had a TV (or a ‘telly’ as it was called in Midlands-speak) long before we had one, and it was on their telly that I watched ‘Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men’, ‘Fireball XL5’, ‘Stingray’, and ‘Thunderbirds’ – the glory days of Gerry Anderson’s marionette shows!

My grandfather was short and bald and smoked a pipe, and although he talked tough we all knew he had a soft heart. For some reason when he wanted to communicate endearment he would call you ‘cough drop’ (well – that’s what he said to my brother and me anyway!); Nana’s equivalent term was ‘ducks’ or ‘ducky’ or ‘me duck’ (which was fairly common in Midlands-speak, and for all I know still is). Grandpa worked for Sturgess’ garage in Leicester, and toward the end of his time there one of his jobs was to drive Land Rovers all over the place to be delivered to customers. Not a bad job, I’ve often thought. He could fix anything and make things out of anything; in later years he made my kids an old railway engine out of pop cans and other leftover scrap, painting it up so well that you’d never have guessed where the parts came from. He made scooters for my brother and I when we were little; small wheeled contraptions which you stood on with one foot and propelled by pushing against the road with the other.

When my brother and I were little my Mum’s younger sister, Auntie Carole, was courting Alan Hewitt, and we thought it was a great day when she married him. Alan had a motorbike and looked like James Dean; we thought he was the coolest person we knew. He worked in his Dad’s ladder business, and it was hard work, too; six and sometimes seven days a week, long hours, making and delivering ladders all over Leicester. Auntie Carole was much younger than my Mum, and she and Alan often babysat for my brother and me when we were little. In 1963 she did something very subversive; she introduced us to the music of the Beatles (‘pop’ music was not played in my house, or my Nana and Grandpa’s house, either!).

Very few people had cars in those days; working class folks got around by bicycle or bus, or took the train. But I do remember us somehow (did my Grandpa have a car, or did we take the train?) making regular visits to Bradgate Park, on the northwest side of Leicester. This old country park had once been the home of Lady Jane Gray’s family, and it was a great place to walk and run. There was (and still is) a hill there called Old John with a battlemented tower on top of it; we used to love climbing that hill and looking out at the City of Leicester spread below us. There were deer all over Bradgate Park, and still are to this day. Nearby at Swithland Woods, a relative of ours had a bungalow (what nowadays in Canada would be called a ‘holiday cottage’, I suppose, though this truly was small and rustic); I have vague memories of summer visits out there, and cricket games in the field in front of the bungalows.

My paternal grandfather died when I was very young and I have no memories of him at all. My Grandma (or ‘Gromma’ as we boys said in our Leicester dialect) lived outside the city at Barrow-on-Soar with my Dad’s oldest brother, Uncle John, and his son David. Some Saturdays we rode the train out there to visit them; David was the only cousin I saw a lot of when I was young. I remember that the back garden of their house was right up against the railway tracks, and when we went home on the train we would wave to ‘Gromma’, Uncle John, and David as they stood by the brick wall at the back of the property. If I remember correctly it was a six mile trip by train; that was an adventure.

Today’s children can have little idea of what our life was like then, growing up in a working class neighbourhood in the city in the early 1960’s. There were no computers, no cell phones, no video games, no DVDs or videos. A Saturday outing to ‘the pictures’ (movies) was a luxury; I well remember how excited we were when Auntie Carole took us to see ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’, and later on we saw ‘The Sound of Music’ on the big screen too. ‘Sweets’, as we called candies, were something to be saved and savoured, as we didn’t get them often. We played outside a lot of the time, my brother and I, making our own fun. If we wanted to watch TV we went across the road to Nana and Grandpa’s house.

We must have often been cold, but we took it for granted, I suppose, and wore lots of clothes, especially woolen sweaters, which my mother would knit. My Dad would get up in the morning, start a fire in the fireplace in the living room, and then as the kindling burned he would gradually load it with coal. He would then cover the fireplace with a sheet of newspaper for a minute to draw the fire up the chimney; by the time we were down, there would be a cheery fire in the grate. Warmth really did depend on where in a room you sat; close by the fire was toasty hot, but back in the far corners the rooms got very cold and damp.

One time of year I remember very well was ‘Guy Fawkes’ or ‘Bonfire Night’. On November 5^th, for some reason, the Brits remember the man who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the seventeenth century; when I was a child the night was celebrated with the building of bonfires, the burning of ‘Guys’ (stuffed effigies of Guy Fawkes), and the letting off of the most wonderful fireworks. I never thought anything of the history behind the day; all I knew was that we were going to see rockets and Catherine wheels, and hold sparklers in our hands and weave patterns of light with them until they fizzled out.

Another autumn game was ‘conkers’, or chestnuts. The chestnut trees were full and we children would collect the ‘conkers,’ as we called them. We would drill a hole through each chestnut, hang it on a string, and then compete with our friends, bashing conkers together until one broke the other. A ‘sixer’ was a conker which had defeated six others; if your ‘two-er’ defeated someone else’s ‘sixer’, yours immediately became an ‘eight-er’! One way of learning basic arithmetic, I suppose!

Once a year my Dad would get a week’s holiday, and we would take a long journey by train all the way to Bournemouth on the south coast of England. Every year we stayed in the same hotel, the ‘Saxonhurst’. Bournemouth had high cliffs, and there was a steep zig-zag path down to the beach. You only wanted to walk that path once during the day, so we went down in the morning with all we would need for the day in bags. If it was windy (as it often was), we would put up canvas windbreaks to provide shelter for our deck chairs. My Dad and my brother and I would swim (the Atlantic Ocean was cold, I can tell you!), jump waves, and spend hours making sandcastles and digging trenches and constructing elaborate fortifications in the sand. Or we would take turns burying each other up to our necks and then breaking out! Once or twice during the holiday we might go to the pier, a long platform protruding out over the sea, with all sorts of different entertainments on it; what I remember the best is the times when my parents would buy us sticks of ‘rock’: hard, sweet candy cut in sticks a foot long, wrapped in plastic with a photo of the pier on the wrapper. A stick of rock would last you days and days; at least, my parents made sure that it did!

When I think of us boys now, both of us in our short trousers and wool sweaters, playing conkers, going out in the cold to use the outside loo, making models with the sawed-off ends of the rungs from Uncle Alan’s ladders (‘knobs’, as we called them), those days seem so far removed from the life that children live today. We were poor, I suppose, but so was everyone else we knew, and we didn’t know any different. And Woodland Road in those days was a real community. My Uncle Alan tells me (I don’t remember it myself) that on warm summer evenings people would bring their chairs out and sit on the sidewalks in front of their houses (which opened right out onto the street, with no front gardens); some houses would send a member down to the corner with a jug for some beer from the off-license, and neighbours would walk up and down the street all evening visiting with each other.

