Reformed Practical Piety – Page 3

Standards, we have got to have Standards

All right the title is jokey, the thing is the Reformed tradition has subordinate standards. Now don’t go looking in the Westminster Confession, or Belgic or the Statement of Nature, Faith and Order of the United Reformed Church for statements about Subordinate Standards, you won’t find any. The simple reason is this is self referential these are the subordinate standards. That means for all URCs that the principle Subordinate Standard for us is the Statement of Nature, Faith and Order of the United Reformed Church. So saying we don’t have standards is a bit stupid!

There is one thing every one should spot I have so far and will continue to do so, use the term Subordinate Standards. They are Subordinate to scripture. The Protestant shout of “Sola Scriptura” means that practically they never ever have been the final statement on the faith. Doctrine can and is Reformed in order to bring it better in line with Scripture. This is alive and kicking in Reformed Churches. I can remember being asked how a hymn of Kathy Galloways could get into Church of Scotland hymn book where it would struggle with its feminist images into an Anglican one. The answer was simple, the images Kathy used were Biblical, therefore the question was not “Are these images feminist?” but “Are these images Biblical?” and if they are then they trump all questions about whether things were feminist or not. Many Subordinate Statements say exactly that.

Secondly Subordinate Standards are about where the faith has been. Have a look at Reformed Presbytery of North America’s list and really go down them. You will find an odd bunch of documents. There are the standards such as: the Apostles Creed and the Westminster Confession, but then look what else is there like: Metrical Psalms and the Acts of General Assembly of the Church of Scotland betweeh specific dates! This does not look to me like a group trying to specify Doctrine it looks far more like a list of documents they tell where the group has come from. To ask who we are is nearly always to ask who we have been.

The picture I tend to come back to is of cairns, they normally come from places where the originating group for some reasons feels that it is a good idea to make a statement about how they see the faith. The reasons can be various; I am almost certain that the Congregationalists insisted on one when the URC was formed. They did not want any pesky Unitarians getting their hands on any property of the new united church and therefore having a statement was essential (the Unitarians won’t have a statement because that might meanthose troublesome Congregationalist getting their hands on the property). I think it is instructive that the requirement in the United Church of Canada to become a member is that you assent to belief in the Trinity (not the incarnation or ressurection) and this was insisted on by Congregationalists. The memories of fights in church history die hard. However it has to be said that fresh statements at the creation of a merged denomination are common. They equally occur at times of crisis, points of turmoil and not always theological, quite a few of them are political. However most of the time we plod along with those we have got and don’t pay much heed to getting new ones.

URC approach to “Substantial Agreement”

A while ago I drew two pictures of what we would mean if we required a ministers faith to be in substantial agreement with the subordinate standards. I suggested the URC’s approach was like the diagram shown here. I would suspect quite a overlap with the Basis of Union, maybe with quite a bit of agnosticism about parts of it, with other bits being inconcurrence with other Subordinate Standards which we accept. In other words the tradition is defined by having a broad scope with many overlapping subordinate standards and the requirement is that the faith falls mainly within those parameters. It does not mean that all ministers sign up to the same things exactly. Indeed although I have shown three here, there are at least another six named subordinate standards. I defy anyone to know them well enough that they can recall them at an instance and say what they agree and disagree with them let alone accept them all. Then there are the ones we don’t name but are included as “of the tradition” e.g. the Scots Confession. However what status is John Robinsons address to the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth. You won’t find it on the internet, I might put it up at some stage if I get hold of it, but the paraphrase in the form of We limit not the Truth of God (ignore the tune) is widely sung in the URC and I have heard quoted in theological debate. There is thus a deliberate ambiguity.

Yes I use the subordinate standards, they have been an important vehicle of my initiation into Reformed Theology, but I do not use them in a sort of lets try to believe twenty impossible things before breakfast style. I usually read them through quite quickly the first time, to try to get a feel of them, what is important and how they stand. Then and this is an ongoing process I turn to bits I see as significant and try and work out why. It maybe I disagree with them, in which case I need to work out why, or it might be a phrase gives me cause for reflection, time to look deeper at other understandings. So Subordinate standards are there to say where we have been, not to determine who we are. Remember “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Sanayana) so we need methods of remembering where we have been and knowing why we have travelled to where we are.

