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

Wanting Mummy

This afternoon, Debbie got back from a weekend at the annual Children’s Ministry conference in Eastbourne. Managing the children and preparing for this morning’s service has been quite a stretch since she left around 5:30 am on Friday. (She had another call to make in Sussex first.)

It hasn’t been the juggling of responsibilities so much, although that has been a factor. Anyone who spotted that today’s sermon only appeared on the blog in the early hours of this morning rather than yesterday evening as usual will get a hint of that.

This morning, we loaded up my car with all sorts of distractions to occupy them during the service, since it was one of the alternatve weeks when Sunday School doesn’t happen. Scrap paper, pens, cuddly toys and games all made their way to church – where we were told that two current Sunday School teachers and one former teacher had arranged a session especially for our kids, knowing I would be coping on my own with them while trying to lead a communion service. How kind is that?

No, the real issue has been dealing with the children’s emotions while mummy has been away. They are used to her being away for a day or two here and there, normally dealing with something to do with her house that we retained when we married and which we let through an agent. However, familiarity with Debbie’s short term absences never makes these times emotionally easier for them.

They coped better this time – there is a pragmatic virtue in keeping busy, maybe in the short term. So after school on Friday we went to the supermarket and bought some treats. (Bribery is good, too.) Yesterday, after Rebekah’s regular Saturday morning ballet lesson, we headed into town. Mark wanted to check one of our two Waterstone’s branches to see whether the one book he doesn’t have in the latest Thomas the Tank Engine series was in stock. It wasn’t. Rebekah wanted a visit to her favourite place of worship, Claire’s Accessories, a place of torture for males, and so Mark played up something rotten while we were in there. On the way back to the car, a detour to Millie’s Cookies at least gave us the chance to sample their raspberry and white chocolate flavour.

It all broke down yesterday tea-time. Debbie phoned for a chat with the little monkeys before they headed for the bath and bed. Rebekah told her how much she was missing her, and Debbie replied that she would be back with some presents for them, something I knew from a text message she had sent me in the afternoon.

“Mummy, I like presents but I want you more than the presents,” was Rebekah’s devastating reply from the heart.

And I thought, if only more of us could reply like that – to one another, and especially to God.

January 25, 2009 1

Blog Rating

Created by OnePlusYou – Free Dating Sites

Which gives me the same ‘movie rating’ as Henry Neufeld.

Apparently, I’m PG because the blog contains five references to the word ‘pain’, three to ‘death’ and one to ‘queer’. Can’t say my children have ever wanted to read this – Oxford Reading Tree is more their thing. And if they did know what a blog was at their age, I’d be seriously worried, however techie Mark likes to think he is at four. Fortunately, their computer is currently disabled after Rebekah lost the ball from the bottom of the mouse.

January 21, 2009 2

Some Surprising Medical News

Anyone who ever watched that classic 1990s comedy programme The Fast Show might remember one of the minor characters, Bob Fleming. He’s the man with the persistent cough – Fleming, geddit?

I am Bob Fleming.

It wasn’t until my early twenties when I went to see my GP about something else and she said, “Good grief, you’ve got a horrible cough there” that I realised it was abnormal not to spend the first two hours of every morning clearing my sinuses and coughing. I kept Kleenex in business – what was so unusual about that?

She sent me to see an ENT specialist. “What’s your problem?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’ve got a problem,” I replied.

The frustrated consultant questioned me more until I explained the back story. “Well,” he said, “the x-ray shows you have a polyp in your left nostril, but it’s clearly been there from birth and it’s evidently benign, so if you’re not worried I don’t see the point of surgery to remove it. Besides, it’s a rather messy operation.”

Now if a doctor says an operation is messy, I guess it’s very messy. Being offered the chance not to have a grotty procedure, I was glad to be discharged from the clinic. Later doctors put me on a repeat prescription of Beconase to keep the polyp down and deal with the allergic symptoms it gave me (it’s like having hay fever all year round).

And that was my situation until just before Christmas. At our current doctor’s practice, all repeat presscriptions are reviewed every six to twelve months. I had a review of my Beconase with one of the GPs. I said I wondered whether we ought to look at the question of my sinuses again. He assured me surgery had come a long way, and we might even just be looking at keyhole surgery by now to deal with the polyp.

