A Nineteenth Century Prophet

All this week at the holiday club I’ve been using material from Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community in team prayers each morning. Today I was flicking through other parts of the book and came to the ‘Finan Readings’ for July. Most are based on Henry Drummond‘s nineteenth century book ‘The City Without A Church’ (full text online here). Some of the quotes are startling and read like postmodern emerging church thinking. For example:

John, in his Revelation, holds up to the world the picture of a city without a church as his ideal of the heavenly life. By far the most original thing here is the simple conception of heaven as a city. The idea of religion without a church – ‘I saw no temple therein’ – is anomalous enough; but the association of the blessed life with a city – the one place in the world from which heaven seems most far away – is something wholly new in religious thought. All other heavens have been gardens, dreamlands: passivities, more or less aimless. Even to the majority among ourselves, heaven is a siesta and not a city.

The heaven of Christianity is different from all other heavens, because the religion of Christianity is different from all other religions. Christianity is the religion of cities. It moves among real things. Its sphere is the street, the market-place, the working life of the world.

…

If the future life were to be mainly spent in a temple, the present life might mainly be spent in church.

But if heaven be a city, the life of those who are going there must be a real life. Christ’s gift to us was life: a rich and abundant life. And life is meant for living. An abundant life does not show itself in abundant dreaming, but in abundant living – in abundant living among real and tangible objects and to actual and practical purposes.

…

John saw his city ‘descending out of Heaven’. It was, moreover, no strange apparition, but a city which he knew. The significance of that name has been altered for most of us by religious poetry: we spell it with a capital and speak of the New Jerusalem as a synonym for heaven. Yet why not take it simply as it stands, as a new Jerusalem? Try to restore the natural force of the expression – suppose John to have lived today and to have said, ‘I saw a new London’? Jerusalem was John’s London.

…

In every city throughout the world today, there is a city descending out of heaven from God. Each one of us is daily building up this city – or helping to keep it back.

…

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War In Lebanon

Christianity Today‘s series on the war involving Israel and Hezbollah today features a piece by a Chicago rabbi. He writes on how evangelicals and Jews might listen to each other through reading the Scriptures they share (he quotes several times from the Torah/Pentateuch). He is aware that evangelicals are suffering in Lebanon, though strangely seems unaware of evangelical Zionism, given the tone of his appeal for understanding of Israel’s response not simply to Hezbollah’s recent terrorist actions but their overall threat. He makes implicit comparisons between the call for the annihiliation of Israel with Nazism.

Having said that, I struggle with his idealistic description of Israeli military action. Yes, Israel may have warned people to flee and it certainly is difficult militarily if Hezbollah has ensconced itself in civilian areas (as seems doubtless true). But there is no acknowledgement of the testimony from some injured civilians – that fleeing convoys have been bombed and there is no hope for those without cars to escape.

I found a more balanced condemnation of the evil on all sides here from Jim Wallis. Hezbollah provoked this, but Israel’s response is immoral, as is western ‘diplomacy’.

‘Condemnation’, I said. Perhaps a bad choice of word. But in Gospel terms will there be any hope until there is confession?

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Bruce Cockburn, Life Short Call Now

Listening to the new Bruce Cockburn CD ‘Life Short Call Now’ while trying to pick some hymns for Sunday morning. Just thought I’d share a couple of hints of Cockburn’s spirituality that come through in the lyrics:

‘Infinity always gives me vertigo
And fills me up with grace’
(‘Mystery’)

‘Spacetime strings bend
World without end
God’s too big to fit in a book
Nothing’s too big to fit in my heart’
(‘To Fit In My Heart’)

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The Hidden Ministry Of A Holiday Club

We’re one of at least three churches in the locality running a holiday club for primary school age children (5-11) this week. It was well established before we arrived, and we do it in partnership with the local Anglican church.

The organisation has been done without input (let alone the chairing of meetings) by me, and I don’t mind at all. It is well done. Mind you, I did turn up on the first day and was the only person not to know I needed a yellow t-shirt that serves as a uniform.

