Sabbatical, Day 5

Having finished my summaries of The Starfish And The Spider yesterday, I spent much of this morning dividing them into natural sections. It turned out that meant eight. I uploaded the first one, and to my surprise got a comment from none other than the Tall Skinny Kiwi himself, Andrew Jones. Many will know Andrew as the doyen of Christian blogging and an engaging, irenic voice in the missional world. He is a scholar and a gent to take the trouble to pass by this obscure backwater blog and leave a comment. I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way, but I felt honoured.

By the way, numbers two to eight in the Starfish series will appear over the next week, one a day, scheduled to appear at 9:00 am each day.

There’s not much reading I can do to prepare for my week at Cliff College next week. Over the years, I’ve read several titles on the reading list for the unit and am going along for stimulation and edification. The weather forecast remains a concern, especially with heavy snow still predicted for the Peak District on Sunday, when I am due to travel. Conditions have eased around here now, but major roads in this region and others on the way that I would be using still look ominous. The M1 for a start. Since I’m auditing this course at Cliff courtesy of a kind anonymous bursary, I have it in mind to ask if I can switch to another course if I can’t make next week. Right now it doesn’t look promising, but there speaks one with the spiritual gift of pessimism.

I have, however, been gathering material ready for my trip later in the month to Trinity College, Bristol, where I shall be spending a week with Anglican ordinands and other students looking at personality type and ministry. Down from the shelf has come ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You‘ (no, not by Alan Partridge) by Malcolm Goldsmith and Martin Wharton. The subtitle is, ‘Exploring Personality Type and Temperament’. It’s based on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, which is being used on the course. I’m armed with the knowledge that I’m INTP.

I also dug out a birthday present from about three years ago. My sister, who is an Occupational Therapist at a hospice, had been on an Enneagram course with the hospice chaplain. She bought me Richard Rohr‘s book ‘The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective‘. Once I knew I wanted to explore this theme during a sabbatical, it seemed right to put it aside until then.

While hunting for something else, I found the Grove booklet ‘Personality and Renewal‘ by William Kay. I’m flicking through that.

The something else was another Grove booklet I’ve been trying to find ever since we moved here three and a half years ago. Something always goes missing. It’s ‘Personality and the Practice of Ministry‘ by Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins. Based not on Myers Briggs, Enneagram or anything else, Francis and Robbins use Hans Eysenck‘s personality test based on extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. I ended up paying to download the e-book version in PDF format, which seemed less wasteful, in the vain hope my original hard copy might turn up one day.

Meanwhile, I found an online version of Eysenck’s test, and here are my results. They tell you a lot about why I want to explore the relationship between personality type and the practice of ministry, because on the surface I just don’t fit the typical stereotypes and expectations:

Eysenck’s Test Results

Extraversion (27%) low which suggests you are very reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and private.
Neuroticism (77%) high which suggests you are very worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.
Psychoticism (33%) moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly kind natured, trusting, and helpful at the expense of your own individual development (martyr complex).

Take Eysenck Personality Test (similar to EPQ-R)
personality tests by similarminds.com

One other good thing today. The post is returning to normal here (shame about the refuse collections). That meant the arrival of Mike Frost and Alan Hirsch‘s new book ‘ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church‘. I put it on pre-order with Amazon the moment I knew about it. Today is a good day. Except for the fact that I paid £10.44 and it’s now £8.53.

February 5, 2009 12

25 Things

I’ve been tagged by my friend Jenny Vass on this web meme. This will take a while, so I’ll type a few random things as I remember them over the day, so here goes:

1. I was born in the Salvation Army Mothers’ Hospital in Clapton, north-east London.

2. I have a big head (I hope only literally), which made my birth distressing for my mother, and explains why my parents waited six years before having my sister.

3. I grew up in the same road that Bruce Forsyth did. Not at the same time.

4. On a school trip to Whipsnade Zoo, my mum gave me nineteen shillings in spending money. When the teacher announced we could only take seven shillings and sixpence with us, I kept quiet. I spent every last penny in the zoo gift shop. Mum was distraught: she had given me the balance of her housekeeping and had only intended the extra sum for an emergency.