So this morning, I had an out-patient appointment at the local hospital ENT clinic. A specialist inflicted local anaesthetic on both nostrils and then sent a camera up each of them in turn.

The verdict? There is no polyp. I don’t have a sinus problem, but I have a genuine breathing problem. The reason is that my nasal septum is out of shape on the left nostril side, and this makes gunk collect rather than dissipate easily. And no, you can’t explain my damaged septum by cocaine use. I’ve never been near the stuff. The doctor thought I had been this way since birth.

It’s possible that all the years of Beconase have shrunk the polyp out of existence. The curious question is why the consultant I saw in my twenties didn’t notice the out of shape septum. But that’s mucus under the bridge now.

I have been changed to a new nasal spray in place of Beconase. I await an x-ray appointment. Three weeks after that, I shall return to ENT and discuss whether to have surgery that will correct the kink in the septum.

All these years I have been living under a medical misapprehension. It’s amazing how often we do live under misconceptions in life. Only yesterday, our daughter wanted to have a conversation with me about Jamie Oliver the footballer.

“He’s not a footballer, he’s a chef,” I said.

“No, he’s a footballer,” insisted Rebekah.

“Well, you might have seen him kicking a ball on television and perhaps he enjoys football, but really he’s a chef,” I replied.

She wasn’t convinced, so I got Debbie’s copy of The Return Of The Naked Chef off the bookshelf. Showing her some pictures of recipés convinced her I was right.

The preacher in me can make a sermon illustration out of this – how people live under delusions and need convincing of the truth. Ultimately, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to do that work of convincing.

So people live under the delusion that their goodness will earn them a welcome from God. The Gospel shatters this with a message of grace and mercy. Richard Dawkins publishes ‘The God Delusion’ and only proves he is living under the greatest delusion of all, where even human wisdom is foolishnes in the eyes of God.

And we still live under delusions in the Church. We are on a lifelong (maybe even eternal) journey of having our delusions shattered, as the Light of the World shines into our darkness. When we receive and pass on a tradition without understanding it, we fall foul of the old maxim that the seven last words of a dying church are, “But we’ve always done it this way.” We practise Einstein’s definition of insanity, in which we keep doing the same things while expecting a different result.

The delusion-breaking work of regeneration is essential. But it is not the last word. It is God’s first word. He who began a good work in us will complete it on the day of Christ Jesus, says Paul in Philippians 1: the shattering has only just begun. We need to welcome it as it continues throughout our lives, for it is a critical component of discipleship.

January 19, 2009 5

Children And Atonement

On Thursday, I took two assemblies at our children’s school for the first time – one with Key Stage 1 (a.k.a. ‘infants) and one with Key Stage 2 (‘juniors’ to oldies like me). I am doing this as part of a team from two or three local churches. We are taking incidents from the life of Jesus this term. Last week’s speaker, Helen, used the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. I couldn’t get anything together on the visit to Jerusalem when he was twelve. So, with the aid of Scripture Union‘s rather decent Big Bible Storybook, I looked at his baptism. I also purloined a doll of Rebekah’s, which Debbie dressed in the very christening robe she and her sister had worn as babies.

Further, I borrowed a portable font from church. It was interesting to hear the children’s answers when I asked them what I thought it was. Some thought it was an urn (wrong end of life, I guess). My favourite wrong guess was from the child who thought it contained tombola tickets.

Without going into the whole of my talk, I got to the point where Jesus asks John to baptise him and John protests, only for Jesus to say it’s what God wants. I took that as an early sign of Jesus identifying with sinful humanity (it’s OK, I didn’t use that level of language). Therefore, I said, it was a sign of what Jesus would do in his death on the Cross.

Thus I asked the children how they would feel if they had done something naughty and a friend offered to take the blame for them. In both assemblies, the answer was the same: ‘Kind.’ No worrying about whether it was just or ethical for an innocent person to be condemned in place of the guilty, they saw the heart of such an approach was love.

