In February, I said I would be writing an article for Ministry Today under the title, ‘Is Blogging For Self-Centred Nerds?’ Finally, over the last two evenings, I’ve written it. I’ve taken responses from the original article, plus those given when Richard Hall broadcast my appeal. I’ve also quoted from a recent Tall Skinny Kiwi post and taken extensive material from a United Methodist Reporter article written two years ago.

I know, two years ago. So long in webland, and longer in the blogosphere.

I don’t know when the article will be published in hard copy or appear on the Ministry Today website. I’ll let you know.

Thanks to everyone who contributed, either here, at Richard’s blog, or in the other articles without knowing. I’ve linked to just about every blogger I’ve quoted, so if you commented, you’re almost certainly in the piece and hopefully you’ll receive a bit more traffic.

In recent months, two lads from an unchurched family have been coming to church. One is eleven, the other eight. It started through our weekly craft club and occasional Messy Church events.

We haven’t seen the older brother for some weeks. Yesterday, the eight-year-old told us that big brother wouldn’t be coming to church any more, or to holiday club this week, because he thought church was boring.

He wouldn’t be the first child to think so. Did we fail him when he said he wanted a job doing something at the church on his first Sunday and we said he needed to come for a while before that? I doubt it. Even if we had given him a responsibility, I still think he would have found it all rather boring.

I did at eleven years old, too. I quit Sunday School, because I found it patronising. Mum and Dad let me go over the park and watch Sunday football games, but insisted I came to the evening service – during which time I used to scribble and doodle when it came to the sermon.

I had a worse problem than this in my first appointment. It involved highly unsuitable children’s workers. One problem among many was the way they kept children in Sunday School rather than going in with the adults for the first part of worship, or for all-age services. ‘Don’t go into church,’ the leader told the kids, ‘It’s boring.’ Not the best advert for your church.

However – without justifying any of the actions that leader and two others engaged in – I have to say that I told that story to a fellow minister who for a short while was my confidante. When I told him the ‘Don’t go into church, it’s boring’ line, his reaction was, ‘Well – is it?’ And it probably was.

So what do we do about boring church? Do we look for all sorts of gimmicks in order to make it exciting? Experienced Christians know it isn’t as simple as that. You can’t have excitement every week. You end up with consumer church, where people are attracted or kept by yet more spectacular thrills, as some critics of North American megachurches have pointed out. Doing so makes worship not God-centred but human-centred.

If the Church is the Bride of Christ, then an analogy from marriage may help here. Whatever the joys in the early weeks and months of romance, those feelings come and go, and they cannot be the barometer of a good marriage. (That may be part of what is wrong with what many commentators have called the ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ approach to worship songs.) A permanent high is unsustainable. Life has to be lived, in all its mess. Sometimes, as I recently heard Adrian Plass put it, life is a choice between what you don’t want to do and what you really don’t want to do. That doesn’t make for a thrill-a-minute lifestyle.

So should I look at more creative and stimulating approaches to worship? I’m sure that would be good, but I don’t find that easy. I happen to believe I’m a preacher who gets stuck also with leading worship. Worship leading isn’t really my gift. In any case, good creative worship requires a team of people with different gifts, and it wouldn’t be possible to do that every week. Even if we had the personnel in order to depend on such an approach, it would leave us dependent upon human skills rather than an encounter with the living God.

Am I trying to find some spiritual justification for boredom in church? No. More often than I care to admit, I’m bored myself – not least when I’m conducting the worship! It feels like a problem, because it is a problem.

And the reason I think it’s a problem is this. I just have to read the four Gospels to know the issue. There was something compelling about Jesus when he walked the earth. Either people came to him like filings to a magnet, or they were repulsed by what he said and did. You couldn’t be bored with Jesus two thousand years ago, and if we claim that worship and discipleship constitute an engagement with him today, then church should not equal boredom.

Surely it is a group of people passionately engaged with Jesus Christ whose worship will repudiate boredom without falling into the dangers of sensationalist tricks. Something about that relationship has to be nurtured in our midst.

