Making church attractive

Matthew 4: 12 - 23 

Simon, Andrew, James and John immediately left their nets and followed him. Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee simply had to call and these capable fishermen, who knew their trade, learned from their father's hands came straight away

For some years I was a vocations advisor for St Alban's diocese, part of a tiny team that shepherded people from initial wondering to becoming ordinands, training for the priesthood. In the way of central organisations the Church sprang up a target, that we should double the number of people going forward for training. You know the sort of thing, a strategist in Church House sees that there are many priests coming towards retirement so tells the far away churches to double the new candidates and naturally to halve their average age as well. Pressure soon fell on us, there were fewer than eight of us, so we began to think again about how people might be called.

Jumping ahead, I want to tell you that people are coming forward in greater numbers so please be encouraged. Be encouraged too by the quality of candidates. My role was to see those who were at the earliest stages of questioning. They came from all walks of life, several standing out but let me illustrate with one example. Min Min, British of Chinese heritage had excelled at Oxford, gone on to take a doctorate, joined a prestigious biochemical research centre and in between times had trained as a professional soprano. Now she was in my front room timidly sharing her sense of being tugged towards becoming a priest so that I could recommend her to others in the diocese. She knew her trade, was prepared to leave it and by the way did go on to be ordained. She left her nets.

I have to say though that her initial call was nothing to do with the vocation team. We did of course mount road shows, travel to preach in likely places, we worked to drum up interest but this is such a minor part of the story.

Returning to the shores of Galilee Jesus must have been astonishingly attractive, his just walking by ignited a spark in those fishermen who said to themselves "I want to know more about this, there is something interesting here for me, let us see.

Before the many who came to see me on my sofa, they had been attracted to church in some way. In my experience this always comes first, I have not seen a full sudden out of the blue conversion from nothing to fervent activity, even these first disciples had years of learning before understanding. 

Above all then today's church needs to be attractive. Jesus was.

For The Saxon Shore Kirsty, Rachel and James certainly have a part to play by their leadership but the attraction of All Saints Thornham will be more than that, it will be created actually by you. In your community your neighbours when meeting you will notice what you show from being a part of this place, in the way you are individually and the way we are as a congregation.

Frances and I have recently been exploring churches in Bedfordshire, concentrating of course on those with churchmanship that we prefer, and in fact on the smaller rural ones. We have landed on one where we find the congregation friendly and warm, where the village concerned seems to have a good connection, in short one that we find attractive. It is a subtle blend of sufficient attentiveness and visible relationships. This is what I would encourage you to continue to develop your way of being together so that those you meet and who live here say to themselves "I want to know more about this, there is something interesting here for me, let us see. “   Amen

The Flying Scotsman

You will have heard many a clergy person contrast the hurly burly pressure filled advertisement soaked run up to Christmas with the true nature of the Advent season, which to remind you is reflective, penitent, peaceful the season of waiting. But I wonder has it done any good? There is an upside down feeling about the church’s calendar and the one the world is on. I once had a parish where church services were held in a building that doubled as a community centre and village hall. At this time of year the hall would be fully crammed with tinsel and parties for everyone from the buggy group to the old age pensioners and many in between. We of course in our purple are in the season of fasting, Christmastide our season of feasting begins on Christmas day and continues for a few weeks afterwards - by then the hall was booked out with weight watcher meetings. 

The world turns, the Christmas engine is running at high speed (We enjoyed last year’s television broadcast of all the preparations which are made here for example) so let’s just accept that this is the way it is, we ARE in the season of rush not the season of waiting.

My wife Frances among other things is interested in trains while as everyone knows I am interested in old books. In a rare confluence of interest I was reading about the Flying Scotsman in a 1936 account in its heyday. The article was called “The Great North Road of Steel” and is starry eyed about the efforts made to make the journey in the announced time. The train left Kings Cross at 10.00 a.m. precisely, while its sister simultaneously left Edinburgh. So well tuned was the system that the point where the trains passed one another, near Tollerton, could be pinned down to within a yard or so. To manage the non stop trip there was a relief crew on board.

They reached the footplate through a specially constructed passage that made its way through the tender where they could swap with the first team without stopping the train. The engine began with 5000 gallons of water in its tank which needed replenishing, so the tender as well as this secret passage was fitted with a device for filling the tank while the train travelled. For this purpose long water troughs were laid between the rails - at Stevenage, Peterborough, Newark, Scrooby, Northallerton and Bedford - and at the appropriate points the engine driver operates a control lowering a scoop up which the water is forced by the speed at which the train is travelling. By this method an additional 8000 gallons is picked up; every pick up had to be timed to the instant since the scoop was in the water trough for only a few seconds. 

