Category: Religion

Methodism and Same-Sex Unions

If you believe the Daily Telegraph and others, “Methodists are to become the first mainstream Church in Britain to offer blessing services to same sex couples.”

But this does not appear to be what the Methodist Conference decided at all. It accepted the Pilgrimage In Faith report, which notes the continued diversity of opinion (disagreement) in the church on homosexuality. Guidelines would be needed before the civil partnership law becomes effective in December, but this is not the same as saying the church will definitely bless same-sex unions. David Deeks, the General Secretary of the Conference, made it clear that the national press had gone beyond what was actually said either in the Conference or by spokespersons in a statement.

Is it too much to hope for more accuracy rather than sensationalism that will falsely alarm and excite people?

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Thoughts From P G Vardis

What do you make of this quote? Is it faith or just the power of positive thinking?

India missions leader P G Vargis wrote recently:

“Put yourself in a growth environment. Certain fish grow according to the size of the environment. Put them in a small aquarium and they remain small. It is said that if you put a baby shark in a small aquarium of 6 inches the shark will grow to that size only. Release it into the ocean and it will grow to their intended size. And you are the same! If you spend your time with the wrong crowd in the wrong place doing the wrong things, you will never experience growth.

“I do not criticize other servants of God. So I do not associate with those who criticize others. I believe in success and so I do not sit with those who always talk about failure, attacks and persecution. I associate with people who talk about opportunity, success, result, victory, peace, growth and mega churches. And I let these qualities rub off onto me as I also try to do this to them.”

From the Web Evangelism Bulletin.

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Long Time No Blog

It’s been too long since the last entry on this blog. Basically we’ve been so consumed with the details of preparing for our move – getting removal companies to quote, selling even more stuff on eBay, and so on.

But there is one story to tell from last Sunday week. I preached for the final time at one of my churches. At the end of the service the choir wanted to sing me a benediction. I had to stand in their midst while they sang to me. Our two-year-old, Rebekah, was in my arms at the time. As the choir began their rendition she looked at me and blurted out loudly one of her current catchphrases: “What’s that noise?” She isn’t the only one who’s been asking that question!

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Father’s Day Was Naff

The kids hardly saw me on Father’s Day. 9 am said communion at one church, straight on to 10:30 am at a second, back to the first for 12 noon to approve a document, 4 pm had to obey a three-line whip to be at a service to mark the closure of another church, 6:30 pm take a service at yet another church. Every time I went out my daughter said, “Daddy come back”. I notice since then I’ve stopped saying, “I’m going to church,” because I don’t want her to think that church is what takes Daddy away from her. I’ve been saying, “I’m going to see some people and try to help them.” But the fact is, that on days like Father’s Day, the church does take me away from my children. Some of you will remember that old Daily Mail headline where they attacked the Moonies: ‘The church that splits up families’. The Moonies sued, and lost. But maybe the headline could be applied to mainstream Christianity sometimes?

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Father’s Day Was Naff

The kids hardly saw me on Father’s Day. 9 am said communion at one church, straight on to 10:30 am at a second, back to the first for 12 noon to approve a document, 4 pm had to obey a three-line whip to be at a service to mark the closure of another church, 6:30 pm take a service at yet another church. Every time I went out my daughter said, “Daddy come back”. I notice since then I’ve stopped saying, “I’m going to church,” because I don’t want her to think that church is what takes Daddy away from her. I’ve been saying, “I’m going to see some people and try to help them.” But the fact is, that on days like Father’s Day, the church does take me away from my children. Some of you will remember that old Daily Mail headline where they attacked the Moonies: ‘The church that splits up families’. The Moonies sued, and lost. But maybe the headline could be applied to mainstream Christianity sometimes?

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The Media: Public Interest and Common Good

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech yesterday of the above title has certainly put the cat among the pigeons. Here are one or two thoughts I had on it:

The Archbishop (or henceforth the ABC) probes the issue of journalism and secrecy. He quotes the question that has sometimes been attributed rightly or wrongly to Jeremy Paxman, “Why is this bastard lying to me?”. But he points out that not all secrecy is sinister. We wouldn’t want certain things about ourselves that are rightly kept private made public. So he wants a more sensitive approach to the old ‘public interest’ defence that journalists employ.

Well, quite right, too, and as a minister I know only too well the issue of confidences that must be kept. I only wish that Rowan Williams had at this point applied his ‘brain the size of a planet’ to the question of why we have got into this situation. What about examining the postmodern ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ at this point, the whole difficulty in pomo thinking about truth and power? That would have illuminated a very worthwhile speech.

