0

Category: Mission

Home / blog / Church / Mission
Jul282011

The Fifth Gospel

Yesterday I was asked to give a talk about the time I spent in Uganda. Five years ago I spent a month on placement at Kampala cathedral. It was the first time Dr Ruth and I had really travelled together and we didn’t know what to expect.  I bought a new camera and took a notebook.  I’m glad I did as preparing for this talk made me dig it out and rediscover some of my memories of our big adventure.

On the page after I had written the profound statement “[expletive deleted] a rat just came into my room”, there was this:

There is a vicar staying at the hostel whilst he is studying. He just said something that made me think.

“People come to church not because of what they have heard but because of what they have seen.

People think there are four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If they read them they probably won’t do it in-depth but they may read them and think that is it. They forget about the fifth gospel, their lives”

9 years ago I went to a baptism service to see an 83 year old lady take the plunge. She had decide to make the leap of faith and start following. Before she was baptised she stood up and gave her testimony.  She told us exactly how she had come to believe in Jesus and why she wanted to follow him.

She explained that she had started coming to church after a conversation she had with her landlord a few months earlier.  He was the caretaker at the church and also owned the small flat that she lived in. Her landlord had come around to visit to check that she was alright.  The weather had been atrocious for a couple of weeks with heavy snow all over the North East.  She explained to him that everything was alright but she had locked herself out of the flat a couple of days ago. She had left her little terraced flat and the latch was on as the door closed behind her.  She was stuck in the deep snow until her husband returned.

She explained that the young kid next door had arrived home and asked if she was OK.  They had never spoken to each other before but he wondered if she would like to come inside to the warmth and wait. In the conversation it transpired that the landlord knew the young kid because they both went to the same church.

The thing is, I had no idea who was being baptised that day.  I was flabbergasted.  From my perspective, I knew the other side of the story.

In my third year at university I was sauntering through the thick falling snow back to the little flat I shared with Dr Ruth after a hard day’s slog through a Johannine literature lecture.  There was an old woman standing in the snow next to a flat door.  When I asked her if she was OK she said yes but she wondered if she could just stand inside my door.  Of course I said yes.  In fact, I struggled to convince her that it wasn’t too much trouble for her to sit on the sofa and watch my TV.   I actually had to pretend that I wanted a cup of tea so that she would have a hot drink. I wandered back around to her flat next door a couple of times to see if her husband was back. When he was she left.

No blinding lights. No miraculous healing. No talking about “religion”. Just a cup of tea with no strings attached.

What does it mean for me to become that fifth gospel?

Jul182011

Going to Church for the First Time

We weren’t sure about what time proceedings were going to start or quite where it was going to happen but Dr Ruth had seen a sign that said 9 o’clock. Neither of us knew quite what to expect as the notice seemed quite vague but Dr Ruth plucked up the courage and said she wanted to go so we tentatively climbed the stairs.

When we arrived it seemed that we were late. Music was already playing and as we opened the door I squirmed a little like we were intruding. Everyone was in their seats and looked really comfortable. A silver haired lady jumped out of her seat and walked to the door with a smile. She appeared to be holding a wooden bowl with some money on it. I glanced to Dr Ruth who looked back. An unspoken sentence passed between us ‘but I thought it was free’. I can feel the words “I’m sorry, i think we’ve come to the wrong place” welling up in the back of my throat but i feel my hand fishing around in my pocket for loose change. The silver haired lady doesn’t push us to one side but her body language indicates that we are to be moved away from the main group…

“Would you like to buy some raffle tickets, they are a pound a strip”

Through the annals of my mind fleeting questions flicker and crackle like the the embers on bonfire night. Only one crystallises fully and bursts forth from my lips in the split second I am given to make a decision. “What is the prize?” I whisper in hushed tones not wanting to disturb the atmosphere or interrupt the lilting voice of the singers…

“A bottle of wine or a CD of….” the name escapes my memory but the artist was not someone I’ve over heard of. I didn’t want them but I felt that I must buy some tickets. All eyes seemed to be upon me, judging me with a beady glare. I took the perforated orange paper and slinked quietly to the back of the room.

The first thing to strike me was that everyone was so much older than us. If it was not for the guy with the acoustic guitar we would have been the youngest people in the room. This was a little unnerving.