So here we are rushing towards the 25th December and I suggest we too need replenishing. Maybe we can learn from the non-stop Flying Scotsmen and replenish on the move?

Prayerfulness is most often characterised as times of stillness, of quiet, times set aside to be with God and these is important , valuable, I would say vital practice. But what if we during our headlong business lower a  scoop and pick up nourishment as we go along? Well we can, in all our days there are moments in between for example when we turn from one thing to another or occasionally when we have to wait for someone or something. However brief these are moments for effective praying, maybe about your next task, about someone, about your present anxieties, about the world - God will hear, his troughs of spiritual blessing are not limited to Peterborough or Newark but are there for us to dip into all the time and even if only for a few seconds we will find refreshment.  

Amen

Being With

“Rabbi, where are you staying?” and He said “Come and See.” They came and they remained with him that day.

Which reminds me of an exploratory trip I made to see my school friend Charles then already up at St. Catherines who invited me and two people I did not know to his college rooms. We spent the afternoon there, talking of fine things, I mostly listened being only a lowly sixth former, but I remember our talking about William Golding’s novel The Spire, watching abortive attempts to toast crumpets on the wall mounted electric fire and discovering another way of learning, by coversation, by sharing, by being with. 

Andrew and his companion are alerted by John the Baptist that Jesus is worth getting to know; so they already recognize his potential as a teacher. “Rabbi” they say and Jesus invites them, two people he has only just met, to his lodging. This account of the calling of Andrew is so very different from those in Mark’s and Mathew’s Gospels where the fishermen immediately leave their nets as Jesus calls them to be fishers of men. Here in John’s Gospel we find an encouragement for us: The stories of sudden conversion, by the sea of Galilee, those abounding in the book of Acts and more recent ones for example that of John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, converted when saved from imminent shipwreck, perhaps leave us looking for and expecting moments of brilliant revelation. But it is not always the case, actually I suggest more rarely the case. The number of blinding flashes on the road to Damascus are outweighed by stories of a gradual dawning of understanding and a deepening of belief from the faithful imbibing of God’s teaching, from scripture, from theology and yes from conversation with and participation with others.

Andrew’s perspective is so changed by his long afternoon with the Lamb of God, the presence, charisma and astonishing attraction of Jesus must have been there, but Andrew gains far more from being with him - now he has a depth of belief which leads Andrew to “straight away” find his brother and tell him (he cannot keep it in) “We have found the Messiah.” From Rabbi to Messiah in an afternoon is a big jump, a huge learning. John, who was himself a leader of a learning community, seems to be telling us not to simply wait but to actively take the chances to be exposed. We heard this New Year in the census that the number of people  declaring to be Christian has again fallen - one of the things that I have been noticing for a long time is the paradox that our multimedia world narrows rather than widens our knowledge. It is just so easy to find a group or a programme which conforms to one of our interests or point of view that we do not find the others. How will secularists discover Christianity?

Which brings me (at last you say) to Jesus. You notice ini the account that he is walking by. He is on his way somewhere but when Andrew and his friend call he stops. He makes time for them, so much so indeed that he invites them, two strangers, to his room to spend time together. We can imagine them discussing the world, studying scripture, toasting crumpets maybe, in any case getting to know one another. That is after all the reason to meet with people, to get to know them better. When did you when you were walking by last begin a conversation with a stranger, someone you meet in the supermarket, the post-office, the pub, the marketplace?

To get to know God better we need to copy Andrew, and spend time with him

To bring others to know God we need to copy Jesus and invite them into the conversation.

Amen

Be good shepherds to one another

 There seems to have been a recent renewed interest in sheep and shepherds, Philip Walling’s “Counting Sheep” and James Rebanks best selling “The Shepherd’s Life” both published in the last five or six years come to mind and I am sure there are others, fuelled by the renewed and special subject of traditional breeds. Walling suggest that the lives of shepherds and those connected with sheep husbandry are these days in a parallel world largely unnoticed by the majority of the population yet this was not always so: the wealth of our nations was founded upon woll and in Jesus’ day the flocks were huge and the shepherds numerous although poor and distrusted. Jesus says “I am the good shepherd”, a fine metaphor - if you have a few sheep Anthea has some in her little paddock for example - then you want to entrust them to somebody competent, honest and eligible, someone who knows what is best for them, who can aid their lambing and collect them from their wanderings when they need to come down from the hills in winter. 

