learning to live

The local school has changed its assembly day from a Thursday to a Tuesday. Mainly, I think, to suit the availability of the PE teacher.

It means a Thursday's not so full of the school, so far as I'm concerned. Just the Scripture Union group, which was starting up again today after their mid-term break last week.

The numbers were down just a bit on what they've been - but still pretty good. Almost 20 children, some of them high as kites as they're off tomorrow to an SU weekend away. Thankfully I've two other folk to help me - otherwise we might have been veering towards a scenario reminiscent of Egypt or Libya.

It verges on chaos at times - but it's a very happy chaos and I hope that bit by bit they're learning from the Bible and discovering how to live.

We were learning again today about how to handle those who've done you harm.

A situation most of us face, at least from time to time. And, of course, we also do a lot of harm ourselves sometimes. We're none of us perfect yet - that has to wait until heaven. And as a result, we're always rubbing rough and ready shoulders with a load of other rough and ready people. It's often really painful, sore, upsetting.

Forgiveness is easy - until you need to show it! That's where the cross of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit start to kick in.

Discipleship starts at the cross. Always.

Discipleship's really the cross of Jesus being ingrained through every fibre of our being. Not just his cross as an ornament slung around our necks.

But as a 'dye' (or more truly a 'die') shot through every single cell within our being.

"We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus," declared the apostle Paul.

The call to 'die'. Daily. Wholly.

In body, mind and spirit.

In conduct, speech and attitudes.

The 'die' of the cross ingrained through all my being.

How many of us try to live as a 'scipl'?

You're wondering about that strange little word 'scipl'?

It's just disciple without the 'die' involved.

It doesn't work. It doesn't make sense. It can't be done.

We're learning to live by learning to die.

'multi-tasking'

Like most of my days, the larger part of today was filled with people. Talking, praying, meeting with people.

Sometimes here in the privacy of the room that's called our Pastoral Office. Sometimes in the privacy of a person's home.

Listening to them. Listening with them. Listening for them.

The Lord is always present. He's at work, unseen, and most times too unheralded, in people's lives. I'm listening all the time to try and figure out not just where they are at, but, more to the point where He is at: indeed, exactly what He's at.

It's demanding work in its own particular way. I'm interested that often at the time of prayer we have each morning here, I'm prayed for by the others in terms of the so-called multi-tasking that I do.

I smile a bit at that, since it's meant to be only women who are up to such multi-tasking. But that aside, I'm grateful for the prayer along those lines, because in truth it is a particular sort of multi-tasking that I'm doing.

I'm having to listen in two directions at once.

I'm listening intently to what the person is saying: I'm seeking to follow exactly what it is they're trying to say, in both the words they use, and in what they're not saying too.

And I'm listening intently as well to what the Lord himself is saying through it all: and what it is that he wants said by me. It requires a fair amount of constant concentration.

But it has its rewards! Being aware of the Lord so at work in the lives of these people; seeing him at work, and speaking, in the talking back and forth that's going on; knowing as I pray with folk that God's own hand is somehow at that moment being stretched out and laid with grace upon a person's life.

In at least a couple of instances here today the person I was seeing was not entirely clear just why they had come 'knocking at my door'. They just had a sense that they needed to come, were meant to come. And I don't doubt for a moment that that was indeed the case.

There was a reason. There were things that the Lord needed to say.

There were marvelous answers to prayer.

There were moments of revelation: an insight afforded which prompted the person to say they wished that they had met me a good ten years before.

There was healing and help being afforded; renewal and growth being seen.

There were burdens being shared, commitments being made, and friendships being fostered in Christ.

Who ever thought that the work of a pastor was dull?!

together

It's Tuesday, which generally means that I'm lunching with my friend from down the road, Douglas. Today was no exception.

We were barely sat down before he was saying, "You seem busier than ever!"

Well, I suppose I am. The decline in the number of 'posts' on this blog over the last little while is a tell-tale sign of that. Things are hotting up.

The large bulk of yesterday, for instance, was taken up with a major 'strategy' meeting. Important, and useful: we live in days of very real significance, and the need for God's people to be getting their act together at and for such times is absolutely crucial.