That area of Leicester is now over ninety percent inhabited by immigrants from Asian countries, and they have replaced that old English culture with a rich and vibrant way of life of their own. The Woodland Road life that I knew has gone for good, and indeed my memories of it are very vague. But for what I remember, I’m thankful, and I’m very glad I grew up when I did, before technology changed the life of children forever. It was a simple life, and no doubt I romanticize it a little, but I think it was a good life, and I’m grateful for it.

Catching Up

2010-05-30T23:02:00.003-06:00

It has been a busy time in our house over the last few days.

My Mum and Dad were visiting with us from England for three weeks, during which time I took a week's holiday, and spent as much other time with them as work would allow. My Dad's health is not good; he has Parkinson's Disease and it is running its course, slowly but steadily. Still, we were able to get out and do a few things while they were here; we went to the Muttart Conservatory and Hawrelak Park, to Whitemud Ravine and the Royal Alberta Museum; we did a trip to Elk Island National Park, and a couple of days before they left we took in the opening weekend of Fort Edmonton Park. It seemed that while they were here our house was full of people; Mum and Dad were staying with us, of course, and then our young adult kids were always dropping in and out, and we were glad to have our son Matt and his wife Cynthia come down from Valleyview for a couple of days as well. Now the house seems empty and quiet!

Mum and Dad left Wednesday; the next day we had an early morning Bible Study, after which I spent the morning at my desk. In the afternoon I had a meeting of the group that advises the bishop at the synod office downtown, and then I drove straight out to one of the rural parishes in our diocese to help a group of parishioners come to grips with the end of Christendom and the issues it raises around mission and evangelism. The presenting problem, of course, was 'our church is small and we need new members so we can be financially viable', but as the evening went on it was great to see the feeling changing to 'We have a wonderful message of the love of Christ to share with the people in our community, if we could only find an effective way of doing it'. That won't be the end of that conversation.

I spent most of Friday at my desk preparing for Sunday services, and then in the evening shared a gig with my friend Jodi Penner at the Bogani Café, just round the corner from where Marci and I live. A good number of friends came out to hear us which was very encouraging. The next morning we got up to find it raining and later in the morning the rain turned to snow. Nonetheless my administrative assistant and I drove out to Leduc for an information morning we were running ('we' being our 'deanery', the local grouping of churches to which we belong) regarding the upcoming General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada. Marci and I did a bit of running around in the afternoon, and in the evening stayed in, vegged out in front of the TV and watched an episode of 'Lark Rise to Candleford'.

Today, of course, we had services at St. Margaret's in the morning, and we skyped with our daughter Jacqui early in the afternoon, after which we went out for the first coffee date we've had with just the two of us since about May 4th! And tonight I got to go up to the YEGlive open stage and hear some good music, especially from my good friends Carrie Hryniw and Rob Heath.

So that's what I've been up to for the last few days!

Some thoughts for Trinity Sunday

2010-05-30T22:57:00.003-06:00

My sermon for Trinity Sunday is posted on our church website here.

A different take on the same subject comes from John Richardson who blogs as 'The Ugley Vicar': his thoughts are here.

And Brother Ken posted his thoughts on the same subject at Brutally Honest here.

They're coming back to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this August!

2010-05-27T23:41:00.001-06:00

I love the Waifs and I especially love this song!

A couple of tips from Proverbs

2010-05-25T23:01:00.005-06:00

Today is the last day of my Mum and Dad's visit to us. Tomorrow they fly back to England. Nothing in life is certain, so I expect that at the airport we'll hug them tight and pray that God will give us the blessing of another meeting before too long. Relationships are precious, and every moment with elderly parents is a gift from God. So today we've been doing things together, and although I've been meaning all day to write a short note about this morning's reading from the Book of Proverbs, I'm just getting around to it now!

When I was a Church Army student many years ago, a good friend and I each independantly got into the habit of reading through the books of Psalms and Proverbs regularly. We would read the daily psalms set in the old Book of Common Prayer (a system of reading morning and evening that takes you through the entire psalter every month), and we would read one chapter of the book of Proverbs every day of the month (there are 31 chapters). So we got to know Psalms and Proverbs pretty well. I remember one day getting one of those 'encouragement' cards from my friend on which he had written the words: 'Proverbs 15:17: I would eat a dinner of vegetables with you any day'.

Proverbs 15:16-17 reads as follows in the NRSV:

'Better is a little with the fear of the LORD
than great treasure and trouble with it.
Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is
than a fatted ox and hatred with it'.

This is sanctified common sense and we all know instinctively that it is true: if you have good relationships with the people in your life, then you can get by with the barest necessities of life and still be happy, but if your relationships are not good, no amount of material wealth can make up for it.

But the very next verse hits me between the eyes:

'Those who are hot tempered stir up strife,
but those who are slow to anger calm contention' (v.18).

I've struggled with a hot temper my whole life long, and I know that it does not help me nurture those good relationships which verses 16-17 say are so important. I would much rather be 'slow to anger', so that I can help calm contention rather than stirring it up. I remember the words of James: 'Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God's righteousness' (James 1:19-20). I know this to be true; so often in my life, my anger has hurt people and damaged relationships, especially with those I love the most.

So my prayer tonight is that God would help me to be content with the necessities of life and to focus on building relationships of love, and to that end, that he would teach me to be 'quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry'. In this, of course, I will try to follow the example of 'The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness' (Exodus 34:6).

Jesus and Pacifism

2010-05-25T09:49:00.007-06:00

Further to my last post on Jesus and Peace, my friend Rick left the following comment:

Some might argue that Christians might know him better than non-Christians, and that this knowledge is gained via the context of the whole of Scripture and not that plucked out of in a way that paints Christ singularly...

Some might argue that God the Father, and Jesus His Son and the Holy Spirit, though distinct, are all one... and that God the Father was certainly no pacifist... nor would he be supplanted by His Son and His Spirit but complemented in some mysterious way... and so concluding confidently that Christ is a pacifist would require ignoring the complementary relationship of the Trinity or that in fact the Scriptures teach that they are three and yet they are one.

Some might argue that these non-Christians, who by their non-Christian-hood, have embraced not the Truth, the Way, and the Life, are fooled. That they have been pursuaded, either willingly or unwillingly, to believe a lie or in the least, to not embrace The Truth... so why would we give them the benefit of the doubt as to Christ's pacifism?

There's more Tim but... I'll stop...

I would like to address the central issue in Rick's post - the issue of Jesus' relationship to the Father and the Holy Spirit. If I understand Rick correctly, what he is saying is that in the Old Testament, God is frequently seen as a god of battles who fights on the side of the Israelites and commands them to slaughter their enemies. And the Spirit of God frequently 'comes on' people in Old Testament times (especially in the days of the judges) and gives them strength to defeat their enemies (Samson is the obvious example ). Therefore, to interpret Jesus as a pacifist would be to either ignore the contradictory witness of the Old Testament teaching about the Father and the Spirit, or to interpret the Son as being in some way in disagreement with the Father. As Rick says, 'God the Father was certainly no pacifist - nor would he be supplanted by his Son and his Spirit but complemented in some mysterious way'.