When two traditions collide

In 1972 the URC came into being and two denominational traditions collided. There are problems today that are caused not by the positions regarding wider traditions, these were both traditions dominated by the Reformed Tradition, but by the fact that the two traditions did not bother to find out how the other tradition worked, the Presbyterian assumed that with these sort of half toned Congregationalists they would find it easy to dominate, the Congregationalists assumed that they would continue doing things as they always did with a few adjustments for Presbyterians as they had done before. The Presbyterians assumed there was a meeting two dissenting traditions of which theirs was superior because it was articulated. The Congregationalists just assumed the way they did things was the way it was to be done noy because it was Congregational but because that was how it was.

The mistake was made in thinking that within English Congretationalism there was a named tradition that in some way is comparable to the Presbyterian tradition of the Presbyterian Church of England. This Presbyterian tradition is that of a clear dissenting tradition that stands against the mainstream. It says “We do this BECAUSE we are PRESBYTERIAN”. It is clear and defined. English Congregationalism on the whole found no need for such a tradition. Indeed may have found problems with having it. Rather with respect to tradition it relates as a dominant discourse, the tradition has no name (or rarely is named) but is referenced by how “We do it”.

I suspect that this has several roots. Firstly the obvious one, the tradition is not a single strand but a loosely woven rope of many strands that are not always compatible. It is true that the Reformed strand is the core one but there are plenty of other bits. It has to be seen as an grouping that specialises in bringing the disparate together. What is more with the Independent part, for most congregations “the tradition” is primarily the tradition of that congregation and only secondarily draws on the wider experience of other congregations and the wider church. When you talk about the wider context few members have any interest. Thus there is a need to have a way of talking and holding things together without setting people’s backs up. Names tend to carry baggage with them, so it is convenient if their is no name for anyone to object to.

Secondly in England there was an indicator name change I suspect at the end of the nineteenth Century. Before that all Congregational churches tended to be called Independent and Congregational used only after then. Traditions are conservative by nature, I suspect that there is a strong streek of people who still think of themselves as going to the Independent Chapel despite this. To add to this the change seems to coincide with the NonConformist Ascendancy in Late Victorian times. There were places in England where Congregationalism was the dominant tradition, so naturally it took the dominant form.

The result is that former English Congregationalists are not concious of their Congregational heritage but they are secure in it, assuming it is the way things ought to be done by any rational person. They have not had a name and feel no need for a name. For them the question was how the Presbyterians will alter the way we do things. It is a tradition based around absorbing not fracturing.

The former Presbyterians, as do former Congregational Church of Scotland, (I have not idea what former Churches of Christ do) find that what happens is that instead of their nice named dissenting tradition, they are faced with a nameless mesh of ideas that somehow resists their attempts to say what it should be like. What is worse it uses the first person plural “We” of itself so your choice is to join it or dissent from belonging. This is not tradition as they know it, yet it assumes the dominant position.

From Fencing to Open Communion

This is the story of a piece of folk liturgy within the Reformed tradition that is so common that we don’t even see it as there. It is nice because it is tidy story that covers Reformed tradition from start to current day and probably is most influential in creating the Ecumenical movement

The story starts off in Geneva with John Calvin. John Calvin in quite a dramatic way fenced the table from libertines. His document Treatise against the Anabaptist and Libertines does suggest some more moderation:

“That is, that none be so hardy to approach to this holy table, which is not verily of the body of Jesus Christ, worshiping one God with all faithful men, and serving him in good lawful vocation. But where they come to make declaration in their fourth Article, how a man ought to separate himself from all pollutions of the world to join himself to God: there they begin to deprave [turn out of the way] altogether”

Note that piety is indeed required but separation from all pollution is not.

However in Scotland under Presbyterianism and fencing the table got out of hand. In the song Cameronian Cat, you get the story of a cat found catching a mouse on the Sabbath day and the dire consequences it suffers. James Hogg, author of “A Private Memoir and Confession of a Justified Sinner” writes about this song in his collection of songs called Jacobite Reliques:
” It is by some called The Presbyterian Cat, but generally as above; and is always sung by the wags in mockery of the great pretended strictness of the Covenanters, which is certainly, in some cases, carried to an extremity rather ludicrous. I have heard them myself, when distributing the sacrament, formally debar from the table the king and all his ministers; all witches and warlocks; all who had committed or attempted suicide; all who played at cards and dice; all the men that had ever danced opposite to a woman, and every woman that had danced with her face toward a man; all the men who looked at their cattle or crops, and all the women who pulled green kail or scraped potatoes, on the Sabbath-day; and I have been told, that in former days they debarred all who used fanners for cleaning their oats, instead of God’s natural wind.”