Also suffering too much from brevity is the section on weblogs. He notes the positive use of blogs to provide quick and necessary rebuttals but sees them as purely ephemeral with no notion of posterity, and often full of wild, unchecked comments and bigotry. Well, there is some truth in this, of course. But the issue of the ephemeral is contentious: are not we bloggers typing our online journals? The Christian spiritual tradition knows much about ‘journalling’, and it is often a very positive reflective process. Granted, in the blogosphere we have to contend with ‘information overload’, but blogging could be the place where the reflective approach begins in our media.

Which neatly brings me on to something else the ABC says. He has a very useful section in the speech where he bewails the contemporary media emphasis on ‘urgency’ with its concomitant features of ‘breaking news’ and ‘instant comments’. He notes how this can marginalise religion, which does not always display ‘urgent’ qualities. So it was difficult for 24-hour news channels to cope with the last days of Pope John Paul II’s life. I would just add that ‘urgency’ has other dangers, too, not least with the phenomenon of ‘instant comments’. Do we not more often need considered reflection? In which case we come back to my argument above about the reflective use of blogs, but it is not limited to blogging.

Having said all that, go read the speech. It’s excellent. In summary I think I’m just saying I wish he had taken his thoughts further and deeper.

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You Can Never Go Back Home

Well, it’s been a full six days since I’ve blogged. Life has been manic. We are busy selling possessions bit by bit on eBay (if you want to see what we’re currently selling, I pasted some code into the home page of my main website). Then there is all the protracted negotiations over work to the manse where we shall be moving in August. I might do some real minister’s work some day soon.

But last Sunday was a highlight. I had been invited back to the church where I grew up to take their Church Anniversary. It has changed so much, and for the better. Only the ‘old guard’ remember me from thirteen years ago. It was great to catch up with them, embarrassing when I’d forgotten someone’s name or didn’t recognise them, of course, but also thrilling that there were so many people there who didn’t know me from Adam. A church that had between sixty and eighty adults on a Sunday morning when I left now has about one hundred and seventy, plus fifty to sixty children and teenagers.

The most heartening change was this, though: even by the time I left the majority of the congregation had become majority African-Caribbean (and woe betide you if you mixed up the Ghanaians with the Nigerians, or assumed that somebody from Montserrat was Jamaican!). However it was still in many ways a ‘white’ church. I remember when the first West Indian became a church steward. All the usual comments came out about not understanding what he said when he gave out the notices in a service. But now all the stewards are black and it was apparent that the lady on duty on Sunday morning could comfortably do her duties in the vestry and in the worship gathering in a way appropriate to her culture, and it was now the norm. Her greeting was very West Indian in style, the choir sang a few pieces before the service that would have been known back home in the islands, and so on. No longer were they marginalised, now their culture was at last central to the way the church functioned.

So you can never go back home and find it just as you remembered it, and my sermon took up that theme, with reference to postmodern culture. Too many churches behave like that: a yearning for ‘how it used to be’ when we actually have to live in a different world. Even the West Indians and Africans at my old church, although they bring their customs into worship now and do not suffer the stigma of the past, cannot simply recreate how it once was back home. And for the younger generations, ‘back home’ never was their home: this place is.

It would be interesting to see what shape that church takes if Methodism ever sends them a black minister. That hasn’t happened yet, although I’d hate that to be read in any way as casting an aspersion on the current minister, because he was wonderful in facilitating things for me, and he seems to be regarded very warmly. I just hope he isn’t treated with the old colonial-style deference.

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The Endings Are Beginning

I’ve just emailed my last-ever column to the Medway Messenger. If you want to see the article, it will be published in the edition on Friday 17th and subsequently in the ‘Messenger’ section of my main website.

I’ve been writing for them for four years now, and it’s been very fulfilling. Ever since I did a creative writing course in 2003 at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity that was run in conjunction with the Association of Christian Writers I’ve felt very affirmed in my desire to write. “Don’t be afraid to say, ‘I am a writer'”, is one of the most powerful things I remember being said at the course.

So to lay it down now in preparation for moving is quite emotional. I’m laying it down, not knowing whether I’ll be able to take it up in another form in the new place. It’s a sort of death without knowing whether there will be a resurrection. Then again, Jesus said that if we wanted to save our lives we would lose them, but if we lost our lives for his sake and the Gospel’s we would save them, and I hope that will be true. It certainly feels like a mini-bereavement.

Perhaps that’s over the top and I need to hear the Gospel as proclaimed decades ago by the Pretenders: ‘It is time for you to stop all of your sobbing …’

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