Let me respond to Rick's position as best I can.

To begin with, let me point out that the God of the Old Testament was not simply 'God the Father', as if the Son did not come into the picture until New Testament times. Yahweh the God of Israel is identified in Christian theology with God the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God. Thus, to say 'God the Father was certainly no pacifist', with reference to the God of the Old Testament, is inaccurate. The God of the Old Testament is not just 'the Father'; he includes our Lord Jesus Christ. What we ought to be saying (if we are making the point Rick wants to make) is that Jesus, in the New Testament, would certainly not contradict what he himself said when he gave commands to his people, and also fought and killed on their behalf, in the Old Testament.

This is an attractive position, but the uncomfortable truth is that Jesus does sometimes contradict the Old Testament. For instance, the Old Testament people were commanded to avoid certain foods as being unclean, but in Mark 7:19 Jesus declared all foods to be clean. The Old Testament permitted people to swear oaths, but Jesus forbad it (Matthew 5:33-37). And the Old Testament permitted people to take revenge on those who injured them up to the level of the injury received, but Jesus forbad this as well (Matthew 5:37-42). And the early Christians added other discontinuities; for instance, in the Old Testament God told the Israelites that anyone who was not circumcised would be cut off from his people, but the New Testament Christians came to believe that circumcision was not necessary for them.

So it is not only with regard to war and peace that the Jesus of the gospels seems to be in contradiction to certain strands of the Old Testament witness about God; on other issues too there is an obvious discontinuity. But the war and peace issue is a particularly clear case in point. Yes, in the Old Testament God not only allows (and even commands) war; he also commands slaughter of innocent women, children, and babies, and even genocide and ethnic cleansing. Over and over again in the book of Judges the Israelites are commanded to offer a city in sacrifice to God by exterminating its entire population, including the youngest babes in arms. And yet in the New Testament we have Jesus telling us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us. We're told that when someone strikes us on one cheek we're to turn and offer the other as well. We're told that it's no credit to us if we only love our friends; even sinners do that! But we're to follow the example of our heavenly Father, who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked; we're to be merciful as our Father is merciful (see Luke 6:27-37 and parallels).

On this issue the apostles clearly follow Jesus very closely. In Romans 13 Paul certainly sees the state as having a legitimate policing role (but note that what he says in this chapter applies to the state policing its own citizens, not waging war on other countries); however, he assumes that Christians will not be a part of that police force ('the authority' is referred to throughout in the second person, not the third). Paul's instructions to Christians are found in Romans 12:14-21, and they are in obvious continuity with what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. Peter makes the same point in 1 Peter 2:21-25.

In his comment above Rick asserts that the reason that non-Christians so often see Jesus as a pacifist is that they do not know him as well as Christians; they have not embraced him as the way, the truth, and the life, and so they have been fooled. How, then, is he going to explain the fact that for the first three hundred years of Christian history, the early church was almost universal in its pacifist interpretation of the teaching of Jesus? I have given a representative selection of the relevant texts from the Church Fathers here. It was not until Christianity began to be co-opted by the Empire that Christian theologians began to develop a rationale for a just war position.

So yes, there is a definite discontinuity between certain strands of the Old Testament witness to God on the one hand, and the teaching of Jesus, his apostles, and the first three Christian centuries on the other. What are we to do with this discontinuity? To me, it seems dishonest to pretend that it isn't there and to argue that the Bible speaks with one voice on the subject of war and peace; it manifestly does not. It seems then that the only course to follow is to decide which parts of the Bible are more authoritative for Christians.

To me, the authority of Jesus is obviously paramount; he is the best representation we have of what God is like. Paul says that Christ is 'the image of the invisible God' and that 'in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell' (Colossians 1:15, 19). Hebrews says that in many and various ways God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son 'whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being...' (Hebrews 1:1-3a). And in John's gospel Jesus specifically disavows any idea that he speaks in opposition to his Father: 'Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works" (John 14:10). We Christians read the Old Testament as a witness to God, yes, but when there is a contradiction between the Old Testament and Jesus (as, from time to time, there definitely is), then we are followers of Jesus, not Moses, because we believe that Jesus is a more accurate representation of God to us than we find in the teachings of Moses.

Furthermore, if we take the opposite view (i.e. instead of bending the words of the Old Testament to fit the teaching of Jesus, we bend the teaching of Jesus to fit the Old Testament) then what have we authorised? The just war, yes, but on the authority of the Old Testament texts why should we stop there? As we have seen, the God of the Old Testament not only authorises what today would be called 'just wars'; he also commands his followers to engage in wholesale slaughter of innocent women, children, and babies, and even ethnic cleansing and genocide. I am absolutely sure that my friend Rick (who I know to be a good and honourable man and a thoughtful Christian) would not be prepared to go so far as that. And yet, given his view of the relation between the two Testaments, there is no reason why he should not. In fact, I challenge anyone who takes the Old Testament view on war as authoritative for Christians to explain how that view is different from the perspective of those today who think that God is calling them to act out his judgement against the wicked by flying aircraft full of innocent people into tall buildings full of more innocent people. Undeniably, God is seen in the Old Testament as authorising acts every bit as heinous as these. Is this really the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one in whose presence the angels of the innocent little children stand continually (Matthew 18:10)?

Is Jesus in conflict with his Father and with the Holy Spirit on the issue of war and peace? Unquestionably, he is not. When Jesus spoke on the subject, he spoke as one who always said the things his Father told him to say. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit led the authors of the rest of the New Testament to underline Jesus' teaching on the subject, and the writings of the first three Christian centuries continue to bear witness to this truth: Jesus chose to love his enemies, not to destroy them, and he has called on his followers to do the same.

Jesus and Peace

2010-05-21T17:22:00.003-06:00

I heard a good line at a meeting today: 'The only people who think Jesus wasn't a pacifist are Christians. When non-Christians encounter the story of his life and teachings, it's quite obvious to them where he stands!'

Is it really a fresh vision that we need?

2010-05-20T09:15:00.002-06:00

I've been enjoying David Hayward's posts about vision (with which I'm largely in agreement), and they brought to mind this rather wicked thought:

'Where there is no vision, the people sigh with relief and get back to loving one another'.

Elk Island National Park, May 14th 2010

2010-05-15T02:07:00.004-06:00

I Know You Will Be There

2010-05-15T01:43:00.003-06:00

I don't know the day of my death,

the day I will draw my last failing breath.

I don't know how it may come -

the end of my days under the sun.

But as I let go the moorings

and drift out into your sea,

I know you will be there sailing with me.

I might live to healthy old age,

in gladness and joy to the end of my days.

But then again, in the blink of an eye

the summons may come - the day I must die.

But as I cross the horizon

on a path my eyes cannot see,

I know you will be there walking with me.

Even now when the day's work is done,

I lie down and sleep 'til the morning light comes.

And I know when I reach my last rest,

safe in your care I will wake up refreshed.

And on that bright morning

when the world is made new and free,

I know you will be there awakening me.