That's me, middle row, second from the left. [No, just kidding!]

That seems to be a thing writ large for us on the opening pages of the book of Acts - the story of the early church. Jerusalem is not an easy place to be back then, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ. The tide of public opinion is pretty much against you: there's an open and destructive hostility towards Jesus, the Word of God. 'Truth' has been tossed aside.

So the small band of followers of Jesus get together. The word suggesting 'togetherness' gets a bit of underlining by simply being repeated. As if to say, it's important they're together.

And then, when the critical day comes round, we're told they are not just 'together', but also "in the same place."

So far as the Greek is concerned in what Luke wrote, it's not necessarily a geographical reference. It's as much that they're in the same place spiritually, reading from the same script, as it were, at one with one another. They've sorted things out and got their act together.

And something astonishing happens. Quite unexpected. It throws the whole thing upside down. It reverses the numbers game in one remarkable moment. The Spirit of God comes down. Thousands are convicted and converted.

A corner is turned. The Jesus story moves on in a way that few if any in Jersualem could ever have expected.

And the starting point to it all? The opening line in this whole new chapter of grace?

"They were all together in one place."

There's something about that sort of 'unity', that sort of 'togetherness' and being at one with one another, that even the Lord himself recognises as a potent sort of force. It was the Lord himself, after all, who declared at the time of the tower of Babel - "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."

That's without God's Spirit.

One people, speaking the same language .. nothing .. will be impossible for them.

So when you factor in the powerful Spirit of the God for whom nothing is impossible to a people who've got their act together and are as one - well, it stands to reason that there'll be no stopping them.

How vital, therefore, in these significant days, to be in this way 'together', 'in the same place', 'at one'.

But it's time-consuming, too, of course. That was a whole day out of the frame. The week gets suddenly shorter.

And because the days are significant ones, today there's been a lot of work to do through e-mails and by letter. A lot of people to speak with and to be in correspondence with as well. A lot of careful thinking to be done, as all sorts of things come together in our congregational life.

Farming is one of the images used to describe the work of the gospel. I've worked on farms, so I know how it goes.

Some of the time it's all pretty slack. The workers are not idle, but it's just a case of keeping things ticking over. Other times it's hectic. All hours of the day and night. I've been there, done that, got the payslips to prove it.

It's little different with the work of the gospel. For long enough it all seems fairly harmless, routine stuff, with little to show for your effort.

And then the harvest season comes around. And all of a sudden the pace quickens, the hours lengthen, and it's round-the-clock commitment that's required!

There are signs, I think, that the season of harvest is near.

When I first came here, the word the Lord had given me was exactly along those lines. I had been brought here in the providence of God for a harvest he would reap.

It's been a long time coming! But I'm wondering if maybe what I'm seeing at this time is indicative of God's harvest now arriving here at last. A lot of things are finally coming together.

Together.

One people. One language. One place. For such a people, nothing will be impossible.

I think we do well to get ourselves ready for fireworks!

walking on the water

The day has just ended with our monthly time of congregational prayer.

More and more I'm aware of the pressing need for that. And I was much encouraged to see a significantly larger number of folk coming out to that tonight than has been the case for months.

These are faith-stretching, stepping-out-of-the-boat-and-starting-to-walk-on-the-water sort of days. In looking to appoint a person as Development Ministries Leader we're doing what we've not had to do in years, in some ways.

We're having to step out in faith. We're having to look to the Lord to raise up the person he means to be doing this work: we're having to look to the Lord to show us the future he plans: we're having to look to the Lord to provide the finance it will need.

So it was good to be getting together like that tonight and be bringing these things to the Lord. One lady came up to me at the end and said, "It's exciting!"

It is. Scary in a lot of ways. But definitely exciting, too.

We have a wonderful set of premises. A church building which is spacious, bright and attractive, and technically quite well-equipped. A delightful little cottage, roomy, warm and furnished really well. Two sizeable suites of halls, both encompassing a range of different meeting areas, and fitted out with kitchens which are more than up to standard. An expansive, open, and, in some ways, secluded area of gardens, which loads of folk like to enjoy. And a massive car park.

Six separate parts to our premises, each of which would be the envy of many another congregation.

