Monthly Archives: July 2012

Metrics of Modernist Ministry

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Let’s face it, “The dehumanising metrics of modernist ministry” is not the snappiest title for a couple of blog posts. It is unlikely to draw the crowds who are looking for the next big secret for Christian ministry. However, if you don’t read Mark Meynell’s series you will be missing out. In two posts, entitled The Present and The Future, Mark does a superb job of identifying the way in which the Englightenment or a modernist worldview has an impact on Christian ministry. It isn’t comfortable reading, but it is very important. The problem with a worldview is that we adopt it and accept its assumptions without even thinking about it. This means that our life and ministry can be shaped by forces which that we aren’t consciously aware of – they are so self-evidently right that we don’t question them.

Across the two posts, Mark identifies five issues, which I’d like to highlight. For the most part, these are things I’ve written about, too and all have relevance to cross-cultural mission.

The economics of effectiveness

… I fear a sinister trend has crept in. For if we’re not careful, we can seek an effectiveness shaped more by Wall St than the via Dolorosa…

But in ministry…? I hear a lot of talk about constantly seeking to have an effective ministry. And who doesn’t want that? But how on earth do we measure that? The Wall St resort is to use numbers and graphs (which of course have their place): whether bums on seats, cash given tax efficiently, staff size, baptism register etc etc etc. (Or Bible translations completed, for that matter.) But that is not necessarily, or even inherently, kingdom ministry… after all, it’s pretty interesting to study Jesus’ reaction to crowds in the gospels – he was usually getting away from them; or at least suspicious of their intentions.

David Smith’s excellent book on overseas mission, Against the stream gives an excellent analysis of this issue if you want to look at it in more detail.

The impatience with slowness

I’ve blogged on this theme ad nauseam, (try this for example) but rarely with Mark’s incisiveness.

Love isn’t the drug. Speed is. We want everything yesterday. As the old credit card ad had it, “Access takes the waiting out of wanting”. And as life speeds up, our impatience thresholds deteriorate. So now, we can be incensed by a slow wi-fi speeds that hinder access to google images by a matter of seconds. But honestly! Life isn’t all a Formula 1 race in which milliseconds really do count.

But this impatience affects profoundly ministry. Which is a problem, because a brief concordance search of the word ‘wait’ in the New Testament will demonstrate that it features rather a lot. From my cursory glance, it looks as though the most common adverbs used in conjunction with waiting are ‘eagerly’ and, yes you guessed it, ‘patiently’ (Romans 8:25, Hebrews 6:15,James 5:7).

The franchising of norms

But we must take care never to let the next revolutionary (yet another modernist concept) ‘package’, usually but not always from a highly ‘successful’ and branded global ministry based in America, become the backbone of your work. There may well be things to learn, but if it is your primary source, you’ll only abandon it as soon as the next ‘better’ (i.e. well-marketed) package appears.

The nature of the Church is to be a multi-cultural, multi-lingual body. We lose something very important when we allow ourselves to become a monochrome reflection of our real nature.

The hubris of strategy?

 I have preached on The Good Samaritan a number of times and have often made this point. If the reason the Priest and Levite failed to help the dying man was their commitment to legalistic holiness, our contemporary excuse for not ‘going to do likewise’ is more likely to be our commitment to our strategy. And a dying man / homeless beggar / uneducated refugee / disabled child(delete as appropriate) just isn’t strategic.

I wrote a blog post on this issue a few years back, inspired by something Tim Chester had written.

The slavery of novelty

The modernist is abhors the status quo, is hardly ever patient, and is usually dissatisfied. And there is a sense in which this is a good thing. We never want to be static. And in fact, there is a spiritual benefit to this mindset, when it is constantly striving towards what God has called us to in life and lifestyle. But battling in holiness is one thing. Constantly looking for the new ministry buzz is quite another.

…the very nature of our kingdom ‘product’ – the gospel, that is – is not so much its antiquity, but its eternity. We don’t need to sing with the psalmist “a new song” every week – unless we realise that God’s newest song is only 2000 years young for it is the song of the Lamb. Of course the song needs rearticulation and reharmonising in every new generation or culture. But it isn’t essentially a new song anymore. Not really.

These quotes from Mark’s blog are out of context and he is more nuanced in his arguments than I’ve indicated here, so I do suggest (insist?) that you head over and read the full posts.