Demo recording to follow before too long, hopefully!

I'm getting into the mood...

2010-05-12T17:17:00.001-06:00

Mount Edith Cavell, from Pyramid Lake. Jasper National Park, summer 2008.

A few thoughts on ministry

2010-05-05T00:24:00.003-06:00

Thirty two years ago tonight, on May 5th 1978, I knelt before Bishop Mark Genge in St. James' Cathedral, Toronto, and was commissioned as an evangelist in the Church Army. As I look back on that night I'm absolutely amazed that the Church Army would take a gamble on one as young and naive as I was (I was not yet twenty at the time). I made a lot of mistakes in those early years - something that has probably not changed much.

But there have been plenty of other changes. After twelve years as a lay evangelist I was ordained a deacon by Bishop Jack Sperry in the Arctic, in October 1990. Later, in May 1992, I was made a priest by Bishop John Clarke. I moved from rural Saskatchewan, to the Arctic, to northern Alberta and then to the city of Edmonton. Marriage and family life knocked away some of my rough edges. Writers like Philip Yancey, Eugene Peterson, Tom Wright and John Howard Yoder enlarged my understanding of the gospel. And the Church Army itself has changed; it became an interdenominational organisation, and this year it abandoned the para-military ethos and began a new phase of its life as Threshold Ministries.

Recently I've been getting a lot of nourishment from the writings of David Hansen, especially his two books 'The Art of Pastoring' and 'Loving the Church you Lead'. I think I could sum up David's approach (in terms I hope he would recognise) by saying that, in his view, pastoral ministry is simple and difficult, but many people would prefer it to be complicated and easy.

When I say that it's simple, I mean that it is about simple things like living a holy life and loving people. But these are not easy things. Holiness is hard, very hard. It involves walking the way of the cross, living in daily repentance from sin, and following the teaching and example of Jesus. And loving people is very demanding, too; much more so than sitting behind a desk and 'running a church'.

I would often prefer pastoral ministry to be complicated and easy. If it's complicated, it means I have to take a course and become an expert in some new approach to ministry, and this is very gratifying to my ego because people can then look up to me because of my expertise. It then becomes my professional know-how that makes the parish grow, not the power of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit.

No, pastoral ministry isn't complicated, but it is very demanding. That's why prayer is so important. Without prayer I can't help people connect with the living God, because I can't lead people deeper into the spiritual life than I've gone myself. So prayer, holiness, and love are essential to real pastoral and evangelistic ministry.

I'm thankful to David Hansen for reminding me of these things. I get so easily distracted by stuff that looks enticing but actually leads me away from the way of the cross. Thank God for sending us people who remind us of what ministry is really all about.

Continued Break

2010-04-05T03:32:00.002-06:00

This blog will remain closed for the time being, mainly for the reasons previously alluded to (see David Keen's blog post pre-Lent). I thoroughly enjoyed my blog-free Lent and am not yet ready to abandon the benefits I received from it.

Time for a Lenten break

2010-02-12T07:41:00.003-07:00

Every year, during Lent, I give up blogging and reading blogs.

I was going to post my reasons for doing so, but David Keen has pretty well summed them all up for me here.

If you're not giving up blogging for Lent, I recommend you keep your eye on Felix Hominum where Joe will be blogging through Dante's Purgatorio.

Have a good Lent, everyone.

Clergy Retreat

2010-02-07T20:32:00.001-07:00

I'm off Monday on the annual clergy retreat at the Star of the North Retreat Centre in St. Albert. Talk to you all later in the week.

A very fine book about being a pastor

2010-02-07T00:58:00.002-07:00

I have just finished my second reading of Dave Hansen's very fine book 'The Art of Pastoring: Ministry Without All the Answers' (IVP, 1994). I think this is the very best book I have ever read on being a pastor.

We pastors nowadays are being inundated with books, workshops, courses, resources, and movements, all of them offering 'the answer' for making our ministries a success. Whether it's purpose-driven ministry, or Natural Church Development, or the church growth movement, or mission action planning, or mission-shaped ministry, or - well, name your own popular trend here - our bookshelves are groaning under the weight of the books (or, more likely, DVDs and three-ring binders) that will finally solve The Problem for us. You know The Problem I mean - the fact that our churches aren't experiencing numerical growth, or aren't experiencing every member ministry, or aren't meeting their budgets, or aren't impacting the neighbourhood etc. etc.

Dave Hansen's book is a refreshing contrast to all of these. He doesn't offer us a program, a movement, or a fad. He starts by offering us an image: the pastor is a parable of Jesus Christ. A parable moves from the known to the unknown; the known casts fresh light on the unknown. He says: 'The thesis of this book is that people meet Jesus in our lives because when we follow Jesus, we are parables of Jesus Christ to the people we meet'. In other words, our role is a simple one: we live our lives in such a way as to remind people of Jesus Christ and to cast fresh light on him. And this requires us to walk the Way of the Cross, as Jesus did.

Did I give the impression that this is an easy book? Sorry about that - it's not. And yet, in one sense it is easy: it's not hard to read or understand. Hansen is a great storyteller and offers us many of his own experiences as resources to help us grasp the simple concepts he teaches. But it's not an easy book, because it challenges us to live holy, Christlike lives and to love people. It's a lot easier to follow the latest church growth program: that doesn't require me to repent of my sins and take up my cross and follow Jesus.

I've spent my ministry as a small-church pastor; so has Hansen. He wrote this book in the mid-1990s just after finishing his first (nine-year) pastorate in a two-point rural parish in Montana, working in congregations of the Presbyterian and American Baptist traditions. As a child he was an Episcopalian but his parents later became mainline Baptists, and that is the denomination of his ordination. But he has never pastored a megachurch. He knows where I live.

It's tempting to fill yards of column space with quotes from this book. Here are a few of my favourites:

'Task-driven ministry always gives way to a time-management ministry as opposed to a Spirit-led ministry. The pastor's day is divided into hours and tasks rather than opportunities to do God's will. The problem is that when I fine-tune my week, tweaking it like a piano-tuner to a perfect A440, I am out of harmony with the kingdom of God. I experience fewer of those serendipitous, perfect opportunities to talk to people about Christ. You know what I mean: the evangelism you never plan, which works better than the evangelism you do plan'.

'The Holy Spirit functions in the pastor's life as in Jesus' life. Because we are followers of Jesus Christ, the love of the Father is poured into our hearts. This love is the active, building power of the Holy Spirit. When we live our lives directed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, as Jesus did, we are like Jesus. Even though our ability to follow the Spirit's leading cannot come close to Jesus' ability, we are parables of Jesus Christ'.

'I've never heard a pastor tell me that he or she was too busy praying to do other things. I've only heard pastors say they were too busy doing things like counselling, organizing worship extravaganzas and managing church affairs to spend much time in prayer. Need we enquire further why the devil wants us busy, pandering to our people's desire for shortcuts?'

