The ecclesiological bottom line
Talking to Cid Latty of the cafechurch network, the question of ecclesiology came up. Like many successful evangelistic ventures, cafechurch are finding some of their gatherings being viewed/used as the primary location of church for some of those who attend, rather than as a stepping-stone for people to find their way into the church congregations that began them. (I know of Alpha courses, youth groups, pensioners’ groups, and other places where the same thing has happened.) Cid, responsibly, asked the question, if the cafechurch is becoming church, what does it need to be? A cafechurch meeting typically involves an element of teaching, probably with some presentation of a Bible text, although it might not be straightforwardly read. It involves discussion and engagement over issues, and majors on real human relationships. It might not involve any corporate – or perhaps even individual – prayer, and probably wouldn’t involve any sung worship. Does this prevent it from being ‘church’? Surprisingly, the standard theological answer would seem to be ‘no’. The church in ecumenical confession is ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.’ The meaning of those terms will be disputed, but I can’t off-hand think of an account that demands corporate prayer or sung worship. In Reformation confession, the church is marked by the pure preaching of the Word, the right adminstration of the (two) sacraments, and (possibly) the exercise of Biblical church discipline. Cafechurch meetings might not have much in the way of sacraments, but if a newcomer were baptised somewhere on profession of faith (if not already baptised as an infant…), and if twice a year (say) a special meeting involving the celebration of the Eucharist (with bread and wine, of course – not lattes and belgian waffles) were held, the gathering would be ‘church’ by those theological definitions that the tradition supplies. So what? Well, perhaps this highlights the gaps in those traditional definitions (whose authors and defenders surely assumed that when the church gathered, God’s name would be praised, if not necessarily in song, and prayer would be offered). But the English nonconformist, and Scots Presbyterian, traditions developed in that way during the nineteenth century, sometimes, with the set-piece sermon as the absolute heart of the service of worship, and all else brief and perfunctory (and sometimes referred to as ‘the preliminaries’!) It’s a good question, though, and a live one missiologically, as Cid demonstrates: what does a gathering need to be to be adequately...
Read MoreBeing insulted by a great resource
Last BUGB/BMS Assembly post (I know it’s ugly, but I refuse to call it ‘The Baptist Assembly’ as the organisers do – we’ve got a Baptist Assembly here in Scotland, and there’s one in Wales, and so on). It’s approaching five years since Heather and I moved up here, and so five years since we’ve been to this particular Assembly. The highlight, unquestionably, was reconnecting with old friends and seeing and hearing how vocations and ministries have developed. I also rediscovered some circles I was once a part of. One was the Baptist Union Initiative with people with Learning Disabilities (BUILD), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and continues to do creative and amazing things that are more gospel-shaped than any other mission initiative I’ve ever come across; the astonishing Faith Bowers, the best president BUGB never had, told me some of what was going on. Another was the Baptist Retreat Group, where I was greeted by Pamela Neville, whose ability to remember people is remarkable – we had met, but not often, and it was seven years ago… BRG are revising all their ‘Occasional papers’, which in a few pages offered always wise and sometimes striking counsel on the call to prayer. Simple but necessary topics were covered (Margaret Jarman on ‘How to plan a retreat’; Will Thompson on ‘What is Spiritual Direction?’), along with others, where distinctive Baptist concerns overlapped with the wider retreat movement (Susan Stevenson on ‘Prayer and the City’; John Rackley on ‘The Spirituality of Peace’; Jim Gordon on ‘Listening to God in the Church Meeting’ – now there’s an idea!). As a result of the revision, copies of the old papers were being given away. I learned much from some of them once, but lost my copies in one or another house move; I was glad to be able to revisit them. Pam suddenly said, ‘You must have this one!’ and thrust into my hands John Rackley’s ‘Prayer in Midlife’. Yeah, thanks, Pam. I’m not 40 yet, you know. Not quite… She hastened to explain that ‘midlife’ did not mean ‘middle aged’. As John describes it in the paper, it is the collision of a sense of disastisfaction with the life you once struggled to construct for yourself, and the acceptance of the wounds, and the wounds to come, that those areas of life you cannot control inflict on you. One of the disconcerting realities of being around people in the retreat movement is their perceptiveness of the truth. Pam was right – this was for me. John Rackley was the BUGB President who welcomed me into accredited ministry at the end of my less-than-glorious probationary period. In the paper he quotes Theilard and Jung; hardly my normal sources. But the practical suggestions are powerful. ‘Consider how your gifts have been a source of pain and suffering to you and to others.’ Ouch. But, yes – those wounds and that guilt are there, pricking and debilitating, making me hesitate to do the very things that God has, graciously, enabled me to be some use at. It happens I have a retreat booked later this month. This time, from afar, Pam and John will be my...