From what had been a sensible practice the barring has become as ridiculous in its strictness as the anabaptists practice that John Calvin wrote against.

Now let us move to the end of 19th Century and to the pastor of Trinity Congregational Church Edinburgh, one John Hunter. Now Congregationalists in Scotland often struggled to find their position with respect to the strong Presbyterian culture. A Reformed church that was not Presbyterian in structure just seemed odd.

Equally at the time in Scotland there is renewed interest in written liturgy with the forming of the Church Service Society and the work towards a new Book of Common Order for the Church of Scotland. It is perhaps therefore not surprising that John Hunter who has an interest in liturgy writes his own Service book.

Now Reformed churches did not do much beyond basic liturgy whether Congregational or Presbyterian but John Hunter takes the prohibitions that are used by the Presbyterians and changes them around in his address by the minister to the people. This change is described Horton Davies as John Hunter’s “… greatest single liturgical invention” [Davies, H.(1962) Worship and Theology in England: From Newman to Martineau; Oxford University Press p232].

“Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins and are in love and charity with your neighbours and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of the God and walking henceforth in his holy ways; draw near with reverence, faith and thanksgiving, and take the Supper of the Lord to your comfort

Come to this sacred Table, not because you must, but because you may: come to testify not that you are righteous but that you sincerely love our Lord Jesus Christ and desire to be his true disciple: come not because you are strong but because you are weak; not because you have any claim on heaven’s rewards, but because in your frailty and sin you stand in need of Heaven’s mercy and help: come not to express opinion but to seek a Presence and pray for a Spirit
And now that the supper of the Lord is spread before you, lift up your minds and hearts above all selfish fears and cares; let this bread and this wine be to you the witnesses and signs of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit, Before the throne of the Heavenly Father and the cross of the Redeemer make you humble confession of sin, consecrate you lives to Christian obedience and service and pray for strength to do and to bear the holy and blessed will of God”

What was a prohibition is now an invitation.

At most URC communion services today you will here an invitation often picking up phrases from John Hunter’s original. However, if you go back to the worship books you won’t often find it, yet time after time in the actual act of worship. What is more is the invite asks people to come, more and more it has stressed that it is Christ’s table not the table of any creed or sect (yes I am quoting but not sure where from).

This repeated use of this liturgical innovation has entered into the consciousness of the church-going public. It has become part of how we think of ourselves. I have seen it quoted in theological debate as well as during worship. It has been picked up by lay preachers as a key element of worship. Most people’s understanding of the rubrics of communion come from this and not from the dry rules that technically govern such things. If a congregation of whatever tradition has some sort of an open table, I suspect this working in the background. The genie is out of the bottle, the tables have become open, I suspect no-one can put it back, however, much any tradition tries to apply the rules. This all because a Scot’s Congregationalist needed to find a way to differentiate his congregation from the Presbyterian around it!

What is holiness

In Leviticus 11:45 we read:

For I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

”. This would not be problematic if it was not for 1 Peter 1:16 which quotes it. So at least one biblical writer thought it applied to Christians as well as Jews. But what does “Holy” mean. Initially it seems in context to have done with ritual purity but then Christians have a different understanding of what makes a person unclean see Matthew 15:11 and refers it to moral deeds done by a person. However I am going to suggest that we learn more about what being Holy entails if we see it as reflecting God. So what are the characteristics that seem to specifically define God as worshipped by Christians. I would suggest that chief amongst them is generous, faithful love.

Generous – In some ways we need to come to terms with this. God’s love is never sensible in its generosity. God does not seem to give us what we think as practical or even what we think we would like. God is frustratingly the sort of person who decides we need a diamond ring when what we were looking for was a good night out. God is capricious and overwhelming. There is not saying what he will do, but you equally can’t be sure that he won’t permit or do something. I don’t know why, but I do know that if God’s action on the cross is what Christians claim it is, then no amount of prayer not answered can balance the books. The problem is that God is does not seem to keep account and give fairly. Generosity in this sense is not about amount its about openness. So our response needs to have some of the lack of calculation that God’s response to us does.