As we quickly glanced around the room we realised that we were out of place. To our left was a man in a waistcoat with a bow tie. In fact, everyone seemed to be dressed as though appearing before high society. We on the other hand had arrived in full bike leathers carrying helmets. We sat conspicuously glancing around and occasionally whispering to each other:

“What do you think this means?”

“They all seem to know each other”

The songs that they were singing were unfamiliar. Everyone was joining in with a tune that we’d never heard and words that they seemed to be plucking from the air. A vocabulary that we didn’t even recognise was pouring out in a unity we were unable to join.

The song drew to a close and then the man who seemed to be in charge announced tentatively that ‘Dave is going to play’. Dave is rather predictably a man with an acoustic guitar. He spends a couple of minutes explaining that this was an older song and that we should all be able to join in.

He starts playing. I turn to Dr Ruth and whisper “I know this, I love this one”. She looks quizzically at me.

She whispers “I don’t know this” as her eyebrows bunch up closer together.

“But you must know this one, it’s a classic” as I enthusiastically join in with the chorus only to find that in the second line he’s changed some of the words. And the timing. It’s just not…. Singable.

Except everyone in the room seems to be familiar with it just as it is!!!

Next the man who is in charge asks us all if we would like to share anything. “Does anyone have a story or a song that they would be willing to bring to us? Anyone?…. No one ?…. Well if not, we’re going to play…”

Proceedings continue like this for a while longer. All the way through Dr Ruth spends the whole time whispering these lines to me:

“They want us to join in”

[“shhhhhh, we’ll just sit here”]

“But we could play SONG X or SONG Y”

[“No we couldn’t, they all seem to know each other”]

At the end we quietly put on our coats and tentatively made our way to the doors without trying to draw attention to ourselves. We opened the door with the minimum force required so as to not make a sound and then scurried away into the night….

And thus ended our first and last evening at a Highland Folk Music Group’s music night, open to all.

Feb92011

Mission in Culture and Context | Social Media

Social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

I am currently doing some MA level work on Mission in Culture and Context.  I have been contemplating what area to research and had three ideas.  On of them was the way in which The Church engages with social media in a missiological context.  @annamdrew posted this video.  Needless to say, the two other areas I had contemplated faded into insignificance.  I wonder what Bevans and Schroeder would say about this clip if they were writing their book in 200 years time.

Jan272011

Literally | A Fresh Expression of Wedding

A few colleagues were talking about weddings the other day.  They discussed things that they had been asked to do and whether they were prepared to incorporate them into the day.  It was a bit of one-upmanship.  Who had the most crazy request?  One said that they had been asked if they could wear reenactment outfits.  I said “what period”?  The conversation continued and I was told “They wanted to have a guard of honour at the door of the church when they left”.  “What period?” say I, “What type of reenactment?”.  It turned out to be Viking and Saxon reenactment.

I guess they weren’t expecting me to say “I used to do Viking Saxon reenactment and I was in a guard of honour at a wedding.  I also have a friend who married in a rifleman’s uniform AKA Sharpe’s rifles”.  When I say these kinds of things people often don’t know how to react.  In the last two days, all the old photos have started to appear on Facebook.  That is literally how I came to share with you this video that @revdrach sent me!

There are legal ramifications to a wedding and much of what is done is prescribed by law.  If I had a pound for every person who has asked me if they can “write their own vows” because they have seen it on Home and Away I could retire at 32.  Never the less, we live in a world that is looking for meaningful personalised experiences in all sorts of different ways.  When they turn to the church to have them, how do we respond?  61 million people have seen that video but how many would put their foot down and say no? 

My experience as a groom was that we walked out of church to this.  We looked at the congregation.  The metalheads were looking at each other and going “is it”?  I looked at Mrs Changingworship and an unspoken thing happened.  We ran.  The emotion was so overwhelming that we were now husband and wife that we ran down the aisle and left them to it in all of its punk glory!  We went to snog behind the church.  We were wedded.  We were now one.  And it was all about the three of us, me, her and God.

So what does it mean to be real with people as “The Church” when we come together for a couple’s wedding?  What can we do to convey the message that it is about the couple and God?  What facilitates their celebration of their love for one another in the presence of their creator?

I was fortunate:  I married the vicars daughter – literally.