Church

Here's a reminder and some further details for you of our pilgrimage walk this Sunday to Buildwas Abbey in Shropshire.

Buildwas Abbey is owned and managed by English Heritage and they say this about it...

"Impressive ruins of a Cistercian abbey, including its unusually unaltered 12th-century church, beautiful vaulted and tile-floored chapter house, and recently re-opened crypt chapel. In a wooded Severn-side setting, not far from the Iron Bridge and Wenlock Priory."

We'll aim to meet at the church in Sheinton, about 2 miles west of Buildwas Abbey. The route of the walk follows part of the Severn Way, going fairly close to the river in parts, and taking us along a disused railway, so it should be pretty easy walking. The walk is about 2 miles long, so we should get to Buildwas in time for lunch.

Last night we had the second of our evenings exploring the roots and routes of Anabaptism. Previously we looked at the question 'Who were the Anabaptists?'. Last night's session was discovering some of the stories of the early Anabaptists, their lives, their impact and their deaths, frequently as martyrs.

Many of the stories are taken from Martyrs Mirror, an astonishing book that is a remembrance of the godly lives and staggering deaths of Anabaptist martyrs between 1524 and 1660 and thousands of other early Christians. Martyrs Mirror records the lives of both well known and anonymous martyrs, many of whom are merely listed as one of a number who died on a given day, nothing more.

We looked at the lives of some of the key figures in the birth and growth of Anabaptism, such as Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, Michael Sattler, my personal hero Balthasar Hübmaier, Menno Simons (who gave his name to the Mennoites) and Jacob Hutter (I would have loved to have looked at others, such as Pilgram Marpeck, Dirk Philips, Hans Denck, Jakob Ammann (who gave his name to the Amish) and more - but there's never enough time!) And we also read some of the brief summaries of the lives and deaths of less well known Anabaptist Martyrs (taken fom the From Anabaptist Seed section of the Third Way Café site).

Anyway, as before, I've uploaded to this page the PowerPoint version of the Keynote slides I used for the evening, and I've created a clickable QuickTime of the Keynote slides. And there's notes below, too.

So, in the light of the last post on The Hidden Face of God, I propose that our Lent meditations this year are based around the theme of lament.

Deep Memory.

Exhuberant Hope.

We're going to host a Sunday evening reflection each week through lent, with some readings from the Bible, some poetry, and some songs.

Stay posted for more details. I'll try to post any helpful materials we produce on the website, in advance of the date where possible, for you to use also if you'd like.

I've recently been reading a wonderful book by Walter Brueggemann called 'Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World'. I've never read any Brueggemann before, never had the opportunity I guess, but when a friend on the Advanced Workshop course spluttered over his coffee on hearing that I'd never read him, I thought I'd give it a go. So, I went for a Brueggemann overdose with some birthday money and got four books in one go, of which this is the first one that I've read (more from the others in due course, I'm sure).

The book is sublime, and I heartily recommend it to anyone! It's a collection of essays by Brueggemann on the theme of the meaning of Scripture in today's post-Christian society. Each essay stands alone, but there is a thread that moves through them all, that being the heart of creativity and imagination rooted in the story of Yahweh.

Well, Estelle's thanksgiving was a fabulous affair. We ended up with around 65-70 people stuffed into our house, and I was beginning to wonder at one point why on earth we'd thought having it in our house was a good idea. But the space did seem to absorb all the people and having so many created a lovely buzz.

Estelle was well and truly blessed by all and sundry, the kids had a wild time jumping on the bouncy castle (in November...?!) and the spread of food was astonishing.

Anyway, the point of this entry is to post the short liturgy that we wrote for the occasion. I thought that there may be some who would like to read it(again, if you were there and carelessly discarded your copy!), so if that's you then you can download it from this page.

This weekend we're having a thanksgiving ceremony for our youngest daughter, Estelle.

She's almost 2 and we should have done it ages ago, but you know how it is - first you're just surviving the onslaught of a new baby, coming to terms with having 3 children instead of 2, next thing you know they're crawling, then walking, then talking, then borrowing the car keys and going out on dates. Before you know it the music is just too damn loud and all you crave is your slippers and some peace and quiet to read the paper.

So, in summary, she's nearly 2 and we're only just getting ourselves in gear to have a thanksgiving celebration for her. How fortunate she is to have such together parents.

So, why are we giving thanks for Estelle?

Well, here's the next post on the current train of thoughts about the old classic phrase of believing, belonging and behaving (constructed in whichever order you want).

Last time around I put together some thoughts on the old paradigm of first confronting people with beliefs. If you read that post you'd know that I suggest we find ourselves in something of a paradox with regard to beliefs. Having beliefs as a starting point can be deeply problematic in our polysemic, polymorphic world, especially when beliefs are held and espoused rigidly and dogmatically. On the other hand, we all hold beliefs, whether we accept it or not. One cannot operate as a human being without believing that certain things are true (murder is wrong, education is worthwhile, a red light means stop, etc). We neglect conversing about beliefs at our peril.

So given the ambiguity about engaging over beliefs, what about connecting through 'belonging' to eachother and to a community beyond?

So, again it's been a while since the last post. Why do we have to earn money to live...?

Anyway, time for some further thoughts on belonging, believing and behaving, and whether that is helpful language in the post-modern world.

In the good old days of modernity believing was always the place to start. It was assumed that the basis for conversation between people was essentially apologetic - arguing, in both the best and worst possible ways, about logical, philosophical, spiritual, theological and ethical issues until one party or another was intellectually convinced of the 'way the world is.'

Sorry it's been a while since my last post - half-term school holidays and earning a crust have come in the way of writing anything much here of late. And I've been wondering what to post after the last essay I put online about reading Joshua as a Christian. I think I will follow this up with a series of posts about reading the Bible after Christendom, after modernity and in the context of alternative and emerging churches and Christian faith communities.

For the time being, however, I've got another issue on my mind.

It's frequently said that a distictive characteristic within emerging churches is that of belonging to a community before any mention of believing comes along (if ever!), let alone behaving - that life is lived as a spiritual journey of discovery, a vast expanding horizon of experiences and possibilities. And yet, and here is the irony, there is often also a strong missional emphasis it would appear.

So, a question arises - after modernity and after Christendom, how might we go about encouraging people to consider the challenges of Christianity, and the challenges presented by Jesus? Does the believing, behaving, belonging analysis of evangelicalism bear any relevance at all?

One of my questions about the place and role of the Church and of local churches in society at large is its attitude towards those on the margins of society. It seems fairly clear from the Gospels that Jesus embodied a view of the world that was predisposed to the poor and marginalised.^[1] It is important to note, for example, that when Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 in the Nazareth synagogue, he stops in the middle of v2, declaring the Year of the Lord's Favour (in resonance with the Jubilee and Sabbath years of Lev. 25) for the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives and the prisoners, but not initiating the day of God's vengeance.^[2]

Here is the real question, though. If the Church, and local faith communities in particular, are going to rise to the challenge of following in the footsteps of Jesus, what should their attitude and praxis be to the poor and to 'sinners'?^[3]