We are often quick to point out how the Christian message should impact the lives of others, but the biggest challenge is whether we will allow the Gospel access to those unspoken assumptions of our lives, the things which drive our attitudes and our ministries and which we seldom even think about.

How I learned to Sing: A Story

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I smiled nervously as the angel shook my by the hand and said “welcome to heaven. Let me show you around”. That first brief tour passed in a bit of a blur, there was far too much to take in, but the angel told me not to worry as I’d have plenty of time to look around. But there was one thing I do remember, the music room.

The angel opened a door and I found myself standing in a huge room; I really do mean huge, far bigger than any stadium I’d ever seen. The room was circular, with marble and frescoed walls, with a huge dome and although I couldn’t see any windows, the room was flooded with sunlight. I found myself standing on a balcony which ran round the room, just below the dome and below me there were hundreds and thousands of musicians all playing. No matter how hard I try, I’ll never describe the sound of that music; it was beautiful and eloquent all at the same time. There were all sorts of different musical styles which combined into an amazing harmony and all of which spoke of the Triune God.

Just below me, I picked out a Welsh male voice choir. I could distinctly hear the bass notes sounding out pointing me to the majestic God who created the world by the power of his voice. A bit further over, there was a group of African drummers painting a picture of the Spirit who moves like the wind and brings joy and peace. And so it went on. There was a group of monks singing plainsong, what looked like an English cathedral choir and hundreds of groups of people from all around the world, playing instruments I didn’t recognise and creating music which was entirely new to me. Even though there were hundreds of groups, playing an amazing diversity of music, I could still pick out each song from among the others and every song told me something about God; Father, Son and Spirit. Each song captured something that the other groups missed.

The whole lot should have sounded horrible, but far from it. Each song and musical style combined with all of the others to tell a story, to help me understand, to point me to God. The harmony created by all of these musical styles was stunning. Each one brought something new, but the whole was far more than the sum of the parts. Each choir, each group, needed the others and together they worshipped God.

As I listened, I noticed someone at the far end of the room stand up and walk out. I was surprised, why would any musician leave a group like that? But I was too taken up in the music to think too much about one musician. Then as I stood there, I felt someone standing behind me and a hand was laid on my shoulder. I turned, and recognised the musician from the far end of the room; he looked at me, half smiling, his eyes brimming with tears.

“Thank-you”, he said.

“Why, what have I done?”

“You prayed for the people who translated the Bible into my language. It was that Bible which led me to Christ. God answered your prayers and now I’m here, playing in this orchestra.”

I looked at him and my eyes filled with tears, too. It was then I started to sing. I’d never been much of a singer before, but now my voice soared and fitted perfectly with the music from across the globe, in praise of the Lamb who died.

A Bit of Poetry

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These lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins have been favourites of mine since my teenage years and I thought I’d reproduce them here. There is no great significance other than the fact that they express my sentiments far better than I ever could.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

The picture is of me enjoying the wildness and wet on Skye.

Sound Track of My Life: Part …

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I was saddened to learn, today, that Jon Lord, the keyboard player with Deep Purple has died. Heavy Rock isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I’ve always had a great affection for ‘Purple’ since I first heard their Made in Japan album almost forty years ago. (Good grief, I feel old.)

Although Deep Purple were always best known as a vehicle for Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar playing (bam, bam-bam, bam-bam-ba-bam) it was Lord’s subtle keyboards that really gave the band their distinctive sound. If you like good, seventies rock, take the nine minutes or so you need to watch this video; crank the volume up to 11 and enjoy!

 

Mission: Unity and Diversity

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The Nicene Creed includes the following line:

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

The wording may be slightly archaic, and some Protestants struggle at the use of the word “catholic”, but this phrase captures an important Biblical principle: there is one Christian Church. Across time and geography, the Christian Church, the bride of Christ, is a single united body. One of the huge privileges of my work is that I have had the huge privilege of sharing in the lives of Christians from all sorts of parts of the world and I’ve experienced the unity of the Church in remarkable ways.

Of course the Church is not one because we are such a wonderful bunch of people, the unity of the Church is inherited from the One God whom we serve and follow.

3 Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. 4 For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all. (Ephesians 4:3-6 NLT)

The Church is united, but it is also incredibly diverse. Andrew Walls wrote a wonderful article which explores how Christianity would appear to a time-travelling sociologist who visited Christians in different places and at different points in time. At first glance there would be very little in common between the scholars who argued over the finer points of the Nicene Creed and a group of Christians worshipping in Lagos today.