Not that all sheep are alike; a few names to think about: The Leicester, Swaledale, Cheviot, Suffolk, Hardwicke and so on each of which have a distinctive appearance and they do have a varied lifestyle. The sheep of Ronaldsay, for example, travel up and down with the tide and are so fond of seaweed that they will sometimes swim out to discover tender shoots on small islands. I have taken lunch with a sheep who, having gained access to the dining room, refused all efforts to budge him out again. So it is worth considering this metaphor some more to substitute any view we are holding of white dots of cotton wool on a green hillside with a much more varied population akin to the variety of the human race. Jesus is the good shepherd and we are all of his flock. 

Of course when we are out and about in the dales the sheep are there doing sheepy things, looking strong and independent and yet as we know they need help quite often. My catalogue of rescued sheep and lambs continues to grow and this week Frances’ phone call included a story of saving an ewe and her lamb from the Dorset highway. We too need help and assistance quite often, especially when shadowed by sorrow or need and we are then able to turn to the great shepherd of the sheep in prayer asking for the help we need. Our shepherd laid down his life for us, and will answer our prayers but most often now in the agency of other people. 

Returning to the letter from John where we read that:

“… we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abode in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need but refuses help?”

This gives a different emphasis to laying down our lives. There are thankfully few who are called to physically give their lives for a cause but we are ALL enjoined to lay down our lives in the sense of dying to self, setting aside our own wishes, dislikes and priorities to help others. We did see this during the last year in many communities, including our own. The team which twice a day, every day for week after week checked on the RED/GREEN cards to be sure that residents were safe had to forgo a warm morning or night at home and sometimes probably more. In this sense they laid aside something of their own lives. There are many other examples but all of them help us to remember that we each need to be Good Shepherds to one another. 

Have we not seen miracles enough? Exodus 16:4-15

I love the Old Testament  and tonight's reading from Exodus illustrates one of the reasons. I noticed the other week or so in the Guardian an article lamenting the performance of Sir Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party. Now such a lament is to be expected from the Telegraph but since this was in the Labour Party’s house journal I sat up to take notice. After all, it was not so long ago that the same paper had so high an opinion of Sir Keir that they daily polished his reputation. What had happened? Well it does not really matter because I want to return to the Israelites. Only in the chapter before our reading we hear the song of Miriam:

“I will sing to the Lord for he is highly exalted
Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea
The Lord is my strength and my defense
He has become my salvation
He is my God and I will praise HIm 
My father’s God and I will exalt him.”

But at the beginning of our chapter the Israelites are grumbling: “Why have you brought us into this desert, we should never have come, at least in Egypt we sat around pots of meat and had all the food we wanted, but you, you have brought us to this wilderness to starve us to death.”

It is the same you see, “Kier at least under Corbyn we knew where we were, now we are lost straddling fences shy of attacking this horrid government “ or anyway something like that.

And I love that the people of the Old Testament are as real, as human and as fickle as we are. For then it is easy to get inside the story. The Israelites were unhappy as slaves of Pharaoh, they watched the various plagues sent, they saw the parting of the Red Sea, the defeat of their enemies and now on the 15th day of the second month, so a mere 45 days after the Passover they are unreasonably cross with Moses and Aaron. Had they not seen miracles enough?  But yet they complain. The Lord hears them, has compassion upon them and sends quails in the evening and so much manna in the morning that it seems like frost on the ground. 

Which is why I am optimistic about the environment. Have we not seen miracles enough? God gave us the miracle of this planet and all its abundant life and I am certainly not saying that we should continue abusing it in the ways we have been nor that we should not amend our ways but I am confident that we were given miracles in the past and that there are miracles we do not yet know about and that there are more to come.

Amen

 

Peter from wayward to obedient

 Peter sometimes gets a bad rap. We remember him trying to set up booths for Moses, Elijah and Jesus. We remember him having insufficient faith to walk across the sea to Jesus, we remember him refusing to let Jesus wash his feet, and that threefold denial before the cock crows. His frailty and fallibility are undoubtedly encouraging to us for even with all these weaknesses Jesus makes him the head of the church. 

This morning’s reading from the book of Acts, Luke’s account of the early days of the church has been set adrift from its context. “When Peter saw it he addressed the people.” A strange beginning which prompts us to look back to answer our question “When Peter saw what?”