5. I became best friends with my mate Jean when he joined my primary school at the age of seven. Nearly forty-two years later, we’re still friends and he was best man at my wedding.

6. Once, while Jean and I were boys, we were stopped by a van driver asking for directions. We made it all up and off he went.

7. Jean is an accomplished guitarist. We used to write songs together, even though I’m not musical.

8. When I was eight and my sister was two, she hit me over the head with my cricket bat.

9. I was the only child from my primary school to go to my secondary school.

10. I hated school, even though I did well academically. The reason? Bullying.

11. Glandular fever-like infections seriously disrupted my schooling at fourteen and fifteen, and a neck problem at eighteen. But for the neck problem, I would have read Computer Science at Imperial College, London.

12. I was a union rep for my office when I worked in the civil service.

13. I used to go to winter nets to practise with my Dad’s cricket team when I was a teenager. I didn’t know until adulthood that the men couldn’t read my spin bowling. I’d have given up quick bowling if I’d known.

14. Theological study: I had three wonderful years at Trinity College, Bristol and three terrible ones at Hartley Victoria Methodist College, Manchester.

15. On the surface I’m all academic, theoretical and conceptual, but underneath a creative person is trying to break out. That’s why I did a creative writing course at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity with the Association of Christian Writers in my last sabbatical, and I’m taking a photography course at Lee Abbey in this one.

16. I am left-handed, have blue eyes and have worn glasses since I was eleven.

17. My first computer was an Amstrad PCW 9512. I ditched the noisy, inflexible daisywheel printer, bought an Epson 24-pin dot matrix and installed that instead. I wrote my MPhil thesis on it. I’ve been fiddling with computers ever since. Had the neck problem not hit when I was eighteen (see 11 above), I would have done so from a younger age.

18. My first car was a hideous yellow Ford Escort with a grim gearchange. I backed it into a tree, the boot sprang open, and for a long while I held it down with a friend’s old tie (= ‘necktie’ for my north American friends).

19. I once saw Oasis before the were Oasis. They were called The Rain and were supporting Roachford at a Manchester University gig. They were rubbish. Still are.

20. Our son Mark is named after my favourite of the Four Gospels. We brainstormed four names, wrote them down, folded them up and put them into a hat for Rebekah, then a small toddler, to pick. Both of our children have middle names taken from grandparents. Mark’s is Alan after my Dad, Rebekah’s is Anita after Debbie’s late Mum. That gives both of them full initials that have something to do with flying. Rebekah is RAF; Mark is MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship). That’s a coincidence, but a nice one, since I come from an Air Force family.

21. I got into SLR photography after a mission trip to the north of Norway in 1981 when I was the only member of the party not to own a camera. Dad has been an amateur photographer as long as I can remember, and he took me to his favourite shop, City Camera Exchange by Cannon Street station in London, where I bought a Minolta XG-1.

22. I once tried to learn the guitar when a church member offered classes free of charge. As a result, I own a Fender acoustic. Unfortunately, the lessons began clashing with essential church appointments and I was unable to continue. The guitar and its electronic tuning gadget stay dormant in its case.

23. I studied Theology under George Carey. Shame he’s an Arsenal supporter.

24. I went from being a rabid teetotaller to a wine lover and now back to being teetotal. Originally, I held to a teetotal view on what I realised were legalistic grounds. Giving them up, I discovered the joys of wine. Unfortunately, medication I’m on for raised blood pressure now recommends I abstain.

25. The most serious surgery I’ve had is a pleurectomy on my left lung to prevent further recurrences of spontaneous pneumothorax. Go look it up. That’s why I inserted the links.

Right, that’s taken far too long on and off. I’m going to tag twenty-five people on Facebook, once this has uploaded to my notes there.

February 5, 2009 2

The Starfish And The Spider, Part 1: Some Introductory Notes

As reported in recent posts, I have been typing up some quick notes on The Starfish And The Spider as part of my sabbatical work. I have split them into several parts. They will appear over the next few days, one part per day. You will find certain themes recurring, not least those of humility and trust.