Faithful – There is as saying that goes “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” and that really is the core of being faithful. God has a habit of turning up in the darkest of places. He rescues Israel from Egypt not in Joseph’s day, but when they were basically slave labour. He does not decide to come in person when things in Israel are going well and turns up at the palace, he comes when Israel is occupied and gets himself killed by the occupying authorities. Now lets be clear I don’t trust God for one moment to get me out of trouble, he may, he may not; I do trust God to be there in times of trouble.

Love – forget romantic attraction, this seems to be more positive regard. Well wishing that is followed through into practical action.If you prefer unconditional regard for all of creation and all creatures with it. Another is that God enjoys creation, much as many men enjoy hobbies, the are serious about it, often quite nerdishly so and gain satisfaction from doing it. God does not need creation but it flows out of the very nature of God. That is important, God’s love comes first. The challenge for the Christian is to mirror this sort of connection back at God and onto creation. As we do it towards creation we become co-creators with God, as we do it to God we honour and enjoy him.

A Radical Welcome Eh?

The United Reformed Church has decided to run an evangelistic advertising campaign called Radical Welcome. Now I can argue that it is a good thing on a number of issues, and I can also here the arguments about it being wrong on a whole lot of other issues but that is not the point of this posting. It has two names really the one used “Radical Welcome” which seems fairly popular with people at present and the less popular one that the campaign agency prefers of “Zero Intolerance”. Lots of people are attacking “Zero Intolerance” as a title I however want to make clear that “Radical Welcome” is not without its problems.

The problem isn’t with the word “Radical” its the word “Welcome”. What is a welcome? Is it the ability to enter a church building without hindrance and to be physically safe while in there? Is it the strength of the hand shake on the door? Is it the depths of the fellowship?

Most URCs are actually pretty good at the first two although and I hope disability campaigners will take note, we tend when it comes to disability to form fill until we are confronted with someone who is. So at my local congregation we had braille hymnbooks but until we were faced with a person who used them we did not wonder about getting a table to put them on. The number of loop systems that are not properly working until someone who is deaf and understands these things comes along, is appalling. I can still remember one guys face when a friend made the effort to get a loop system working at a church that had one that wasn’t and he heard the sermon for the first time in years. He was beaming from ear to ear. My view on disability is that all congregations should advertise someone as the person to contact, and they should be prepared to meet with a disabled person and/or their carer and discuss requirements before the person is faced with coming into worship on a Sunday. This person should normally not be clergy.

The warm handshake and the brief chat is clearly catered for in most URCs. I mean that seriously, here is the description of the welcome given at the first Mystery Worshipper Report I found today on Ship of Fools

“The welcome was amazing. I was greeted at the front entrance by a couple, who both shook my hand. Then, as I entered the church, three other people welcome me. I received the relevant service sheet, Bible and hymn book. One of them introduced herself as Eunice, the church secretary. I sat down near the middle of the church, and three more people came up to me, one by one, to say hello and welcome. The minister also came over and introduced herself. They even showed me where the coffee hatch was, although it wouldn’t be open until after the service.”

Most URC reports are in that style. As far as initial welcome is concerned we largely have it sussed.

What is more most URCs have had it drummed into them that they must be welcoming, it really has been dinned in in the last twenty years. However apart from the tick box approach to equal access and the initial welcome, most members of the congregation judge a church to be welcoming by the warmth of the fellowship they experience.

The problem is that very cliquey churches where nobody could possibly join are also often places of very warm fellowship for those that belong to the clique. In such congregations the switch from “I am welcomed” to “We are welcoming” happens unnoticed. However this is poor evidence. Are they equally welcoming to the parents of the child with Aspbergers who can’t sit quiet during the service? Are they as welcoming to the person who is twenty years younger than they are or do they think “he will be off very quickly to join a church where there are more young member and modern music”. That sort of thought can become a self fulfilling prophecy and when the next person comes in in that age bracket then there is even less reason to be welcoming as “she will be off like the rest”. Or what about the person who nips out between worship and coffee to have a cigarette? The person who comes in tatty clothes or smells? Yes we greet them at the door but hold a conversation with them when our friends are around?

No I am not being pious, I know I am as guilty as the rest of doing this, it is always easier to talk to people we know than to those we don’t. I still have to make myself do it. It is also easier to talk to people we think of like us. It is far easier for many churches to accept a middle class gay couple in a long term relationship, than to accept the young married couple with a group of noisy children who use colourful language in discipling them.