The preceding story is set at the beautiful gate of the Temple where a lame man is being carried in as he is every day to lay there and to beg for alms from the people going in for the three o’clock prayers. Peter and John seeing him there begging from them declined to give him any money but instead Peter said: “I have no silver or gold but what I have I give you - in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth stand up and walk.” The lame man is spectacularly healed and he enters the temple walking and leaping about praising God.” When the people saw this they all ran to Peter and John who by now are in Solomon’s portico. And this is what Peter saw, an excited, enervated crowd running to them to hail them and give him and John the credit for the miracle. Now this is a new Peter, not the one who ran away from a servant girl and the taunting when she said “He is one of them!” but one who has been empowered by the events of recent weeks. 

The transforming effects of the resurrection and of Jesus’ appearances to them all the coming of the Holy Spirit (for all this takes place after Pentecost) not to mention his own self confidence boosted by these miracles of healing have so altered Peter that he wants to confront, argue with and if possible change the crowd in front of him. He absolutely grasps the opportunity to do so which may be even more surprising since here in the Temple he leaves us in no doubt that this audience are the “crucify” crying people of Good Friday. Brave therefore in the face of possible attack or arrest yet he does not hide his belief and allegiance. 

In our Gospel reading Jesus stood among them and said “Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be procl;aimed in his name to ALL nations beginning with Jerusalem.” Notice how closely Peter follows these instructions. He and John are at the Temple in Jerusalem at the very centre of the Jewish world; they are to take the message of the Messiah to all nations. Peter begins his preaching by recalling Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to underline that Jesus is from the one true God, the God of these people, of their ancestors and of Peter. By this power has the lame man been healed, we Peter and John are but witnesses, just as Jesus said, and look at what Peter proclaims - repentance and forgiveness. He says repent and your sins may be wiped out.

Peter, previously known as wayward; “Get behind me Satan”, Jesus told him, is now fully in line, following the instructions to the letter, he is changed forever. There are the transforming results of all they had seen, felt, herald and now fully believed. Can we reach back to grasp this and be transformed ourselves?

Do not worry C of E

 Deuteronomy 7:7-13

Moses knows full well and so do we that the Israelites can be stiff necked and rebellious, witness their behaviour in the wilderness or at the foot of mount Sinai. Now they are established in Egypt, Moses, is exhorting them to obey God’s commandments and statutes especially those concerning the worship, or I should say the prohibition to worship, foreign gods and idols. As I say they have form on this one. Moses has just reminded them that they are a Holy people to the Lord God and that they have been chosen to be a special people above all the people on the earth. He then explains that this is an outpouring of God’s grace, there was nothing to commend them at all. They were an inconsiderable number when brought out of Egypt and even now settled as they are they are the fewest of all the peoples. [Hittites, Girgashites, Ammonites, Cananites, Perezites are all more numerous.] God chose to love them but not for their merits. God is not earthly, where the greatness of our kings is measured by the numbers of their peoples. He loved them because he would love them. I have mentioned before that Peter Schaeffer’s play Amadeus opens with Salieri looking at a picture, he tells us it is of an Old Testament God, the sort of God you could bargain with. There is a hint of this at the end of Moses’ speech “If you heed these ordinances … he will love you, bless you and multiply you, the fruit of your ground, grain, wine,oil, cattle and flock” which sounds like a good deal doesn’t it. I think that considering it as a bargain though must I think to misread Moses' intent.

Rather he seems to be saying “Look without you deserving anything, God chose to love you and remember that a fruit of that love was the oath he swore to your ancestors so recently exemplified by bringing you out of Egypt. This love moreover is steadfast, returned to you who love HIM to the thousandth generation. 

Actually it seems we already have the gifts of grain, wine, oil, cattle and flock not to mention much else besides all of which are the fruits of his love for us.

So please can we take this on board? I have from time to time commented that in these recent  times the Church of England has become an anxious place; our leaders worry about the size of the declared membership (prepare for probable rending of garments following the census), they worry about balancing their budgets (see the clergy pay freeze and the call for bishops to be paid less) they worry about our buildings (committee after committee in a constant state of review) they worry  about how many clergy there are (see our own diocesan deployment review). Where is Moses in all this? Where is the simple faith “God loves you, he loves his church  - obey the statutes, stick to the great commission and God will bless and multiply you.?

So please do not worry, C of E, do not be disheartened, hear the promises of God which he made down to the thousandth generation. 

Amen