I couldn’t help thinking they might be further on than many of us who discuss the atonement as adults. There are crude statements of substitution that sound like Jesus was placating an angry God, that overlook the rôle of the Trinity or that forget the Resurrection. Some fail to see that the word ‘sacrifice’ is about more than a sin offering in the Old Testament. There are other images of the atonement in Scripture. (I owe use of the word ‘image’ to George Carey, who prefers it to ‘theory’.) Yet you cannot completely expunge some form of substitution.

And these primary school kids got the fact that it’s about love. Great.

For a more nuanced discussion, Tom Wright’s article for Fulcrum two years ago is always a good starting point. He is glad the church has not defined the theories of the atonement too tightly, yet he rejects both those who caricature and dismiss substitution and also those who hold onto it in a severe way.

January 17, 2009 0

I Made It Up

What to do on New Year’s Day with the children yesterday? We began with a return to ‘the world’s least crazy crazy golf course‘. After freezing there, Debbie offered to buy lunch the local branch of Wetherspoon’s.

Wetherspoon’s may not do flashy food, but they are family friendly. So Debbie and I didn’t worry if our mixed grill was tough enough to suggest the animals had put up considerable and recent resistance: the monkeys were happy. They had activity books to decorate while we waited for the food.

And it is the activity books given by Wetherspoon’s that are central to this story. Rebekah is used to ‘spot the difference’ puzzles, but Mark had his first encounter with one on this occasion. Rebekah found the eight differences between the two drawings with little difficulty; Mark found five.

Suddenly, however, he had found eight, like his sister. However, they weren’t the same.

“Where did you find those differences?” we asked him.

“I made them up,” he replied, laughing – and we joined in.

Sometimes, making it up is fun, especially when you are a four-year-old comedian like Mark. It is also part of that cherished part of childhood where the imagination is valued.

But sadly the currency of imagination is devalued as we grow older, even though poets and artists often have special insights on life. In that respect, ‘making it up’ has wrongly earned a bad reputation in a scientific culture, where to make something up is of lesser value than ‘hard facts’. That is something the church has imbibed. While there are many parts of Scripture where historicity is of vital importance, there is no loss to faith and truth, for example, if the book of Job is a literary creation to grapple with the problem of suffering in an artistic way.

Yet there is also a rightful concern to protect against a wrong kind of ‘making it up’. Imagination is fine, false witness is not. Not that Scripture condemns all forms of lying – see the example of Rahab the prostitute of Jericho at the beginning of Joshua, for example. But bearing false witness against your neighbour, as the commandment puts it, is most definitely out. And it is here that we have a problem, both on a large public scale and on the more personal level.

In terms of the public, it is easy to think of scandals. Like last August, when Michael Guglielmucci was found to have faked cancer (even writing a song called ‘Healer’ and performing with a tube in his nose), all deriving from a porn addiction.

And yet it’s easy to get self-righteous about those types of incident when we do the same thing on a smaller scale, where fewer people are affected. From the modification of a CV to finding all those subtle ways in which we present ourselves in the best possible light, making it up is a curiously popular pastime for those of us who profess to follow the One who called himself the Truth.

Naturally I don’t mean that in the sense that a Richard Dawkins would allege against us. It is not a wilful attempt to believe a lie. On the contrary, our faith is based on reasonable evidence, and with that in mind we enter into a relationship of trust. But relationships of trust require honesty in order to flourish, and that’s where the fantasy stuff becomes dangerous.

I suggest our problem, at its root, is that we don’t believe the Gospel enough. If we believe in grace, do we need to perform? Do we need to appear like we reach a certain standard? The fact that we do suggests we have developed cultures that are not soaked in grace. We are not free to be ourselves, with our foibles and weaknesses.

Not that I seek to justify sin, you understand. But the lack of acceptance that we need in order to face change and growth in holiness is disturbing. If I feel I am going to be judged all the time, I shall go on the defensive and spend time justifying myself, even when in my heart I know full well I am in the wrong. As such, a judgmental culture does not bring greater righteousness but a deeper retreat into sin. If I know I am loved unconditionally, then I feel able to face what is wrong in my life.