Read MoreExpository preaching
At the BUGB/BMS Assembly, I had the privilege of giving the George Beasley-Murray Memorial Lecture, on preaching, and of listening to several excellent examples of the art, notably from Pat Took and Lauran Bethell. Sally Nelson’s Whitley lecture, whilst not preaching, was academically excellent, pastorally sensitive, and personally moving – an impressive combination. I made a comment in passing about ‘expository preaching’ in the course of my lecture which has led me to further reflection on the theme, following the thoughts of Haddon Robinson. He cautions, in his Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages, that we should understand ‘expository preaching’ to be a philosophy of preaching, not a method of preaching (p. 20). There is nothing magical about working through a text word by word, verse by verse, or whatever. Indeed, as I suggested in passing in my lecture, it is extraordinarily hard to do this well: the older preachers – Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine – did it by using all the techniques of classical rhetoric to add shape and colour to what might have been a very flat discourse; Pat Took gave the best example I’ve heard in a long time at the Assembly, not least by using different voices to bring illustrations of her points from literature, and to punctuate the shape of her sermon; but ‘this verse says this; that verse says that; …’ is usually pretty deadly, and the exaltation of it to some magical perfect method of preaching is merely bizarre. Understood as a philosophy, as a claim that, whatever the method and shape of the sermon, it is constructed to enable the message of the text to make its claim on the hearers, ‘expository preaching’ is vital, however – or so Robinson claims. This seems to me precisely right, and it captures a couple of the emphases I made in my lecture. On the one hand, preaching finds its only reality in announcing and applying a message that is discovered through disciplined exegesis of the sacred text. If that is not happening, it is not preaching (it might be an inspiring lecture on a religious theme, but that is still not preaching). On the other hand, however, if the goal of preaching is to reshape and to change lives and worlds, not merely to inform and instruct (and I take it that this is the goal of preaching, for various reasons outlined in the lecture), then there is a need, under God, to select rhetorical methods that are best directed towards effecting such change. This will, of course, mean that we preach in extended monologues (which, and every communications professional I have read agrees, are the best way to effect change of behaviour in human beings); it will also mean that we give attention to all the skills of using such monologues to change hearts and minds, and a dry recitation of information is, oddly enough, not one of them. Exposition as a philosophy, never deviated from; but methods drawn from far and wide – plotted moves and Lowry loops and constructed narratives, and all the rest. Perhaps I could call in ‘Ancient-future preaching’ and make some...
Read MoreLiving in the real world
I’ve commented fairly often in conversation that the only downside of having moved to St Andrews is, when faced with the most irritating comment that comes to pastors and academics alike, ‘But you don’t live in the real world, do you?’ I now simply have to admit, no; this strange and marvelous town is many things, but it is just a little too like fairyland to be ‘the real world’. The thought came back to me when I noticed that several friends (including Andy and Craig) had launched an initiative at the recent BUGB/BMS Assembly called Real Life Worship. The stated aim (in a post by Andy) is this: It is an attempt to connect real life to worship. Worship that forms us relationally, politically, socially and economically. Now, I understand the point, and I support it wholeheartedly (and I love the prayer that forms the first substantial blog post), but I find the language odd – and actually slightly disturbing. What is ‘real life,’ or ‘the real world’? If we interrogate the use of the terms, it tends to end up in one of two places: either finance, or a place of naked suffering. (To their credit, Andy, Craig, and friends seem not to have fallen into either of these traps; rather they are aiming at something like ‘the rest of life’ or ‘ordinary living’). The notion that there is something ontologically basic (‘real’) about finance is merely ridiculous. Like all idols, money is a fiction, one which we once found useful but now have imbued with so much authority over our lives that it has the ability to destroy us. (This concept of idolatry from 1 Cor 8.) Money may be powerful, but it is in no way ‘real’. It makes promises that it is unable to keep (‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand…’ – the notes I current have in my wallet carry this promise from RBS, and it seems a little hollow), on which we choose to build our lives (and so we have reconstructed our society in far-reaching ways to protect me, and RBS, from their defaulting on that promise). Our choice does not make it ‘real’ – it merely makes us foolish. Alternatively, ‘the real world’ is the place where struggle and suffering is most visible and desperate. There is something more ‘authentic’ about life on an urban estate (or in the face of urban poverty) than in the comfortable suburbs. This idea is more explicable than the previous one: human reactions in contexts of suffering and poverty are generally more immediate and direct, less covered over by the mores of polite society. But still, is this ‘real’? I presume that God is real. Our reality is the truth of our being as intended and determined by God. It would be tempting to become slightly Buddhist at this point, and claim suffering as illusion, but that would be wrong. East of Eden, God’s determination of human life is gospel shaped, following the pattern of cross-and-resurrection. Suffering is real, but only within this wider narrative. What, however, of where I started: pastoral ministry; academic life; the practice of worship? I claim no privilege for the academy, but I’m not sure that I am prepared to accept any necessary deficit, either. A particular moment of academic life, or a whole academic career, may proceed at some disconnection from reality, but there is nothing necessary or even likely about that. We are as capable as surrending to the idol of financially-driven priorities, and so living unreal lives, as anyone else, but not more so, as far as I can see; we are capable of devoting ourselves to chasing irrelevancies, but so are many others. Pastoral ministry I do claim privilege for. The calling of the pastor is, by the ministry of Word and sacrament, to be a constant reminder of the real world in the lives of those who chase idols or illusions, and to fit them for reality. Worship, finally, and back to Andy’s language: ‘connecting real life to worship’? How can we imagine worship that is not connected to ‘real life,’ the life God is forming within us and fitting us for? Worship is real life, pretty much; all other life is ‘real’ only insofar as it is ordered by worship. (Of course, I realise that the ‘Real Life Worship’ folks know this, and are precisely aiming to find modes of worship that usefully order the rest of life so it becomes real – an urgent and necessary task; I’m not trying to criticise what they are doing, only reflecting on a chance turn of...
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