I am following a convention in that my comments should appear in a different colour from the rest of the text.

I would be very interested in your comments.

So here goes with some introductory words.

The main thesis of the book lies in the metaphor to which the title alludes. Historic organisations are like spiders, with a central control point of a brain. If the legs are progressively removed, the organisation is crippled more and more. Starfish are different. There is no central nervous system. Neural characteristics are distributed throughout their body. Cut a starfish into two and they will both grow into new, separate creatures. Today, we are seeing similar changes in companies and organisations in society. On the Internet, P2P networks, eBay, craigslist and others all exhibit this starfish characteristic. Similarly, political campaigning organisations such as the Animal Liberation Front and terrorist groups like al-Qaeda operate like this.

Historically, tribes like the Apaches were able to survive the attacks of Cortes because they were decentralised and ‘leaderless’, unlike the Aztecs and Incas, who were simply weaker spiders than the Spanish spider.

The book examines the characteristics of starfish groups in more detail, considers how they might be countered and looks at hybrid companies that combine elements of starfish and spider.

My interest in the book comes from it having become influential in emerging and missional church circles. I want to consider how far its models are consonant with a biblically rooted faith, and how far it is simply a business management model that has been as uncritically adopted in these parts of the church as the consumer corporation approach, where the senior pastor is the CEO, has in megachurch and other post-Enlightenment style churches.

Centralised organisations have a coercive structure and they need this to function well. Decentralised groups have an open structure. Leaders have influence through their example but not power. Rules exist, but they are not enforced from the top, they are distributed across the network. Decisions can be made anywhere. How does this compare with apostolic ministry? Paul has authority, but he has to plead and exhort; he also calls people to imitate him as he imitates Christ. It is not completely decentralised, although Paul himself pops up separately from the original apostles. However, it seems far from later and contemporary authoritarian or centralised models of church and leadership. There is a question here about the biblical appropriateness of much church leadership. 1 Thessalonians 5:12ff talks about ‘leaders’ in the church who ‘are over you’, but the basis for their receiving respect is their ‘hard work’.

February 5, 2009 3

Sabbatical, Day 4

At last. I’ve just finished typing my summary notes of ‘The Starfish and the Spider‘. They exceed three and a half thousand words, so when I post them to the blog I shall certainly split them up. There are probably about seven sections in what I’ve summarised.

The job got finished, because the children’s school was open again today. Snow still lies thick on much ground around here, including the school playground, which was out of bounds, but a path had been cleared to enable parents to get children to their classrooms this morning. Peace at last!

I made one or two phone calls this morning. I am due to travel on Sunday to Cliff College in the Peak District to spend five days studying there. Every day I enter their postcode into the five-day weather forecast section of the BBC website. Currently, heavy snow is predicted for them on Sunday. It’s too early for them to consider cancelling the course, but clearly it is a possibility.

During the day, I found a particularly interesting blog post on Mark Batterson’s Evotional site. Entitled ‘Chief Storyteller‘, Batterson proposes this as a description of a senior pastor’s rôle. We are called to retell ‘genesis stories’ that show where we have come from and where we are headed. There is an intimate connection between the past and the future, to the point that ‘stories of the past … frame visions of the future.’

I think there is a lot in this. My one query (which I left in a comment on the blog) runs something like this. I see great value in this approach in that the ‘genesis stories’ tell us key things about our spiritual DNA, the purposes for which God called our community into being. I’m not so sure they remain the entire framing reference for all future vision. We need to make allowance for the possibility of paradigm shifts that appear to come out of nowhere and seem to bear little relation to our prior trajectory. Even where genesis stories do give us vision for the future, that vision can change shape drastically. A classic example would be the radical reinterpretation of Old Testament texts in the New Testament. In the light of Christ, OT texts bear a wieght they didn’t originally carry in the minds of their authors.