What is more, if I only deal with people I know, then to some extent I am dealing with a known quantity, I like the familiar. The incorporation of somebody new into the community does not just mean change for them, it means change for us, and what is more unpredictable change. It takes real discipline to try and implement a consistent interest in people who are on the edge of your friendship group whether congregation or other. Even if you start from the supposition that variety makes for richness there is still the day when richness isn’t what you want, or the a friends has pressing needs.

That means we need to look further into our hearts that we think. The welcome we really needs to have, is about meeting the person as that person. Not giving them a hand shake at the door then ignoring them, not ask them through to coffee the first week then expecting them to mix with their own friends from then on and leave us to talk to ours. It is also the real challenge of realising that some of them has a profound ability by our standards to mess things up and still managing to care for them without saying it is fine to mess things up. It is also the ability to see the love and care that so many of them demonstrate despite the mess they are in.

Communities that attempt to do that, I believe are struggling to become Christ like, but that isn’t the work of five minutes, the human capacity to mess it up is huge. All I hope is by my death I have learnt slightly more of how to do that than I do now, I can only learn that from trying to participate in such communities not from all the theory books. This sort of knowledge is heart knowledge and the head can be totally sorted and the heart in totally the wrong place.

There is a problem though, the URC has consistently told its congregations that they must be more welcoming. The congregations have responded, they have developed a good initial welcome and dealt with a lot of discrimination issues. Members also find the local fellowship welcoming particularly if it has familiar faces that you see week in week out. So when they are asked to be welcoming they tick the box. Few, very few are going to admit there is something missing and those that do, know they are unwelcome for saying so.

The problem is that we need a conversion, that is us in the church need it, not those outside, and I worry that with all this talk of welcome we might just miss how radical the real task is.

Mission in Urban Priority Areas (personal reflection)

I am tired after a hard week in work, it has been frustrating checking the fine details of papers to be submitted to journals and by 5:30 p.m. I am exhausted. All I really want to do is go home to my warm flat and relax with a glass of wine and a book but I need to shop for the weekend still, so that I can spend tomorrow working on my thesis.

So I set out and head to the supermarket. In doing so I walk down a major road, with ice still on the pavement from the snowfall about a week ago, past a few equally weary workers who trudge up the hill to where they live. By doing this I walk through a small area of with quite a high level of social deprivation. However although there are lights on in my home church, I see people come out of car park carrying large black cases which have the outline of brass instruments. there is Samba drums coming from the local community centre, but when passing the high-rise flats not a single creature stirs, not even the overfed pigeons. Nearby is the old Methodist Church that the Jesus Army have taken over and are redeveloping as a Jesus Centre.

On the underpass to the supermarket sits Mike, he has his battered blue parker hunched around his thin body, his black eyes sharp in his thin face, and before him sits his cap, waiting for any spare change the straggling passers by might put in. I stop and ask if he is getting on and if he wants anything to eat. In doing so I learn he is seven quid short of his B&B money for the night having ‘slept’ rough the previous night.

As I go to buy him his egg sandwich and a chocolate milk shake I ponder what to do. It is clear to me that tonight of all nights nobody should be sleeping rough. I am not sure that ringing emergency accommodation has any point even if I knew the number, which I don’t. I know Mike is in contact with the authorities at least for the last six months. I also have never seen him clearly drunk or under the influence, I know he is ex-services and he smokes. I also know that most of the places I could send him during the day (or better still go with him to) are shut. In the end I give him the £7, he offers to repay, I reject saying that he should do something for himself with any extra.

It takes another eight months, a trip to hospital with serious illness before Mike is housed. His first plan on being housed was to go and help at local charity. Now I know I did not fix anything, I maybe gave Mike a bit more comfortable existence for twenty four hours but that is it. I may even have allowed him to get drugs that were the cause of his homelessness in the first place. I don’t know. I do know that one of the problems of trying to help people like Mike, and there are plenty, different stories but similar difficult circumstances, is the fact that they live chaotic lives.

Expect them at church dressed in clean clothes at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, and then to behave politely is just not reasonable. I am afraid the chance of getting them to a church is negligible. Mike was invited at least three or four times including people willing to walk in with him, to a community breakfast at my church less than half a mile away, he never came let alone to Sunday worship with many middle class people.

The problem is that in many ways church has to be twenty-four seven in these communities, it is no good expecting them to come when church is open, church needs to be open when they come. What is more they often need more support and effort at least initially than your average middle class person. In order to even start to comprehend the faith they will need a small affirmative accounting community. A place where they are helped to tackle the chaotic forces that rule their lives.