And all on a main arterial route in and out of the city.

I mean, have we landed on our feet or landed on our feet?

But how best to use them? That's the crucial question.

We're grateful for our heritage, the vision and commitment of our forbears in the faith, who've left us with this 'legacy'. We're conscious of our calling, too: the fact that all these premises are very much a stewardship entrusted us by God, and meant, by him, to be themselves the context for his gospel being proclaimed through our community, an asset which is used by us to further all his purposes of grace.

We have that sense of destiny. We have that sense of purpose. We have that sense of this all being siginificant. Danger - God at work!

But as we've prayed and worked at this, the conviction has grown in our hearts that all that God means to accomplish can only be done through our setting aside a person to provide the leadership needed.

Someone with vision and drive: someone with energy, passion and zeal: someone with loads of initiative, someone with good people skills: someone who makes things happen.

For the last 15 years or thereabouts, the Lord has been building a platform. Showing us what can be done.

It would be easy, I think, for us simply to settle right back into routines which now are quite comfortable, things that we've done now so often we could do them I think in our sleep!

But the Lord simply won't let us settle like that. There's a whole lot more he means yet to do. All that the past many years have involved is really no more than a start. A kind of pre-match, warm-up session, to ensure that we're now ready for the action, and can hit the ground all running when the vision, which he all along has cherished in his heart, at last kicks in.

Exciting days, indeed!

But they're days when we're now right out of our depth. And unless the Lord himself is out there on the water with us all ... then, for sure, we'll simply sink!

people

The Lord has a sense of humour.

Someone was saying that to me both yesterday and today. And I guess most folk discover it for themselves sooner or later.

Having underlined on Sunday evening that one of the qualities charateristic of a pastor is his being good with people, the last two days for myself have been absolutely brim-ful of .. you guessed, people!

People with whom I've been talking through issues now facing us here.

An elderly man whose hearing and sight, along with his legs, are failing him more and more. He's glad of the chat (mine is one of the very few voices he's able to make out and hear) and the company too, and the prayer that we share in before I'm off and elsewhere.

A younger man who's recently come to the point of faith, and crossed the line and entered the kingdom of God - and who ever since then has been ill. We talk at some length about 'the wiles of the devil'; why and how it is that following Jesus involves us in a battle.

Leaders within the congregation here, whom I need to see and speak with as we fashion out a whole new sort of framework for the vital pastoral ministry we seek to see being exercised among us here.

There's a meeting then with my 'chaplain', who has come, I guess, to check I'm still OK. I am.

Every minister here in the city is accorded a 'chaplain'. Pastoral ministry, too, I suppose, in slightly different context.

The chaplain's involved in another, very different congregation in the city centre (different denomination and everything). We chat about that church and how things work out there. It's useful for me to be hearing how other congregations go about their ministry.

My friend and fellow-pastor in the church along the road is in for lunch. Douglas is back after some weeks away in his native America. it's good to be seeing him again and to have the chance to catch up. A lot of water has flowed beneath the bridge since I saw him last - both sides of the Atlantic.

It's mainly his story we have time for today, since I've already arranged to be meeting with someone else.

We've got our monthly congregational prayer coming up tomorrow night. There are things to be thought through, planned and prepared. These times of prayer are more and more important. I'm hoping there'll be more and more folk coming out to share together in prayer. That's when and how things happen.

I've a mountain of things to prepare. These are significant days. But there's not a lot of time! I'm having to prioritise.

At night I'm out again in various homes. Touching base with different folk. Praying folk into their future. Calling folk into God's future.

People. All sorts of different people.

I think of what David once said when Abigail came out to meet him - "Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me." [1 Sam.25.32].

My prayer is, every day, that that would be the experience of those whom I'm with - that they will indeed feel, on account of what's said and done, that the Lord has sent me to meet them today.

forming the future

We are building for the future. Both the more immediate future in our land and in our world: and also that great future which is promised us in Christ.

What that more immediate future is going to bring and hold - who knows? But we're building for it, and working towards it.

I was meeting again this morning with the young man from our fellowship who's been called to be the pastor of a church up north. There are all sorts of issues he wants to work through and get clear in his mind before he starts that work.