Let’s end today with this. I received a friend request on Facebook today and I didn’t recognise the name. I sent a polite message to the person, asking her to remind me where I knew her. Back came a reply in which she admitted she didn’t know me, but had seen my name on a mutual friend’s list and she thought I was ‘an awesome man of God’.

Well, the lady is clearly very kind, but Debbie would soon correct her misapprehension of me. I am nervous of these descriptions, not out of low self-esteem, but out of a need to protect myself. I have seen Christian leaders who believe the hype, and I wait for them to fall. I can remember one grisly example back in Kent.

Eleven years ago, I was involved in putting on a one-day conference for members of worship bands. Cutting a long story short, at the end of the evening celebration, two women went from the conference to pray with a man who should have been there but had sustained a fall. As they prayed, he felt the heat of the Holy Spirit and was healed. I emailed this story around a few networks at the time, and back came a reply from someone who ran an email group about revival: “David, you mighty man of God.” I had to sit at the computer and type back immediately, explaining I hadn’t even been one of the people who had prayed for the sick man. I was merely recounting the story. As I said, believing the hype is dangerous. The glory must always go to God. And not just in the times of ‘success’, but the opposite too. ‘Though the fig tree does not blossom … yet will I praise him,’ said Habbakuk.

But for those of you who might enjoy a satirical take on self-important and self-deluded leaders, I can do no better than to recommend the wonderful Brant Hansen’s 417 Rules Of Awesomely Bold Leadership. Have a smile. Or a hernia, if you read too many.

February 4, 2009 2

Sabbatical, Day 3

“Yes!” shouted Rebekah, hurtling her fist into the air as if into orbit.

There would be no school for a second day running. I had checked the BBC Essex website at 7:30 this morning. The children’s school appeared in the long list of those shut again today.

Even Mark was happy. Yesterday, Rebekah had been thrilled not to go to school, but Mark – ever the self-motivated swot at four years old – had been disappointed. Today, however, he was pleased. “I can play in the snow again,” he said, contentedly.

And that pleased me. So often he is like me. In my youth, I barely had a childhood, I was so serious. If Mark were actually learning to enjoy play, then that had to be a good thing.

Not such a good thing for my sabbatical studies, though. After sending a parcel back at the Post Office (we thought we were getting a bargain on a Wii console from Price-Drop TV but no, it was only accessories) and buying Buttercup Infant at the pharmacy, I joined the rest of the family at the Green for more fun in the snow. Debbie knew how to get me there: bring your camera, she said. Well, that would be better than yesterday’s frozen extremities.

It went well. I’ve uploaded a few photos to my Facebook profile for those of you who are ‘friends’ on FB, albeit without cropping or any other shenanigans in Photoshop Elements.

Mark on his sledge tray, 3rd February 2009

Not only that, Rebekah got invited back to our next door neighbour’s house for several hours. Result!

So mid-afternoon, I got back to typing up my thoughts on The Starfish And The Spider. I felt rather tired, though, and even now around 9:30 pm I still haven’t finished. I’m at 2500 words, which all the more means that when I post this on the blog, it will be in a series of chunks.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering about the weather and the next few days. Today was supposed to be three or four degrees above freezing, but little of the snow has melted. There is still a lot of snow that has been compacted to ice underfoot. In particular, I’m not just looking at the five-day forecast for Chelmsford, but for the Peak District too. I’m due to be at Cliff College next week for a course. It starts at 9:15 am next Monday, and I’m hoping to travel on Sunday and stay overnight at the college beforehand. So far, I’ve emailed once and phoned twice but still not got it set up. But I hope the weather will have subsided sufficiently by then to make the journey viable. I shall need to take a fair amount of stuff with me, making a public transport journey impractical.

Anyway, the good news is that the school will be back open tomorrow, so I hope for fewer distractions then, apart from our weekly Tesco delivery. I’ve just sent in our order via the wonderful My Supermarket site. It allows you to compare prices with other online supermarket delivery services. You can easily check the cheapest version of the goods you want to buy. Also, you can find recommendations for lower calorie versions of your desired food. If they only added a tab to search out fair trade items, it would be near-perfect.