Yet I know equally the high cost of trying to do such work. I have lost count/track of the cases of burn out when people have tried. These were people of faith, why else would they do it. Even to live your life in close proximity to these people (by that I do not live in the area, I have done that for years and it can be done with very little contact, but actually living so you shop at their shops, socialise where they socialise) is extremely draining work.You are faced with an overwhelming need that could drain your spirit and your finances very single day.

I have come too a conclusion that really only two groups have the ability to deal with such a challenge. On the one hand there are the Roman Catholic orders who specialise in living alongside the marginalised. They manage to do it, partly because they have systems that watch peoples reserves, because quite often the brothers and sisters who do this have as much money as those they help (i.e. none) and because you normally do this as a community.

The second group are from the other end of the spectrum and are groups like the Jesus Army, again the do it by living in community, actually by quite strong discipleship and again by having a communal rather than an individual purse. The difference is that people from the area can join the Jesus Army where as the Roman Catholic brothers and sisters would expect people to join the local RC church and are not looking for others to have a vocation to their order. In some ways this makes the Jesus Army more vulnerable to the stresses of the people around them.

Which of the two is best?

Well the Roman Catholic has the advantage of not expecting people who want to be involved locally to make the commitment the brothers and sisters have made. The supply of people for the presence is not from the locality and what they want is to create a worshipping community around them that will be part of the Roman Catholic Church. The problem is that as soon as you start to help people in these very dire circumstances in a way that really does challenge the chaos, then they normally start rising up the social ladder and quite often end up moving out of the area. So you have an continual mission situation with the need for constant support.

With the Jesus Army approach you actually do develop a local community. There are people from the neighbourhood and they tend to stay because the amount they have invested in the Jesus Army, i.e. housing, job and friendship means that leaving is very difficult. What should the Jesus Army do for people who want to leave. They may well have come in with nothing, been given shelter and then experience of employment by the Jesus Army. If that person leaves and the Jesus Army gives them nothing then that person is destitute again and open to fresh forces of chaos. However given the amount of support the Jesus Army gives such people why should it be expected to support them still when they no longer want to belong?

It seems to me both are flawed but both work better in these circumstances than standard church model as practised by many churches in this country. Getting the balance right, for there to be a church which really is open to the community will always be extremely tough.

Vulnerability and Mission

The sermon today got me thinking. The minister was going on about the way that we needed to respect other people and also to serve other people as part of our Christian witness and mission. I agree fully with this, respect and service are part and parcel of good Christian mission. However I want to add a third and that is vulnerability

I am well aware that vulnerability is not the first thing that most people thinking of a mission strategy consider, yet it seems to me essential on two levels.

Firstly the kevlar mailed knight in shinning armour is great for getting you out of difficulties, but you don’t actually believe you could become one. That is the rub. The state of postmodernity that the world is in has changed people’s questions. It is no longer “Does it work?” but “Will it work for me?” and the super-person or kevlar mailed knight just isn’t who they are. They want to see the Christian faith working in a frail person like themselves. The closer you can get to a person, the more they can see where your fault lines match theirs the more they are going to be able to trust your solutions.

Secondly there is the fact that the Kevlar coated knight is actually a pretty poor way to allow the light of of Christ to shine through your life. The power is visible but it is assumed to be the power of the individual whom it is working through not the power of God. The other thing is God, at least the one revealed in the New Testament does not seem to think that the normal trappings of power are good ways to communicate what he is about. Oh he can use them if he wanted too, far too many examples of that in the Old Testament but he seems to not use them in the New Testament. Yes he heals people, but he does this for individuals or small groups, yes he can produce food and drink, but he does this for a crowd for a single meal, not a nation for forty years. Yes he can tell the wind to stop but he does not get it to part the Sea of Galilee. In other words he has gone small scale and low key, an interesting change in approach. He is now using the small, weak and vulnerable to show forth his power. As St Paul says God’s power is perfected in weakness.

Reforming church structures to Reform Church finances

It has just occurred that the reason the centre has grown in the URC and the periphery diminished is the way we set our finances. At the moment the finances are a levy which the centre sets on all the local churches. The problem with this is that the centre can see work to do, and then set the levy to pay for it. Once or twice this does not matter.

Under the old Congregational Union, the local churches had far more say over what the levy was and when it was to high simply did not pay it. The centre thus had to decide what best to do with what was given.