What would it take to create a culture in the church where we don’t have to make it up? It would require that we actually believe the Gospel of God’s free grace in Christ, and that by such grace we may face the need to repent of our sins and co-operate with the Holy Spirit in the project of sanctification.

It would also surely free us from the religious celebrity culture which contributes to the public scandals by creating an expectation of the spectacular or dramatic. When you are nurtured by grace, you don’t need to be an immature thrill-seeker. You are thrilled by God instead.

January 2, 2009 6

Christmas Is Really For The Children …

… to quote an old Steve Turner poem. Well it will be tomorrow for me. I’m not posting a sermon on the blog tonight, because neither of my services tomorrow demands one. In fact, they demand I don’t deliver a typical sermon.

In the morning, I sit in on a nativity service at one of my churches. The Sunday School will perform some drama, my Anglican colleague will lead the service, and I get to give a short talk.

I’ve drawn on an idea from a new book that I’d like to recommend as a useful resource at this time of year for preachers, ministers, worship leaders and musicians. It’s co-written by Lucy Moore of Messy Church fame, along with Martyn Payne. It’s called Bethlehem Carols Unpacked: Creative ideas for Christmas carol services. The book tells the background stories to eleven famous carols and then gives ideas for how to use them in worship, be it ‘adult’ or ‘all age’.

So I looked up the carols that my colleague Jane had chosen and adapted an idea for use with children in connection with The First Nowell. It’s a simple idea around the theme of birthday parties. What kind of people do you invite to your birthday party? God invited the most unlikely of people to celebrate the birth of his Son. The shepherds were ‘unclean’ and the magi were Gentiles. Those you would think more likely either just gave academic answers and did nothing (Herod’s scholarly advisers) or actively opposed Jesus (Herod). We have an ongoing party with Jesus: it’s called the kingdom of God. And it’s our privilege to invite all sorts of unlikely people to join that party. Were I expanding this I might draw in the Parable of the Great Banquet to give something for the adults to chew on, but I probably won’t have time.

Then in the afternoon I have a Christingle service. Although the (Church of England) Children’s Society is largely responsible for introducing this service to the UK in recent years, it is very appropriate for Methodists to celebrate, because its origins are Moravian from 1747. The Moravians, of course, were highly significant in influencing John Wesley towards his ‘warmed heart’ experience of 1738.

For those who don’t know the tradition, there is plenty to fill you in on the web, but briefly everyone is given a decorated orange. Each part is symbolic. The orange stands for the world, so we shall begin by thanking God for creation. The fruits (e.g., dried raisins) and sweets attached on a cocktail stick represent God’s good gifts. We shall lead that in the direction of Jesus being God’s best gift. The ribbon is for the blood of Christ, so I get the difficult part of the service where I have to lead a brief, simple prayer thanking God for the death of Jesus. Finally, the candle is for Jesus the light of the world, and as we light one another’s candles while standing together in a circle we enact our rôle as lights in the world, sharing the light of Christ.

Afterwards, we’ve invited everyone to stay for a free family tea of sandwiches and cakes. We’re hoping that our publicity to two local primary schools and the pre-school that uses our school hall will make for contact with plenty of non-church people.

Say a prayer for us, will you? This church hasn’t had a Christingle in years. It’s a new event to many, however old hat it is elsewhere. It is requiring hard work from many people.

One of my churches in the last appointment had to run two identical Christingle services every Christmas Eve, because it was so popular. They had a publicity advantage in being smack next door to a big supermarket, and also with the timing of Christmas Eve afternoon, when families might specifically look for a child-friendly Christmas celebration. We don’t have either of those factors in our favour, and couldn’t have gone for Christmas Eve due to a highly successful crib service every year at the parish church. But we do want to bless the community with God’s love and build our relationships with them. It was striking at our last Messy Church event a couple of weeks ago how the fact that we insisted on not charging made an impact on some parents. We want to bless them with a Gospel message and Gospel action tomorrow.

So if you could squeeze in a prayer, we’d be ever so grateful. Please leave a brief message in the comments section below to let us know you have said a quick prayer: it will encourage us. And obviously, feel free to offer any other comments in the usual way.

December 13, 2008 0

Category: Children