Anyway, that’s my shopping tip for the day, which is hardly the reason anybody reads this blog. So I think I’ll sign off and say, “See you tomorrow.”

Deo volente, of course.

February 3, 2009 2

Sabbatical, Day 2

Well, here’s a tune for today:

Yes, after the snow that made a flourishing entrance yesterday afternoon, it continued all night and we woke up to a thick and persistent covering, with temperatures comfortably below zero Celsius. The children’s school was closed, as were most in Essex, and the snow received such a welcome from the children that it decided to keep arriving all day.

This morning, we spent an hour or two in the garden. I don’t know whether Rebekah is an instinctive young feminist – her usual prediliction for girlie things and the colour pink might not fit the stereotype – but she insisted we make a snowwoman:

Rebekah and Mark by the snowwoman, 2nd February 2009

After a walk to the local Somerfield for soup and a few goodies, we had a restful lunch before a trip to the nearby green, a few hundred yards down our road. Two more hours of freezing while the children sledged down an incline and played with neighbourhood friends.

I’m sure I should have done some theological reflection as my extremities protested about the temperatures, but in truth I was more warmed later by the news that Robbie Keane is returning to Spurs.

All ‘proper’ sabbatical work has been relegated to this evening. I am beginning to write a summary document of The Starfish And The Spider, which I recently referenced here. I said I was interested in this book, because it has been popular over the last two years in missional and emerging church circles. Tonight I’ve started to type up a summary of the book, complete with some reflections on where it might intersect with Christian faith, and how far its insights are compatible with a biblical faith.

In due course, I hope to post some of those reflections here on the blog for discussion. They might be split up into a series of posts, or it could be rather long and uninviting. Watch this space.

February 2, 2009 3

Sabbatical, Day 1

The sabbatical began today with a visit to Holy Trinity, Springfield, which will be our worship home for the next three months. I jotted down a few items from the service that could make the transition to worship in smaller, more elderly congregations than Holy Trinity’s. Not least among these was a version of the Creed rewritten as a hymn and sung to the tune of ‘I will sing the wondrous story‘. Tim, the vicar, kindly emailed me the words.

Mind you, I do recall hearing Professor Frances Young say in a lecture once that the creeds were originally acts of worship, so perhaps putting them in a hymn is entirely appropriate for those who sing their worship.

It’s not the first time it’s been done: in recent years, Graham Kendrick has, as have Stuart Townend and Keith Getty. So has Wayne Drain. And those are just the ones I that come to mind immediately. So there’s something to store away for when I return in May.

This afternoon, it was another church trip. This afternoon, our friends at St Andrew’s held one of their ‘Activ8’ Sunday afternoons for primary school age children. This time, however, parents were allowed to stay. They had a Christingle, timed to coincide not with Christmas but with Candlemas, the festival that celebrates the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple. But coincide was all it did: everything was Christingle.

Besides, while we were in the church, we could see the snow starting to arrive in thick quantities. And while that is more characteristic of February than December, it made the afternoon feel more Christmassy for some, not least two excited children with whom I am acquainted.

We played a game with paper pieces of a Christingle, rather like playing Beetle or Hangman with a Christian twist. There was a picture of a Christingle on an A4 piece of paper turned landscape-wise, with the text of a grace to say at mealtimes. Once you had coloured it in, you could have it laminated, and hey presto, one place mat. That was another idea, along with the sung creed this morning, to ‘borrow’. Finally, before sharing tea together, we made our own Christingles, albeit using glow sticks rather than lit candles.

So twice in one day I have found something to take back after the sabbatical, and I wasn’t even looking intentionally. Sometimes I say I don’t have an original idea in my body. My best ideas have been duplicated from someone else.

How about you? Are you original? Do you borrow? Or both? And if you have borrowed something good, do you feel like sharing it further in the comments below?

February 1, 2009 1

How Determining Is Disappointment?

Today, I have undertaken my last ministerial duties before I start that sabbatical I keep talking about. I attended a meeting this morning of the Essex Christian Healing Trust, on which I sit as the official Methodist representative.