So we need to redress the balance of power and put power back into the hands of local churches. One way would be to have a scrutinising body of church treasures to look at the levy. I would suggest that for national each synod would send one church treasurer to a central committee, each appointment lasting five years. In each synod a body of about the same size 12 people should also sit, the rule being for a member that they have to be a church secretary. This would mean a meeting once a year before a synod and it is this body and not the central finance people who should bring the levy.

Such people are a lot better placed than either a full synod or central staff to make these decisions. They can be fully briefed on the central issues but are also well aware of the local church finances as well.

This is not a quick fix, it will not work overnight and it will not bring about immediate cuts. What I expect it to do is over twenty years to consistently reduce the central bureaucracy so that local churches are empowered to carry out their mission or not as they see fit. The only long term way to keep control of expenditure is to put people in control of it who have an interest in keeping it low.

Older Generation and the Church

This was a mini rant I was giving to my parents and thought it was perhaps worthy of a blog post.

Lets be clear, there are certain things that I don’t want to hear from the older generation. Firstly I don’t want to hear them grumbling about the mess the church has got into. Not because the church is not in a mess, but because its a method of seeking to make other people (i.e. the younger people) responsible for getting the church out of the mess. Lets start with facts, the church did not get into this situation overnight, it has taken decades to get into it, and in each preceding decade it would have been easier to rectify than it is now. The people responsible for things in previous decades are now older people. So the grumbling is asking others to get you out of your mess.

Secondly I don’t want excuses not to engage with the younger generation. One of the things that has happened is a disconnect between the Church and the vast number of younger people. It started before 1970s, as I can remember sitting in school in the late 1970s and finding myself the only person familiar with the Easter story amongst my class mates in high school (I hope it was Easter, it may have been Christmas). They already did not know the grand narratives of the Christian gospel. That gap is partly your making, help us bridge it.

Please don’t think you can pass this onto us. What you tried to do then obviously wasn’t enough because it did not halt it. This means there are fewer of my generation in church than of yours, in case you had not noticed it. Expecting us to make the effort to connect with those younger and provide a chaplaincy service for you that allows you to stay within your comfort zone ain’t fair. I suspect our priorities have to be to get the gospel out to those who are younger than us. So yes things are going to be more uncomfortable for you. Believe it or not, its not half as uncomfortable as it is for us.

Now I am really not interested in blame, blame does not solve anything but I am interested in getting you on board, realising that you have a role to play (your retirement from church is cancelled just as mine from work is).

What is more it means change, its not the church kids we need to connect with or keep. I am sorry but we have consistently failed to find a way to keep them through college, when grants came in in the 1960s we should have started looking for new ways to connect. Chaplaincy is often under funded and does not connect back to the local congregation.

It is the secular 20 to 30 years olds who are just setting up a home in the area. How do we reach them? I don’t know, but we have to try experimenting to find a way.

That of course means our resources are directed elsewhere, not to keeping the body of the church functioning as it is, but on trying to develop relationships with people , people who are distinctly different from most of us in their attitudes and ideas. People who are a lot younger and therefore a lot more technologically au fait.

So if you are up for the challenge, welcome to the team, we need all the hands we can get, no matter how weak and full of arthritis they are. If you are not, then I am sorry, but we have more important things to do and at least you can stop grumbling.

The Elements of Faith

I am going to try a new tack on the first five stages of faith by Fowler. I have known about Fowler’s stages of faith for over a decade now and for various reasons I have been unsatisfied with them as a model and yet have been drawn back to them as containing explanations of what I see happening around me. The two major problems I have are that I do not see faith development as the simple progression that is implied by his structure and I find the sixth stage too dependent on Liberal Christian hagiography.

Before I even start, the sense that I mean by faith here has almost nothing to do with salvation. Faith in this entries take is a human activity that most if not all humans partake in or at least most Western humans do. I am not defining what is correct to belief, I am rather describing those activities that create a person as a being of faith or at least a western person as a person of faith. There is space for the development of correct belief in the descriptions but that space could equally lead to false belief.

Equally too often in the past Christians have thought that what it is to belong to another faith is the same as what it is to belong to Christianity. There is a lot of room for different forms of faith, but I am no expert of different faiths, therefore my thinking and data which I have drawn on is at broadest a western perspective and at its narrowest a perspective from within a specific Christian Western tradition.