The Christian Church is rather strange, it is a picture of unity and diversity. Which brings us back to the theme of the Trinity and to the sketch at the top of this post. The Church is united because there is one God. But the Church is varied because the Triune God is a God of variety. When the Spirit first empowered the disciples to speak to the crowds in Jerusalem, he enabled people to hear in their own languages. God does not force us all into one mould; the Church has space for all languages and cultures.

We’ll get onto the relevance of unity and diversity for mission in the next post, but I need to make one more comment in passing.

Sadly, down through the centuries, Christians have spent a lot of time, energy and blood trying to divide the indivisible body of Christ. We’ve been so intent on drawing lines to say who is in and who is out, that we’ve often overlooked the amazing unity which is the inheritance of the Church. The Church is united, but we often determined to live as though this were not true; this must pain the Lord who prayed that we would be one. (John 17:23)

Paul says that we have to “make every effort to keep ourselves united”. We have to take this seriously, if we divide the Church, we are effectively saying that there is more than one Lord, more than one God. That isn’t on!

It Ain’t What You Do, It’s the Way That You Do It

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This is an edited version of my monthly letter to Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Staff (with added links and a Bananarama video!)

As some of you will know, I’m rather allergic to some of the narrative about speed and progress that sometimes makes its way into discussions about Bible translation. It’s not that I’m allergic to speed per se; just ask anyone who has been a passenger in a car that I was driving. I’m simply not convinced that doing things faster is always a good thing in Christian ministry.

Of course, all things being equal, producing a New Testament translation in five years rather than fifteen is undoubtedly a good thing. The problem is, that all things are not equal. In Christian work, the things we accomplish are only part of the story; the way in which we accomplish them is also incredibly important. Research on translation work has shown that one of the key factors in the long term use of translated Scriptures is the godly witness and example of the team doing the translation. Building relationships and demonstrating the love of Christ is as much a part of Bible translation as exegeting a tricky passage from Romans.

Of course, this is true in all aspects of our work, not just translation. We have jobs to do, things to accomplish, goals to be met. But the way in which we do these things is as least as important as actually getting them done. We are responsible for building others up, encouraging them, challenging them and helping them to walk with Christ, just as we are responsible for meeting our work targets.

When Sue and I lived in a Kouya village we were acutely aware that most of the people around us were not believers and that we had a responsibility to show Jesus to the Kouya people in our life and words. I fear that in some Christian contexts, we live in isolated bubbles and don’t feel the same compulsion to demonstrate Christ to our colleagues as we would to non-believers. This is a big mistake!

The way in which we live as followers of Christ is, perhaps, especially acute at times of stress and change, when the temptation can be to grumble or ‘go off the deep end’. the church and mission agencies are all going through big changes at the moment and many of us, in different parts of the world, are feeling under pressure. Let’s pray for God’s strength to go through this time in a way that pleases him and helps us all to walk more closely with Christ.

 

Mission: The Trinity 2

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In my last post in this series, I suggested (not for the first time) that the mission of the Church has its roots in the character of the Triune God. In this post I’d just like to take that concept a little bit further.

One God in Three Persons. God is one and yet he exists in three distinct persons. In other words, God is a God of unity and diversity. The diversity bit is more or less straightforward. The Father is not the Son or the Spirit, and the Son is not the Spirit; the Godhead demonstrates diversity. The unity that we see in the Godhead is not the simple uniformity which comes when there is no variation, but a true unity in which Father, Son and Spirit, three persons are united as one God. This is difficult to get your head round – but it is important. We’ll come back to it in the next post.

Running Report June 2012

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We are half-way through the year and I’m half way through my self-imposed challenge to run 750 miles during the year. The last three months have been rather mixed. I’ve had some weeks where I ran well over twenty miles and then a two-week period in Thailand where I didn’t run at all. During our holiday on Skye, I did no long runs, though I did run through some wonderful countryside as you can see from the photo above.

What this means is this:

Target to date: 375 miles
Distance run: 357 miles

In other words, I’m a little over a week behind schedule. I should be able to make this up fairly easily over the next six months as long as my joints hold up. I have noticed that my knees and ankles have been fairly sore of late. I probably need to improve my stretching routine – does anyone have any good suggestions?

In July I hope to take part in the High Wycombe half-marathon and then I’ll be starting to think about preparation for the London Marathon next year (stay tuned for more news about this).

Oh, my running software says that I’ve used up the equivalent of 86 burgers.