He's glad of a 'wall' to bounce things off: and I'm happy to help him consider the issues there are.

It's a long-term work of the Lord to which the man is called. God takes his time and is in no rush. HIs work is thorough and careful and most of the time it is bit by bit by bit. I'm glad to play a small part in that work in helping this man in advance of the work that he'll do.

"The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others." [2 Tim.2.2]

There's that sort of strand to the work that I'm called to by God. Entrusting to other reliable men the things that I've been taught myself by godly, gracious, thoroughly reliable men.

It was straight from seeing this man to the lunch-time service. The end of the road for Nabal who had shown such thorough disrespect in the face of the kindness of David. He meets his end at the hands of the Lord.

The story is an object lesson in 'entrusting ourselves to the One who judges justly' [see 1 Pet.2.23]: as Jesus did. 'Vengeance is mine,' says the Lord. He makes a far better job of the thing than we would ever do. It's always best to leave it to him.

One of the ladies present at the service came up at the end and shared with me the story of her daughter through these recent months. Her employer had treated her badly, a Nabal sort of man I fear he was. To cut a long story short, the man has got his 'come-uppance', and she has been wonderfully (and in some ways, very manifestly) vindicated by the Lord.

"'No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me,' declares the Lord." [Isaiah 54.17]

Leave it to him to sort these things out. He does a good job. Entrust yourself to him: he always judges justly.

Of course, in the story of David and Abigail, there's a sobering end to the tale. Nabal dies. David takes Abigail as his wife. That's his second wife. Indeed, in truth his third wife.

In the flush of delight at the grace God has shown him through this lady's intervention, keeping him from taking revenge himself on the curtly Nabal, David lowers his guard at a different point in his life. Women.

Everyone else was indluging in this sort of way. More than one woman.

But the ultimate downfall of Israel had its ultimate origin here. The seeds of the country's collapse were sown at this moment of time.

You can draw straight lines between David's taking another wife here and his taking another man's wife later on. You can draw straight lines between that affair with Bathsheba, and the pattern with women adopted by David's son, Solomon, born to him by Bathsheba ('if Dad could behave like this, then why shouldn't I?'). You can draw straight lines between Solomon's countless women and the seeping into Israel's life of the worship of other gods.

David, of course, wasn't really thinking of the far-off future fate of this his land, when taking to himself a second wife. But the devil surely was.

Scary.

Entrusting ourselves to the love of the righteous Judge is one thing. It needs to be matched by our submitting ourselves to the lordship of His Son.

We are to be as wise as the serpent himself in the seeds that we sow in the present, through our godly, patient, self-denying living day by day.

We're affecting the future, one way or another. May it be for the good of our people. May it be for the glory of God.

how a society dies

On Friday past Melanie Phillips had a piece in the Mail Online to which I was alerted.

Confession (1): I tend not to read the newspapers much at all, and when and if I do it's not the Daily Mail.

Confession (2): I'm not the world's greatest fan of Melanie Phillips. I don't read her columns, and I've only ever seen her a few times as one of the panel on Question Time.

However, this piece which she wrote on Friday past was more than a little interesting. Not just because she chooses to call a spade a spade, but because her conclusion is so stark and clear.

Here's what she wrote -

In our allegedly multicultural society, there is one religious group which is apparently not to be afforded equal respect, let alone treated for what it embodies - the foundational creed of this nation. That group is Britain’s Christians.

Somerset community nurse and committed Christian Caroline Petrie has been suspended and faces being sacked and even struck off for offering to say a prayer for an elderly patient. Although startled, the patient - herself a Christian - did not make a complaint and was in no way offended.

Nevertheless Mrs Petrie’s boss wrote to her saying she was required to uphold the reputation of her profession - which apparently means demonstrating ‘a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’ and not using her professional status ‘to promote causes that are not related to health’.

Apparently, Mrs Petrie previously received a warning about promoting her faith at work after she offered to give a prayer card to an elderly male patient.

Now there may be a valid point here about professionalism. Offering prayer cards comes close to touting one’s faith, which might well be thought inappropriate on the wards. But even so, one would have thought that a quiet word in the nurse’s ear would have been all that was necessary. Instead, Mrs Petrie was packed off to an ‘equality’ course for some diversity training.