To my pleasure, I have been given a floating rôle – ‘minister without portfolio’, you might say. I have just two duties. One is to lead team prayers before the children arrive each morning, and I’m enjoying adapting some material from Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community. The second is to circulate among the activity groups giving the ‘five minute warning’. No, it doesn’t mean we fear a nuclear attack – I just have to tell them they have five minutes to wrap up before moving on.

Beyond that, I ‘float’. And that’s where the hidden ministry has come in. Conversations with parents and grandparents of holiday club children. With team members old and young. Rarely is the topic anything to do with the club. I won’t elaborate, because I don’t want to break confidences. But mostly we end up talking about significant matters in those people’s lives. A space has been ‘accidentally’ created which leads to conversations that might not otherwise have come up.

The random nature seems to work very well. It rather goes against the way I like things in an orderly fashion, but the more I minister the more I recognise that untidiness is a frequent context for grace. For example, temperamentally I don’t like interruptions to what I’m doing, but I have had to learn that usually these are not interruptions to ministry, rather the interruptions are the ministry. I would rather they booked an appointment, but it doesn’t work that way!

To broaden this out: in a culture that prizes efficiency, I am more than ever learning the value of inefficiency. I do not mean poor stewardship (I can do that well enough). Rather, most of my pastoral visits are unannounced, without arrangement. It means I risk not finding the person in. But even if they are not in, the fact that I leave my card has led to a sense of appreciation that I made the effort (and I’m not the world’s most natural pastoral visitor). Some would say that is not an efficient use of time. It may not be a good use of petrol. But I know too well that with many people, if I were to ring and make an appointment they would resist. “I’m OK, you don’t need to bother with me.”

Floating, random and inefficient: these are starting to be key values in pastoral ministry for me, fourteen years in.

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The Hidden Ministry Of A Holiday Club

We’re one of at least three churches in the locality running a holiday club for primary school age children (5-11) this week. It was well established before we arrived, and we do it in partnership with the local Anglican church.

The organisation has been done without input (let alone the chairing of meetings) by me, and I don’t mind at all. It is well done. Mind you, I did turn up on the first day and was the only person not to know I needed a yellow t-shirt that serves as a uniform.

To my pleasure, I have been given a floating rôle – ‘minister without portfolio’, you might say. I have just two duties. One is to lead team prayers before the children arrive each morning, and I’m enjoying adapting some material from Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community. The second is to circulate among the activity groups giving the ‘five minute warning’. No, it doesn’t mean we fear a nuclear attack – I just have to tell them they have five minutes to wrap up before moving on.

Beyond that, I ‘float’. And that’s where the hidden ministry has come in. Conversations with parents and grandparents of holiday club children. With team members old and young. Rarely is the topic anything to do with the club. I won’t elaborate, because I don’t want to break confidences. But mostly we end up talking about significant matters in those people’s lives. A space has been ‘accidentally’ created which leads to conversations that might not otherwise have come up.

The random nature seems to work very well. It rather goes against the way I like things in an orderly fashion, but the more I minister the more I recognise that untidiness is a frequent context for grace. For example, temperamentally I don’t like interruptions to what I’m doing, but I have had to learn that usually these are not interruptions to ministry, rather the interruptions are the ministry. I would rather they booked an appointment, but it doesn’t work that way!

To broaden this out: in a culture that prizes efficiency, I am more than ever learning the value of inefficiency. I do not mean poor stewardship (I can do that well enough). Rather, most of my pastoral visits are unannounced, without arrangement. It means I risk not finding the person in. But even if they are not in, the fact that I leave my card has led to a sense of appreciation that I made the effort (and I’m not the world’s most natural pastoral visitor). Some would say that is not an efficient use of time. It may not be a good use of petrol. But I know too well that with many people, if I were to ring and make an appointment they would resist. “I’m OK, you don’t need to bother with me.”

Floating, random and inefficient: these are starting to be key values in pastoral ministry for me, fourteen years in.

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