What I am going to suggest is that there are five elements of faith which are loosely characterised by Fowler’s stages 1 to 5 (I will leave the sixth for the present as I am not so sure about it). I have chosen elements rather than stages as I wish to make it clear that they are no successive, although I freely admit that it is possible for one element to be dominant at any stage of faith development. However, as I see it a fully developed faith would include parts of all five elements. However, it is not essential to develop all five equally or to keep a specific balance between them.

Moving onto the five elements:

The element I wish to draw from Fowler’s first stage (which he calls Intuitive-Projective faith), is what I call passive faith. This is perhaps the simplest. It is when the faith of others keep the faith for you. I think it is often derided and forgotten, treated as pre faith, but this simplest form of faith reminds us that at all times our faith is not ours alone but that shared with others. They hold us and we hold them. In this, I am picking up the projective part of his definition. That is the faith is projected onto us by the people around.
The second element I want to draw from the second stage (Mythic-Literal faith) is participatory faith. This is about performing the faith, when an individual starts to be involved in active listening and doing within the faith. It is this sort of faith that gets one to pray, read the bible, take communion, do acts of charity. This one concentrates on doing faith in a very active way. The evidence suggests that this is more basic and more important than is given credit. How one what one understands as happening when one performs will vary with age, faith stage and previous experience but the emphasis is on performing of the faith.
The third element that seems to predominate in Fowler’s Synthetic-Conventional faith, I call belonging faith as it stressed being part of a faith community. This really becomes about knowing what the group norms are and conforming to them. The norms can be both about the practice and about belief. Under this one also comes the developing of deeper relationships with other believers and participating in communal events. Perhaps to be understood as faith similar to that of a football team supporter.
The fourth element which I have drawn from Fowlers Individuative-Reflective faith is owned faith. I might well have called this is a questioning of faith, asking whether you agree with the communal norms. This is when it is no longer good enough to take other’s answers and you want to work out answers for yourself. However, as people inevitably do find answers for themselves by this process and by so doing come to ownership of faith I am referring to this as owned. It should be stressed that the process of developing an owned faith rather than just accepting what is taught often involves searching and asking awkward questions.
The fifth element drawn from Fowler’s Conjunctive faith stage is accepting faith; this is about learning to live with the unresolved. The struggle to understand and create a coherent faith, also in the end is doomed to failure. Things can never be that tidily sorted. There comes a stage where a person of faith needs to let go of the questions knowing they have pushed them as fully as they can and the answers that do exist are incomplete. Others may refer to this as learning to live with mystery. It is a coming to terms with the lack of answers, finding that despite not having everything tied down, that somehow faith continues and developing an ability to let go of the questions.

Now at any one stage, an individual’s faith will have different mixes of all five elements. However the lower number an element is the more basic it is. Yes, there are stories of people who have come to faith without contact with others, but I think our most find that something holds or draws them towards a faith, long before they actually make an active personal connection. Equally the second is often held to be the essence of any faith tradition. Please note at this point no intellectual assent is necessary. It is only with the third element that this starts to play a role. I suspect that for an active faith an adult needs some component of all of the first three.

Equally the final two elements are the harder ones to develop, I suspect that fifth is always a struggle and does not come easily to anyone. I am also suspicious that some people only ever have low requirements for these elements of faith. The conventional answers of their faith community, on the whole, satisfy them. For others, the very opposite happens and only when they are practising these elements do they find they can with integrity participate in the participatory and belonging elements of faith. I also suspect that some people with a tendency to approach things with their intelligence rather than emotions may find more need for owned faith than others. That is not to say people who approach things emotionally are without this struggle just that it plays a lesser role.

I also suspect that people who go through a conversion experience go through a process where different elements dominate at different stages of the process. I suspect that at the start people are developing the owned part of their faith, this leads them to question what they have received from their current community. They are then drawn to another community, passive faith if you like, as they start exploring it then participatory faith becomes dominant, finally as they make the commitment belonging faith dominates. I suspect this cycling happens to a lesser degree with those within faith traditions. Some will cycle many times, quite often moving in a consistent trajectory with each cycle, others will never need to make such big changes.

This cycling while distinctive of conversion experience but it is not the only way elements can change. For instance, I suspect that to the strengthening of owned faith leads to a weakening of belonging faith, although I suspect that for many belonging faith is important even when owned faith is quite strong. A growth in accepting faith may well produce a situation where the other four elements of faith can flourish as well.