'I suppose the existence of God is the only real issue of the pastoral ministry. Not whether God exists, but where God is and what God is. Both questions are answered in the friendship of God experienced in prayer. The pastor's life of prayer answers the questions of the existence of God on the deepest experiential level. These questions are answered in the pastor's personal life of prayer, and the pastor answers the questions for others through prayer for them'.

'Pastoral calling whose motivation is church growth - visiting to 'sell' the church - isn't friendship. It's peddling... Instead of working, I get paid to go fishing. Most men in our church love to fish. It's tough floating down a crystalline river past deer, mink and herons, casting to three-pound wild trout. But as an evangelist I get more mileage sitting in a river boat talking to a man about Christ than I do by sitting in his front room with his wife hanging over us hoping I can make her husband come to church. I don't consider that to be an evangelistic atmosphere'.

'Can pastors call friendship "work?" I doubt that we can. I tell people that I read the Bible, pray, and visit with friends. That's all I do. It's not work. It's tiring at times. But we shouldn't expect people to cal what we do "work"'.

There are many more fine passages in this book. But if you'd like to get a flavour of the sort of pastoral ministry Dave Hansen is describing, you can find a very good interview with him online here. If you are a pastor, I'd encourage you to read this interview, and then to go out and buy this book. For myself, I can only say that at the moment this is the book the Lord is using to save the soul of my ministry. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The Really Ancient Christian Practices

2010-02-05T21:40:00.005-07:00

A few months ago a couple of people asked me if I had heard about a new movement that was trying to recover ancient Christian practices that the contemporary Church has forgotten about. I asked what practices they were talking about, and was told that it was to do with things like silence, and meditation, and spiritual reading, and other quasi-monastic things (my phrase, not theirs).

To be honest, I hadn't heard of the movement. I remember the previous time it came around (folks like Dallas Willard and Richard Foster led it, if I recall, and wrote some very fine books about it, including Celebration of Discipline and The Spirit of the Disciplines); one of the perils of growing older is that you begin to really experience the truth that 'there is nothing new under the sun'.

I've got nothing to say against these 'ancient Christian practices' - last time around, Richard Foster's books were a blessing to me and to many other people too - but I must admit that when my friends first mentioned this new movement, I was hoping that they were going to tell me it had to do with a different set of practices, an even more ancient set. I'm talking about the ones in the Sermon on the Mount.

To be honest, I don't really see monasticism in the Sermon on the Mount. The practices I see there include the following:

Having an upside-down view of the world, which turns out to be the right-side-up view, since the world is the wrong way up to begin with (Matthew 5:1-12).
Being different from the world in order to bless it (5:13-16).
Turning away from anger and working on reconciliation instead (5:21-26).
Turning away from lust and living a life of sexual purity (5:27-30).
Turning away from divorce - staying in our marriages and working on them instead (5:31-32).
Telling the truth and being known as people of our word (5:33-37).
Blessing those who hurt us instead of retaliating against them (5:38-42).
Following the example of the God who loves his enemies by loving ours too (5:43-48), and forgiving those who sin against us (6:14-15).
Carrying out the traditional practices of giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting in such a way as to please God and not win brownie points for our spirituality from others (6:1-18).
Praying short and simple prayers together (6:7-13).
Living with very few possessions, serving the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of mammon (6:19-24), focussing on God's will and trusting him to provide the necessities of life for us (6:25-34).
Not judging others (7:1-6).
Being bold in prayer, asking for what we need in the faith that God will hear us (7:7-11).
Treating others the way we would like to be treated (7:12).
Doing the will of the Father in heaven rather than just talking about it, and putting Jesus' teaching into practice rather than just listening to it and then ignoring it in our daily lives (7:13-29).

I can't claim that I practice all these ancient Christian disciplines. But I do know that in the long list of things I need to learn in my Christian life, these things ought to be my priority. I have no quarrel with St. Benedict, but I'm sure he would agree with me that the teaching of Jesus comes first.

Reed's thoughts

2010-02-05T17:29:00.002-07:00

Check out my old friend Reed Fleming's blog here. Reed is Director of Formation at Taylor College of Mission and Evangelism in St. John, New Brunswick (a college run by the Church Army in Canada).

Twelve days to go...

2010-02-05T16:44:00.001-07:00

Man, I love Lent...

Rudy Wiebe

2010-02-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite authors...

Long-Term Ministry

2010-02-01T09:38:00.001-07:00

I find it curious that if you stay married to the same woman for thirty years, Christians congratulate you for your faithfulness and persistence, but if you pastor the same church for ten years, many church people assume you're stagnating in a rut...

More of Noah

2010-01-31T21:09:00.000-07:00

Show of Hands cover Stan's 'Northwest Passage'

2010-01-31T00:05:00.003-07:00

As a Canadian folk music fan I'm a bit sensitive to attempts by 'furriners' to cover this classic Stan Rogers song. However, the British folk group 'Show of Hands' do a great job here. The 'Due South' scenes are a bit weird though!

How to see the face of God quickly

2010-01-29T09:32:00.001-07:00

Overheard on the radio this morning from the CBC traffic reporter:

"Honk if you love Jesus; text if you want to meet him!"

Our new grandson Noah

2010-01-27T22:56:00.002-07:00

Sermon for January 24th: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

2010-01-26T12:29:00.001-07:00

The Body of Christ

I wonder what first comes to mind when you hear the word, ‘church’?

For many people, it’s a building; when they say, ‘our church’, they’re referring to the building in which they meet for worship. Those buildings are often full of hallowed memories for people, especially if they’ve lived in the same place and gone to the same church all their lives. For them, the presence of God is somehow especially associated with these familiar places of worship.

For other people, it’s an institution. There used to be a saying, at least in England, that when a young man (it was always a young man in those days) decided to become a priest he was ‘going into the Church’. Never mind that, from a Christian point of view, it was faith and baptism that made you a member of the Church; these folks saw the Church as a great national organisation, comparable to the army or the civil service. If you decided to become a soldier you were joining the army; if you decided to become a priest you were joining the Church.

There’s a variation on this today when people say, ‘the Church should be getting involved in the community more’ or ‘the Church should be doing something about housing issues’, or ‘the Church should be feeding the hungry’. What many people mean by this is that ministers should be visibly involved in this. Never mind that three quarters of the members of the board of a particular charity might be members of Christian churches; never mind that ministers are trained in biblical exegesis and not housing policy – unless there’s someone with a clerical collar on the committee, some people will say that ‘the Church doesn’t care about these kinds of issues’ – by which they mean, the Church as an institution, as represented by its paid professional ministers.

So there’s the church as a building (preferably old and beautiful), and the church as an institution. A third common use of the term is the church as a community. This is usually a local thing; people talk about ‘my church’, meaning the particular congregation of which they’re a part. It’s especially important for it to be a welcoming community, a friendly community, a community that has lots of activities and programs to support people through the stresses and strains of their lives. At St. Margaret’s we try to give a lot of attention to this aspect of the church; we think it’s important for members of a church community to know each other and care for each other, and there’s no way we can do that without being willing to spend time together. We also try to make sure new people feel welcome and can easily find their way into this community of faith.