Three years ago, Christianity Today carried a powerful interview with Eugene Peterson. It was entitled, ‘Spirituality For All The Wrong Reasons‘. Like an eminent consultant surgeon, Peterson showed in the conversation where many others had gone wrong and where instead one should cut for a successful operation. Spirituality isn’t about emotional intimacy with Jesus, but the ordinary stuff of following him. The Gospel shouldn’t primarily be conceived in terms of the benefits we receive, he says: that’s consumerism. Moreover, he says, don’t idealise the church. All our great goals are laudable, but they are slow work. Our impatience leads to manipulating or bullying people, even in the cause of something good.

Towards the end of the interview, he says this:

I think relevance is a crock. I don’t think people care
a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the
service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they’re
taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or
their consumer needs.

Why did we get captured by this advertising, publicity mindset? I think it’s destroying our church.

He substitutes reverence for relevance. Is this an excuse for more misery? I heard the call for reverence when I was a young Christian from older Christians whod didn’t like the frivolity, as they saw it, of our lives. True reverence is surely about awe, rather than putting distance and barriers between ourselves and God.

And if we are about engaging with the real Jesus, then reverence of the ‘awe’ kind will be part of the mix. People were awed by what he said and did. So should we be, though truly our familiarity has bred contempt.

But it will also include joy. In yesterday’s sermon I quoted a description of Jesus as a ‘party animal’. Jesus gives us reason for celebration, every bit as much as for reverence.

Maybe both frothy churches and boring churches haven’t engaged that much with the Gospels and their depiction of Jesus. I’m making as much a point as I can of preaching each week from the Lectionary Gospel reading, so that our vision of Jesus can determine everything. (Not that I don’t believe all the Scriptures point to Christ, but perhaps it’s fair to say that the Gospels give us the clearest portrait.) I wonder whether our responsibility is to do all we can to focus on Jesus. That involves our preaching, prayer, Bible study, personal devotions and the spiritual disciplines generally. And when I say the spiritual disciplines, I don’t merely mean a list of devotional habits. They have to translate into the actions of practical piety, or they are worse than useless.

Not that I wish to suggest it’s all down to us. Ultimately, a real encounter with the living God is not about all the good works we do – I’m simply advocating those things that I believe best tune us into him, when done in co-operation with the Holy Spirit. The God of love will in his grace and mercy make himself known on his own terms. But we can stand ready to encounter him.

Today, we took the kids to Chelmsford Fire Station’s open day. We had a wonderful couple of hours. There were engines to climb on, platforms to watch as they rose into the sky, fund-raising stalls – not just for their own benevolent fund but for a local cancer charity and Guide Dogs for the Blind. Children could hold a hose with one of the firefighters and put out an imaginary blaze.

But there was also education. A powerful demonstration about dangers associated with leaving a chip pan untended, let alone dousing the fire with water, scared our two as flames suddenly and loudly shot into the air. They also wanted people’s names and addresses if they didn’t have smoke alarms, because they would visit and fit alarms free of charge.

Oh, and I forgot the very reasonably priced hot dogs.

After we left, a metaphor of ministry struck me. Although the fire service is becoming better known for its educational work, such as with smoke alarms, they are better known and more glamorised for fighting fires. Yet the education is just as needed, albeit less spectacular.

Can you see where I’m going? Ministers are often most appreciated for fighting the fires of personal pastoral crises. The ongoing education is less glamorous, and less appreciated for its importance. Tomorrow morning, as many of us preach the Word – for the nth time – we shall be engaging in the unglamorous work that is less often appreciated. I know we shall hear some ‘Lovely sermon, dear’ comments and that one or two will make specific comments. However, some of the best preaching and leadership of Bible Study will be fire prevention work. Some of the crises need not happen if the preventative work is done well and heeded.

Just my thoughts tonight. Have a good Sunday.

Matthew
14:13-21

Introduction
There are several bizarre local laws on the statute books in America:

·
For instance, it’s illegal to slurp your soup in
a restaurant in New Jersey.

·
In Oklahoma it’s unlawful to get a fish drunk,
or to try to catch whales in a river or lake.

·
In Pennsylvania, cafés are not allowed to sell ring
doughnuts, while in Massachusetts they are not permitted to serve coffee to
babies.

·
In Lexington, Kentucky, you cannot carry an
ice-cream cone in your pocket.

·
In Waterloo in Nebraska, barbers are prohibited
from eating onions between seven o’clock in the morning and seven in the
evening.