This Orwellian response has now been followed up by the draconian action of suspending her with the possibility of outright dismissal from her job simply because she offered to pray for another patient.

Suspension and dismissal are sanctions to be used for mistreating or neglecting patients. Yet here they are being used against a nurse for offering to bring a patient a form of spiritual solace - which the patient was able easily to refuse and which caused her no problem. Is this not an utterly idiotic over-reaction?

I am a Jew; but when my mother was in the last stages of her terminal illness she was cared for by deeply devout Christian nurses who regularly prayed for her. Far from being offended by this, I was touched and comforted by this signal that they cared so much about her.

Moreover, this is not actually about upholding professionalism in nursing. It is all about foisting upon nursing the sinister and politically correct ‘diversity’ agenda – which means in effect treating Christianity as inherently offensive.

Demonstrating ‘a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’ apparently means that offering Christian solace to anyone at all, even if they don’t belong to another faith, somehow damages ‘equality and diversity’. Would the same action be taken, one wonders, against a Muslim nurse offering to pray for a Muslim patient?

It is but the latest in a growing line of incidents where people find themselves singled out for opprobrium for expressing their Christian faith. These include the Heathrow check-in worker who was banned from wearing a cross around her neck at work; the Relate counsellor who was sacked for refusing to give sex counselling to homosexuals; and the woman who was forced to stand down from an adoption panel because she disapproved of gay adoption.

It was particularly telling to compare this incident with the astounding video footage featured in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday, showing police officers running away from chanting demonstrators who took part in a violent protest in London against Israel's military action in the Gaza Strip.

The ten-minute amateur film shows 30 officers being chased by a crowd of up to 3,000 people who broke away from an official protest march last month. Absurdly, the police claim they were ‘going backwards’ but not running away. But the video clearly shows the police retreating under fire, being chased through central London by protesters chanting ‘Allahu akhbar’ as they pelted officers with traffic cones and screaming ‘cowards’ and ‘they’re going to get it’.

It is hard not to reach the dismal conclusion that a society faced with violence in pursuit of the goal of overturning Christian values and conquering Britain for Islam turns tail and runs away - while at the same time coming down like a ton of bricks on any expression of those Christian values which underpin British society, in the interests of ‘equality and diversity’.

This is the way a society dies.

She's closer to the truth than most folk care to imagine.

This is how a society dies.

shaping lives

There were 27 children at the Scripture Union Group today.

Not that I counted them as such. We had a game which involved them coming up with a word beginning with the succeeding letters of the alphabet (My best friend is Annoying .. Beautiful .. Clever .. Dog .. etc), and by the time we'd got through them all we were back at the letter A again.

My best friend is .. Abigail, said the last girl in the queue. I wasn't sure whether she was telling the truth about herself, or remembering the name from the Bible.

27 is a lot of children to be herded together at lunch-time! The numbers increase from week to week - not because I do a brilliant job of giving the thing a plug, but simply because they start to bring their friends.

Which is pretty much how evangelism's meant to work. One shall tell another, as the song rather quaintly puts it.

They're a lively bunch and although the time is pretty short, we cover a good bit of ground. Behavioural problems abound, of course, so it's really a help that the Scriptures are always so down-to-earth and practical.

We were on today about owning up and saying sorry; and making amends; and warning our friends when they're planning on doing something wrong. And just about all of that was immediately applicable there and then.

No need for merely theoretical application: it was Scripture being applied to the here and now.

A lot of pastoral ministry's basically that. Bringing the truths of the Word of God to bear upon the lives and situations of God's people in their varied states and stages.

And much of my time every day is spent in this sort of thing. On a one to one basis explaining and applying what the Scriptures have to teach.

Starting when they're young is always for the best! And teaching these young children not just what the Scriptures say, but also how they can apply it to themselves is a vital part of what I'm seeking to do.

It's the business of shaping lives for the glory of God. Hammering out, with the Word of God, the contours of the grace of Jesus Christ in all their lives.

A privilege indeed.

spin

There's spin and there's spin.

My head was spinning this morning, that's one sort of spin, for sure.

A hectic morning with a (metaphorical) hundred and one different tasks to address.