Well, there’s probably some truth in all three of these common ways of thinking of the church – the church as a building, as an institution, and as a community – but they all fall short of the image that Paul uses in our epistle for today when he talks about the church as a body. And not just as any body, either – as the body of Christ. What’s he trying to get at here?

Read the rest here.

Fearfully and wonderfully made

2010-01-22T16:18:00.002-07:00

My grandson, Noah, is fearfully and wonderfully made.

I saw him yesterday, less than an hour after he emerged into the daylight from the rather cramped conditions inside his mother's womb (he's a big bruiser of a baby, and space was getting a little tight in there). He looked a bit battered after a thirty-hour labour experience, but the parts are all in working order, thanks be to God.

When you stroke your finger across the palm of his hand, his little fingers automatically wrap around yours. When you stroke his foot in a certain way, his toes shoot out in all directions. He knows how to suck (he obviously got a lot of practice in utero), and if he's hungry, he lets you know. Yes, the lungs are definitely in working order; he's got a good set of pipes. The other end works pretty well too - input and output function pretty well as designed.

At the moment, of course, he doesn't understand any of this. He hasn't a clue how his digestive system works, but he's still interested in digesting. His brain is a mystery to him, but he's storing multiple megabytes of information on it every new day of his life. He doesn't know how vital his liver and kidneys are, getting rid of poisons that could kill him - he just knows he feels wet and clammy in the diaper region. Time to exercise the lungs again.

This stuff is going to work on automatic pilot for a long time. It'll be years before he has more than a rudimentary knowledge of how his body works. But in the meantime, it works anyway. Fortunately, he doesn't have to understand it to be able to benefit from it. God is looking after that for him. God and his Mom, of course (God created her so that he could be everywhere at once...).

One day, I hope Noah will learn to enjoy praying the psalms. Especially one of my favourites, Psalm 103, which has this rather relevant bit in it:

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. (Psalm 139:13-16a, NRSV).

I love this psalm. I suspect it'll be a few years before Noah learns to love it. Meantime, I'll just pray it for him.

The Stork has landed...

2010-01-21T14:01:00.003-07:00

Noah Taliesin Chesterton was born at about 10.00 a.m. Thursday January 21st.

He weighed in at 9 lbs 14 oz.

Mom (Sarah) and baby are both well.

Sarah and Lynn don't want us to post general photos for a few days; they want to keep it in the family for a bit.

Thanks for all your prayers.

Grandbaby update

2010-01-21T05:31:00.001-07:00

This is a slow stork, but I think it could be quite soon now...

Grandbaby update

2010-01-20T17:35:00.001-07:00

Looks like the stork might come in to land some time tonight...

Chris Wood - Spitfire

2010-01-19T23:16:00.001-07:00

Something good for you tonight from Chris Wood.

Stories from Haiti

2010-01-17T14:57:00.006-07:00

Here are a couple of stories from people trying to do some good on the ground in Haiti.

The first is about Sarah Wallace, a young midwife from Devon, just outside Edmonton:

As Canadians are urged to head toward the embassy in Port-au-Prince and evacuate earthquake-ravaged Haiti, Devon-raised Sarah Wallace will stay amid the chaos in an isolated city to the south and search for survivors.
Wallace moved to the port city of Jacmel in 2008 to work as a midwife and establish a registered charity, called Olive Tree Projects.
The city of 40,000 is her home now, and though devastation in the country's capital dominates headlines, Jacmel is likewise in shambles.
Many people are dead. Many more are struggling to survive.
"Haiti needs help and that's why I moved here," says Wallace, 24.
"I wanted to help them before the earthquake. Now they need the help even more. Why would I stop now?"

Read more at the Edmonton Journal website here. Sarah's website is here.

The second article is by Willard Metzger, director of church relations for World Vision Canada who was in Haiti leading party of volunteers when the earthquake struck. Willard has actually preached twice at our church here in Edmonton. Here's an excerpt:

Our hotel became a quick, make-shift medical clinic. People with emergency first aid experience became lead doctors. Bed sheets were ripped into bandages, pool chairs became stretchers and baseboards were stripped to become splints. The make-shift medical clinic worked with the headlights of vehicles until
10:45 p.m. Then the scenes seemed to settle for the night. But not for long.
By 11 p.m. the wounded started pouring in again: a young girl who had been dug from the rubble, still in her school uniform from her walk home, a young boy with a broken ankle, foot pointing outward. These broken limbs needed to be set with little more than a steady hand, ripped bed sheets and splintered base boards. Painful cries rose into the starry sky.
Another tremor shook the ground sending those who could run scrambling into the middle of the unlit streets. But the damage had already been done and the wounded needed care. The street was filled with those receiving medical attention as relatives waved their hands and begged God for mercy on their children.

Read the rest on the World Vision Canada website here.

Sermon for January 17th: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

2010-01-17T13:22:00.003-07:00

The Lord and His Gifts
For many Anglicans, reading Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians chapters twelve to fourteen is really like visiting a foreign country; it’s as if we got lost on the way to St. Margaret’s and wandered into a Pentecostal church instead! These chapters talk about supernatural gifts – speaking in tongues, prophecy, healings, miracles and so on – things that we tend to associate with more emotional and sensational forms of Christianity. We Anglicans don’t tend to ‘do’ this sort of thing; our favourite verse of the Bible is the one that says, ‘All things should be done decently and in order’ (1 Cor. 14:40)!
Well, interestingly enough, that verse comes right at the end of these three chapters in 1 Corinthians, and so apparently Paul didn’t see any contradiction between using supernatural gifts like speaking in tongues and prophecy and healing on the one hand, and doing everything decently and in order on the other. And so perhaps we need to get over our phobia about things that aren’t traditionally Anglican, and ask ourselves if there are gifts that God has given to other parts of the Christian family that we can learn from, just as there are things we have to teach other parts of the Christian family as well. So for the next couple of weeks, following our lectionary, we’re going to look at these three chapters and ask what they have to say to us about the life of our church today.

Read the rest here.

Some of my favourite albums #1: Sting: Ten Summoner's Tales

2010-01-16T00:29:00.003-07:00

I stopped taking the Grammy Awards seriously in 1994. That was the year Whitney Houston won the Grammies for best album and best song for the soundtrack to 'The Bodyguard'. Also nominated that year was what I believe to be one of the most brilliant albums ever produced, a piece of work far above anything Whitney Houston had ever done in her entire career: 'Ten Summoner's Tales', by Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting. That the folks who award the Grammies would consider 'The Bodyguard' a better album that 'Ten Summoner's Tales' was incomprehensible to me. I was of course still operating on the assumption that the Grammies were about musical talent!