Before our mercifully brief AGM, we had an hour and a half trailing a major conference to be held on 4th April at Chelmsford Cathedral, where there will be various workshops on the healing ministry in various forms. A couple of our guest speakers were present to give us a flavour of their input on the day. One was my friend Anthony Rose, author of ‘Stranger On The Shore‘, an account of his struggle with emotional healing. The other was Paul Harcourt, vicar of All Saints Woodford Wells.

Paul is bringing a team to the conference to talk about their extensive practice of offering the healing ministry with the laying on of hands. His brief talk this morning was thoughtful. He talked about how many of us set off into something like the healing ministry with great enthusiasm and passion, but then disappointments set in. We have to be realistic about brokenness and the incompleteness of God’s kingdom, he said, referring not least to his own autistic son. But, he said, how many of us let the disappointments shape everything? They provide necessary colour and shade, and they qualify unremitting triumphalism. But should they be the determining factor in our understanding or interpretation?

And I just had a brief thought that the experience of disappointment doesn’t just affect an area like the healing ministry. Disappointments in all sorts of areas need handling carefully. We need them to inform a proper realism, but when they quench faith and we rewrite faith on a basis that we should expect little or nothing at all, then something has gone seriously wrong.

Does this resonate with you? Are there aspects of life and faith where disappointment has distorted faith instead of informing it? What do you think?

January 31, 2009 2

Bill Frindall

Two days, two sad deaths. Yesterday, John Martyn. Today, Bill Frindall. The man who combined two of my favourite things in life: cricket and Maths.The only sport I was ever any good at, plus my best subject at school. Today, Frindall has succumbed to Legionnaire’s Disease at the age of sixty-nine.

Cricket is a statistician’s dream, and Bearders elevated it to new heights. Test Match commentaries on the radio punctuated every few minutes by an announcement that this was a record sixth wicket partnership for India against England at Trent Bridge, superseding the previous record, which was held by X and Y in the year whenever.

He was part of a remarkable commentary team that has been slipping away from my youth. First, Jim Laker, then John Arlott, Brian Johnston and now the Bearded Wonder. Stay with us, Richie Benaud.

Frindall’s death made me particularly remember a church member in my last circuit. I always knew she was a mad-keen cricket scorer. Occasionally she let slip about trips around the world following the World Cup and having conversations with the likes of Benaud and others. But then in 2003, Cathy Rawson made history: she was the first woman to score a top international cricket match in this country. A bit different from her day job as a practice nurse. I wonder how Cathy feels about Bearders. He was the man who made scoring exciting, not tedious.

January 30, 2009 0

John Martyn

Driving back from an away day today, I tuned into BBC London 94.9 and found Danny Baker was playing non-stop John Martyn. It was a shock to discover the great man had died this morning. Well, not such a shock, given Martyn’s history of substance abuse.

And yes, his lifestyle was far removed from my Christian ethic. A brawling boozer. (How did he relate that to the Buddhism of his later years?) Yet one who had a way with a tender song. He hardly ever charted, but surely millions know the wonderful May You Never:

Maybe the beautiful Head And Heart:

Then, Solid Air, the song he associated with his late friend Nick Drake:

Or the love found and lost of Bless The Weather:

The echoplex masterpieces such as Glistening Glyndebourne:

An album like Grace And Danger was a divorce album to rank with Marvin Gaye‘s Here, My Dear. One World fused dub way before trip-hop was apparently invented in Bristol. Later, tracks like Sunshine’s Better

would cross over into dance circles, although he was surely the godfather of chillout. (I remember Robert Elms playing that one to death.) That, along with his appearance on the Sister Bliss track Deliver Me:

There are several other tracks where it was difficult to track down video clips – Lonely Love or John Wayne from Piece By Piece, for example. I associate the former with a girl I rather liked. The feelings weren’t reciprocated!

There’s no theology in this, no punch line, just a deep sadness and sense of loss that someone whose music has given me great pleasure over thirty-five years is gone at the age of sixty.

January 29, 2009 4

Author: Dave Faulkner