·
Finally, the most ambitious law must be the one
in Kirkland, Illinois, where bees are forbidden from flying over town![1]

Well, so long as no one bans the consumption of apple pies
in Chelmsford, at least one member of this congregation will be happy!

Food. Lots of it. More than enough for five thousand men,
plus women and children. What are we to make of this miracle? It was so
important to the Gospel writers that it’s the only miracle to appear in all
four Gospels apart from the Resurrection.

But what do we make of the story? We can debate whether the
miracle happened. I say it did. If all that really happened is that a crowd of
people was inspired by Jesus to share their packed lunches, I doubt that four
evangelists would have recorded it.

But we have to get beyond basic issues like that. Because as
well as the transformation of the bread and the fish, we find in this story
three transformations of the human heart.

First Transformation

If I know anything as a father of young children, it’s about that sense of
permanent tiredness. I have a particular low point around 6:30 to 7 pm each day
that coincides with bath and bedtime for them. Debbie will tell you how I drift
off, almost to sleep, while we are in the bathroom with them. Sometimes the joy
of getting the monkeys into bed reinvigorates me, sometimes it doesn’t.

Jesus appears to be tired in this reading. He has just heard
the news of John the Baptist’s execution. It has had some kind of draining
effect upon him. He wants to withdraw. But the crowds come, and he responds by
healing people.

The disciples may not be tired, but they are certainly
stressed. They want to send the people away for food, because they can’t cope –
not with just five loaves and two fish at their disposal. But Jesus tells them
to give – just as he gave to the crowds when they ruined his plans for some
quiet time.

Jesus was drained. The disciples were impotent. Yet this was
the time to give. This is the first transformation of the heart – people
apparently with nothing give what they have, and God does something miraculous.

In fact, God does something extravagant with limited giving.
Food for thousands, with doggy bags to spare.

In fact, the American Methodist bishop Will Willimon believes
that this extravagant giving is characteristic of Christian discipleship. He
says it’s why we make such big promises to each other in our wedding vows. It’s
why a friend of a friend of mine, who has a PhD in Theology from Aberdeen
University, returned to his native India, where he runs a ministry that
provides children’s homes for orphans. He could have a flourishing and
rewarding academic career in the West, but he lavishes Christian love on these
children.

After all, it’s just what Jesus talked about in his
parables. The father bestowed this same extravagant love on the prodigal son
when he returned. It’s the generosity of the Good Samaritan in paying the bills
of the injured man.

Why should God choose to use those who are weak and weary,
who feel they have nothing left to give, in order to give lavishly? Perhaps
these are situations that God deliberately wants to place us in: when we are
drained of our strength, we have no option but to trust in his power, rather
than taking pride in our own gifts.

Perhaps you’re wacked out. You feel the need for a rest. And
maybe that’s right. But if God puts some people across your way at such a time,
don’t be afraid to give. God might be setting you up for something quite
miraculous to happen in the lives of those who cross your path. God is like
that. The first transformation, then, is in giving.

Second Transformation

In the wake of the Chelmsford Christian
Festival, some ministers have received a nasty, critical letter from some
extreme Christian organisation somewhere in Essex. I haven’t received one: I’m
probably beyond salvation as a Methodist! But Baptist, Anglican and URC
ministers have all received this letter damning the festival, for – amongst
other things – its emphasis on fun. ‘Did Jesus die on the cross for us to have
fun?’ asks the letter.

You wonder how selectively such people read the Gospels if
Jesus is comprehensively associated with misery. Jesus was, in the words of one
scholar, a ‘party animal’[2].
A glutton and a drunkard, his opponents called him.

Now put that into this story. We might be grateful for a
‘party animal’ to provide a lot of food, but it wasn’t so simple for devout
Jews, however much they enjoyed feasting (and they did). Their maxim was, ‘You
are what you eat’ – not in the sense of diet and nutrition, but in the sense of
wanting to ensure they ate proper kosher food.

There were only two ways to ensure your host prepared kosher
food. One was to go into the kitchen and watch every step of the process.
However, they could hardly have done that in this circumstance: there was no
kitchen to enter! The crowd doesn’t know where this food comes from!

That leaves the second option: trust. That’s what the crowd
does. They trust Jesus. A miracle like this, happening in a deserted place, had
considerable overtones for a Jewish group: it would remind them of the manna in
the wilderness. Is this the ‘one greater than me’ whom Moses prophesied would
come?