'Ten Summoner's Tales' was Sting's fourth solo album since the breakup of the Police; the title of course is a pun on his name, Gordon Sumner, and a character in Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'. The album was noticeably more upbeat than its predecessor, 'The Soul Cages', and produced two hit singles in North America, 'I I Ever Lose My Faith in You' and 'Fields of Gold'. But it also contained other wonderful songs, like 'Seven Days' (in 7/4 time), 'Shape of My Heart', and 'She's Too Good for Me'.

The core band for the album was of course Sting on bass and vocals, Dominic Miller on guitar, Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, and David Sancious on keyboards. They were backed up by other supporting musicians, but the four of them were the musical powerhouse that drove the album. A few months after it was released I saw a TV special with Sting live somewhere in Italy, with just this four-piece band; they played his recent songs and also some of the old Police hits, and the simplicity and power of their music was awe-inspiring to me. In later years Sting would appear with ever larger and more complicated bands, but I never forgot the power of that simple four-piece. All four of them are of course superb musicians, but I must single out Dominic Miller as one of the most skilled and tasteful sidemen I have ever seen perform.

A long form video with alternative performances and live versions of the tracks was recorded at Sting's Lake House in Wiltshire and released in conjunction with the CD. From that video, I offer you 'Fields of Gold' for your listening pleasure.

Baptized with the Holy Spirit (sermon for January 10th)

2010-01-11T09:39:00.001-07:00

For some reason I was never a big fan of the character of Superman. I never read his comic book adventures when I was a boy, and I never went to see any of the Superman movies, even though they were very popular and got a lot of attention. But I know the story, of course – the story of how he was born on the planet Krypton and was rocketed to earth by his scientist father, minutes before Krypton was destroyed. On earth he was brought up as Clark Kent by a farming family, but as he grew up he was gradually seen to have what we would describe as supernatural powers. At a young age he decided to use those powers to benefit the whole of humanity, and the rest, as they say, is history – or, at least, comic-book history!

Superman can do amazing things because he’s not from earth and he’s not really one of us – he comes from ‘Another Place’. And I think a lot of people see Jesus in the same way. He comes among us as a human being, but he’s not really a human being – he’s the Son of God, a divine character. So it’s possible for him to do all sorts of things that we can’t do – he can work miracles, he can read people’s minds, he can live a perfect life without sin, and so on. In fact, he has an unfair advantage over us, and so he’s not actually very useful to us as an example, and all the biblical themes about the imitation of Christ aren’t really very helpful. How can we imitate Superman, when we weren’t born where he was born and we don’t have the same sort of nature as he does? And how can we imitate Jesus when he’s not a real human being with the same struggles as we have?

But the problem here isn’t with Jesus, it’s with our ideas about him. Real Christian theology stresses that when God decided to become one of us in Jesus, he wasn’t just play-acting. He took on a real human nature, with all of the limitations of that nature. For instance, he didn’t start out knowing all the stuff he was going to be taught in school; he had to grow and learn, just like other children. Luke emphasises this aspect of Jesus’ life; in chapter two of his gospel we read that ‘The child grew and became strong’ (v. 40) – in other words he didn’t start outstrong, he grew strong with time, as other children do. And later on in the chapter we read that ‘Jesus increased in wisdom and in years’ (v.52). Once again, he didn’t start out perfectly wise – he increased in it as the years went by.

The story of the baptism of Jesus, which we read this morning, continues this theme. It’s interesting to me that when Luke tells the story he doesn’t actually give a lot of attention to Jesus’ baptism itself. In fact, he doesn’t tell the story of the baptism at all; he tells us what happened after the baptism. Look at Luke 3:21-22:

Now when all the people were baptized, and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”.

Luke doesn’t seem to be all that interested in the fact that Jesus was baptized by John; he just mentions it in passing. What interests him is something different about Jesus’ baptism, something that happened only to him and to no one else around him: the fact that after he was baptized he received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Read the rest here.

The Stork is about to come into land...

2010-01-10T13:24:00.002-07:00

My first grandchild is due next Sunday (January 17th).

If everyone could pray for a safe delivery for this little person (boy or girl as yet undetermined!) and for his or her two mommies, that would be much appreciated!

Proroguing is for children

2010-01-08T11:24:00.002-07:00

Rick Mercer tells it like it is. Here's an excerpt:

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's government faces fierce opposition at every turn. Many of his cabinet choices have been rejected in a secret ballot by the more than 200 parliamentarians who sit in the legislature. Simply closing it down and operating without their consent is not an option; to do so would be blatantly undemocratic or at the very least downright Canadian. If Mr. Karzai suspended the legislature on a whim, we might be forced to ask the question why Canadians are dying to bring democracy to that country.
Stephen Harper doesn't have that problem. Our Parliament has been suspended for no other reason than the Prime Minister simply can't be bothered with the relentless checks and balances that democracy affords us. He doesn't want to have to stand in the House of Commons and hear anyone question him on any subject. I don't blame him. Parliament is filled with jackals, opportunists and boors. The problem is, like it or not, they were elected.
I also don't blame the Prime Minister for wanting to keep his ministers out of the spotlight. This is a man who could argue that he is Canada's greenest PM simply because he's the only one who has gone out of his way to give potted plants key portfolios.
The problem is, he is the one who appointed cabinet and like it or not, they are supposed to be accountable. A minister's job is not to hide in his or her riding; it is to be accountable in Ottawa – or at least that was the promise.
This Prime Minister has gone from the promise of an open, accessible and accountable government to a government that is simply closed.
It is too bad that prorogation isn't something that our soldiers had in their arsenal. When faced with the order to head out on a foot patrol in the Panjwai district of southern Afghanistan, to risk their lives to bring democracy to that place, wouldn't it be nice if they could simply prorogue and roll over and go back to sleep? Soldiers don't get that luxury. That is afforded only to the people who ultimately order them to walk down those dangerous dusty roads in the first place.

Read the rest here.

The Silver Chair

2010-01-08T10:27:00.002-07:00

Before Narnia movies went all CGI/action, they had funny 'humans-in-animal-suits' characters, but they paid a lot more attention to C.S. Lewis'original story lines.

Here's the first part of the 1990 BBC production of 'The Silver Chair'. I think it's the best Narnia story the BBC ever did, and a bit later on in the story it brings together two of my favourites: C.S. Lewis' character of Puddleglum the marsh wiggle (who I think is the best character in the whole Narnia series) is played by one of the best Doctor Who actors, Tom Baker.

After you watch this one, you can google the rest or look them up on YouTube. They're great!

My playlist from Alex's open stage last night

2010-01-07T05:00:00.004-07:00

First time not playing Christmas music for six weeks or so! I played three songs, all traditional:

'Fair Annie'
'The Duke and the Tinker'
'The Goodman'

Alex joined me for the last two. We were going to finish with my 'Watching this Town Growing Old', but Al Dunbar asked us for something vulgar, so we played the Goodman instead!

A few nuggets of pastoral wisdom (I hope!)