E-mails and letters and phone calls - some pastoral, some personal, some essentially clerical (and not, I should add, in the 'dog-collar' sense of the word): preparation, writing, planning.

I'm hopeful we'll be able to produce another 'mini-magazine' for distribution round the community in the week or two before Easter. There's a fair bit of planning involved in that.

And the time is short. Easter, I know, is late this year, but to get the thing produced I'll need to have the contents complete by the end of the month. Which, starting from scratch as I am, is not a lot of time!

Lunch-time brought a welcome break with the half-hour service of worship. The story of David and Abigail. Which brought some interesting discussion over lunch together afterwards.

Was Abigail a 'goodie' or a 'baddie'? Swayed perhaps by the first description we're given of her (she was "intelligent and beautiful"), and impressed by the speed and wisdom with which she addresses a potentially disastrous situation (for her family and for David as well), I've always thought her a 'goodie'.

But plainly not everyone agreed! The view was expressed that actually she was a predatory opportunist sort of woman, keen to get out of her marriage, with a fancy for the young man, David, and quick to throw herself onto him as soon as she possibly could.

Is that fair? Particularly since she's no longer around to defend herself.

It does raise the question as to what construction we place on the conduct of other people, though. The worst? Or the best?

That's the question today in our modern world of 'spin'.

Is it simply naive to believe the best of others? Or is that not what 'love' will seek to do?

Talking about the construction we put on the conduct and circumstances of others, when I visited one of our older members this afternoon in one of the local hospitals - a lady up in her nineties - I found her with a glass of brandy in her hand!

Mid-afternoon and all - some would think in terms of a definite 'problem'. Others perhaps would see the thing as medicinal.

I haven't a clue where the drink came from (she did have two friends in with her as well, though I don't think they had brought the brandy in): but it didn't seem really to be doing her much harm - she seemed remarkably well! Lucid and right on the button.

It would be easy, though, to interpret the thing in a negative way. And I guess that's why the Scriptures stress how important it is that among us as the followers of the holy Son of God "there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people." [Ephesians 5.3]

Not even a hint. Because a hint is more than enough for the cynical spin of our modern world to kick in and point the finger in a vicious and damaging way.

Love, by contrast, believes the best.

Love seeks the best and sees the best and gives the best and brings out the best in others.

We love, because He first loved us like that.

reversing the trend

Most folk will choose the escalator rather than the steps if given the choice.

It maybe makes sense. Why waste your energy, when the machine will do it for you? But maybe, too, it's a measure of the way we've grown so lazy.

Our 'get-up-and-go' has often almost gone. I heard someone on the radio today arguing that since the Thatcher era it's harder and harder these days to get any volunteers.

Maybe it's 'human nature', this regular gravitation to a life of indolence and ease, where we look to have things done for us instead of getting up and out there to be doing things for ourselves.

It subtly creeps into the life of the church as well.

Where is the sort of commitment of a former generation which sees folk ready to give their lives, year after year after year, to serve the Lord in hard and tough locations where there's maybe little fruit to see?

Where is the sort of commitment of a former generation which sees folk ready to sacrifice a lucrative career and offer up their lives to Christ in serving for a pittance in some place?

Where is the sort of commitment of a former generation which sees folk ready to give of their time and their strength in costly spheres of ministry?

Where is the sort of commitment of a former generation which sees folk ready to take on tasks and undertake responsibilities for long and arduous years?

Where is the sort of commitment of a former generation which sees folk ready to fight the good fight right to the bitter end, to run the good race right on through to the finishing post, and to keep the faith in the face of a hostile world?

I'm generalising, I know.

But we've become too much an escalator generation. We've chosen the path of the moving stairs, instead of the climb up the steps.

The trend can be reversed!

I came across this little Youtube clip today (see below) which hints at how such a change can come about.

A group of engineers took up the challenge and found a way to prompt an 'escalator people' to choose instead the life of climbing up the stairs. It can be done!

Think outside the box a bit! Be a bit creative! See the possibilities there are when we start to show there really is a better, far more interesting way to live.

Our 'escalator lifestyle' trend has got to be reversed. Here's how! Click on the picture below