Then, there are messianic overtones in the text. When Jesus
tells them to ‘sit down’ in the text, we just have a vision of the people
sitting around on the grass. What he actually tells them to do is ‘recline’,
which carries connotations of a banquet. Who would provide a banquet in the
wilderness? The Messiah would.

Not only that, it’s a miracle involving the forces of
nature. Is there something divine at work here?

Put that all together and it becomes quite a big picture of
whom the people might be trusting here.

And for us, we take heart here: this is not just a
trustworthy person, this is the Messiah, this is even God Incarnate who is
trustworthy, even in extreme situations.

So where is it we feel stretched? Jesus is trustworthy. Let
him give us energy. Where do we feel weak? Let Christ give us strength. Where
are we hungry? We can look to him to feed us. He is able. By virtue of who he
is, he has the ability, the resources and the love to provide all we need. And
if he can do all this for us, what is stopping us trusting him with our lives?
The second transformation is in trusting.

Third Transformation
To understand the third transformation that happens in this famous story, we
need to return to the question of how the crowd might have used their Jewish
traditions to come to terms with what happened.

Not only did the tradition hold the stance I described a few
minutes ago of ‘You are what you eat’ in terms of keeping to the kosher laws,
they also took a similar attitude. You could call it, ‘You are who you eat with.’
On the surface, this is another matter of purity. Not only must the food be
prepared in a ritually pure way, you must also keep yourself from contamination
by association with the wrong kind of people. Not only were people known by the
company they kept, they could be spiritually tainted by contact with defiled
people.

Now see a problem. The bread and fish come from the
disciples to Jesus, back to the disciples and then out from person to person.
Who knows what kind of person might have handled that food at some point in the
process? That’s more than a question of hygiene; it’s a matter of honour: what
if by eating this I associate with an unworthy person? I am reduced to their
status.

But in this miracle, all these distinctions between morally
superior and inferior people are cast to the four winds. In the work of Jesus,
there is an acceptance across boundaries and divisions. It is a foretaste of
what would happen when the Gospel broke out beyond Jewish borders and reached
Gentiles, and after much agonising the baby church realised that all who were
in Christ were one.

So here is a basis for unity. Good and bad, rich and poor,
black and white, female and male, weak and strong, powerful and oppressed.
Under Christ, all may be made one. It isn’t simply that we are one, because we
are all human, because sin has caused our divisions and that sin must be
addressed. Which it is in Christ and his cross.

But this gives us the motive for reaching across boundaries.
It means that serious questions have to be asked about churches where everyone
is from the same background. It means that if we live the faith at this point –
not that we have any option – then the church will be a prophetic sign to a
divided, broken world.

Where, then, is Jesus calling us to live out this third
transformation of the heart, the transformation of reconciliation and unity? As we share in The Peace with one another
in a few minutes’ time, to whom else will we want to offer the peace of Christ
who is not part of our body?

Conclusion
So – I find it sad when Christians reduce the feeding of the multitude to
saying that Jesus just enabled people to share their picnics. Such an account
is barely worth inclusion in the Gospels.

But I am also disappointed when we don’t get beyond
defending the reality of the miracle. There is so much Jesus accomplishes here
as he transforms people through the action of the miracle. We may not be coming
to a feast, but to a table where small squares of bread and sips of grape juice
symbolise the coming banquet of the Messiah.

Might it be, then, that as we come to the Lord’s Table this
morning, he might work his transforming power in us:

·
That we might be able to give, even when we have
nothing;

·
That we might trust Christ to feed us in every
way;

·
And that the unity we find in him might spur us
on to be reconciled with one another, and across the divisions in our world.

Dan Edelman at the Cerulean Sanctum blog recently commended a new website called NoiseTrade. It’s a site for downloading music from quality independent artists. All the names I recognised there were Christian.

One leading light is the estimable (if not indeed prophetic) Derek Webb.

You can either give the email addresses of three friends and download whole albums in MP3 format, or you can pay whatever you want. I downloaded stuff by Webb, Waterdeep, Jeni Varnadeau and Sixpence None The Richer.

I had technical problems with the last one, but NoiseTrade sorted me out.

This is a wonderful site, a galaxy away from what Bill Kinnon calls ‘Jesus junk for the jaded masses’.