2010-01-07T04:25:00.004-07:00

On New Year's Eve I was reading the Old Testament reading for Morning Prayer, which was Solomon's request for wisdom in 1 Kings 3:3-14. I prayed that God would also give me the wisdom I needed to lead his people at St. Margaret's and to be a good pastor to them, and then it occurred to me that God might possibly have already answered that prayer. Over the years there are a good many nuggets of pastoral wisdom that I've picked up, and perhaps the challenge is not so much receiving new wisdom from God, but rather, putting into practice the wisdom I've already received! Here are a few of the nuggets that came to my mind (in no particular order):

People don't care what you know until they know that you care.
It's really all about helping people to know that they matter.
If the prayer life isn't right, the ministry probably won't be either.
You can never answer the same question too many times.
Pray, love, evangelise, make disciples.
If you're feeling depressed about your ministry, go out and do some visiting, and you'll soon feel better. Too often, depression comes from ministering to a desk instead of ministering to people.
Build your week around your sermon preparation, not the other way around.
Pray with people a lot. Don't be shy about it.
Someone's going to decide what your ministry priorities should be, and generally speaking, you'll be happier and more productive if it's you!
Make disciples, not just churchgoers.
Remember that people don't know the Bible anything like as much as you think they do.
Remember what it was that caused you to fall in love with Jesus in the first place. Make that the central part of your ministry to others.
'Do God'. That's what people expect from a priest, and they have a right to expect it!
Teach Christian basics often.
Competence is important, but holiness is even more important.
Always preach for a verdict.
Nurturing people's relationships with Christ and with one another is vastly more important than passing on denominational traditions.
Eat less, sleep more, hug God once a day.
Live your own life of discipleship transparently so that people can see the joys and the struggles.
Take days off faithfully, and have another consuming passion besides ministry.
Build relationships all the time.
The leader sets the tone for the level of honesty and openness in the community.
Schedule the things you don't like to do, and make sure you stick to that schedule.
50% of the job is just showing up. Especially at times when people need your pastoral support - just by showing up, you've already shown them that you care and that God cares.
This is a calling, and sacrifice and suffering is an integral part of it.
Don't try to please people. Try to please God and love people.
Thank people often.
The work never ends, so stop and go home while you've still got energy for your family.
Make sure volunteers have clear job descriptions, good training for their positions, and plenty of support.
People won't believe that God accepts them unconditionally until the minister accepts them unconditionally.
Tell people the truth (as in Matthew 18:15-20).
Preach the Gospel regularly and invite people to respond to it.
Don't react to the atmosphere on Sunday - you're the leader and it's your job to create the atmosphere (especially important when congregations are discouraged).
Ministry is about wandering - wandering through the Scriptures, wandering around among the members of the congregation, wandering around among people outside the church family...
Get the congregation to give to more than just their own church's needs - it will make them feel good about themselves, it will do good in the world, and it will often pull the regular giving along with it.

And finally...

When the weather is good, get on your skidoo and go hunt rabbits. There'll be plenty of bad weather days when you can do your work (from the former Bishop of the Arctic, Jack Sperry!).

Anyone else got any nuggets to add?

Going the second mile...

2010-01-06T09:24:00.003-07:00

I've seen this image before, but Richard reminded me of it this morning. The scripture reference is Matthew 5:41. What do you think?

By the way, if you like this image, there are a lot more here.

They were the best...

2010-01-05T23:30:00.000-07:00

Bullying in the Church / Bishops as pastors

2010-01-04T10:54:00.006-07:00

Over at 'Of Course, I Could Be Wrong', MadPriest (AKA the Rev. Jonathan Hagger) is on a rant about bullying in the church. Specifically, he's talking about bullying in the Church of England, with the parish priest as the victim. It comes in two directions as far as he's concerned: from members of the congregation (and he gives examples), and from bishops. He doesn't have a very high opinion of the bishops of the Church of England, claiming that for the last couple of decades the church has appointed managers to the position, rather than pastors.

I've never served in the Church of England, but I have had some experience of bullying in a parish, although in my case it has come mainly from members of congregations, not bishops. The funny thing is that most parishioners consider themselves to be experts in their own field of work and would not take it very well if others presume to know how they should do their jobs. But you will always find a few parishioners who are quite convinced that they know how to do the rector's job better than the man or woman (with, in my case, thirty years' experience) who happens to be their rector.

But there are also people in congregations who simply get their kicks from bullying others. Churches are especially vulnerable to them, because we feel we should be nice to everyone (how many times do we make the mistake of thinking that when Jesus told us to love everyone, what he actually meant was that we should be nice to everyone? Walter Wangerin once wrote 'The world is dying of terminal niceness!'), and so it takes a long time and a lot of provocation before people in a congregation get motivated to do something about a bully - if they ever do. Ken Haugk's fine book Antagonists in the Church addresses this problem very well; you can get the flavour in his article here.

When it comes to bishops, I've been very lucky; I've served with some of the best bishops in the church. In the Diocese of Saskatchewan I worked with the great Anglo-Catholic bishop Vicars Short, who not only had one of the finest theological minds I've ever encountered, but also understood the importance of personal contact with his clergy. When he came to visit us in our parish, he always stayed overnight, and we would stay up late talking every time (although sometimes with Vicars it was a bit of a monologue; he did like to lecture!). He was pompous, yes (he's been described as 'the last of the great prince bishops'!), and no one could write the signature +Vicars: Saskatchewan' with more flourish than he, but he loved the Lord and he loved his clergy and people, and we all knew it.

I served seven years in the Diocese of the Arctic, six of them with Jack Sperry, third bishop of the Arctic, who refused to sign his name '+John the Arctic' for fear someone would nickname him Jack Frost! Jack was an ordinary down to earth Christian, who had served nineteen years as missionary in charge of St. Andrew's Church, Coppermine, at which post he regularly did five thousand miles a year by dog team, serving the Coronation Gulf and Victoria Island parishes. Jack also loved his clergy and his people, and was loved by them; when he came to visit us in Holman (which had once been part of his parish) the mission house would fill up within an hour, with people coming to visit with their old friend and former minister 'Mister Sperry' (or 'Mister Hiperry' as the older ones would say - there was no 'sp' sound in Inuinaktun). My kids got to know him well and they remember him fondly to this day.

I now serve in the Diocese of Edmonton with Jane Alexander, who I was privileged to have as a friend before she was elected as our bishop, and who I still count as a friend today. She also is a down to earth Christian who loves people and loves the gospel and wants the church to be moving out in mission to others.

So I've served with the best, and my comments are a reflection of that experience. And what I have to say is simply this: even with the best, it's a bit romantic to think that a bishop can be a pastor to his or her clergy. Yes, we can be friends, and yes, we can enjoy each other's company, and yes, I will go to my bishops for advice and help with parish situations, but I'm not going to bare my soul and tell my darkest secrets to the person who has the right to hire and fire me. Our previous bishop, Victoria Matthews, recognised this and always refused to act as a confessor for her clergy. I'm not saying it's impossible; I'm just saying that it's very rare, and when it happens I think it's in spite of the system, not because of it. This is one of the points at which I think our theology of episcopacy needs to make contact with reality a bit more often.