Skip to main content

Re Re:Call Revisited


Just a quick post to partially redress the balance regarding the retreat last week. I stand by all that I said about one strand of the event... It was appalling. But that happens sometimes... You book speakers with an international reputation, brief them appropriately, and they then don't come up with the goods... And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, except take them off your list of recommendations for anyone else. As for the rest of the event, it was extremely well organised and worthwhile, although personally I think it is something that we should do every 3 years, rather than bi-annually as it has been recently... The speakers and seminars are an important element, but probably more important is just the time spent sharing with colleagues, especially now that our annual conference in June is shorter, more condensed and business-like.

But to refer to the other main speaker at the event, Bishop Graham Cray of Maidstone, as I said in a comment after my previous post, he was good but didn't get me fired up. His material was a good balance of broad research and practical experience, with a theological depth that the Bible Studies sadly lacked.

Not sure then whether it was an issue of presentation, or the fact that I was exhausted by the time I got to Sligo that meant I wasn't terribly taken by him (I actually fell asleep in one session... right in front of the poor man... but then I've got form on that front, regularly falling asleep in lectures at college and even at one poor guy's trial sermon when there were only about a dozen people in the church!).

However, like another colleague, I was taken by his second session, where he looked at the indisoluble connection between discipleship and mission... This spoke directly into our local situation where we too often fragment the work of the kingdom, into social outreach, evangelism and discipleship and so on, almost seeing them as steps, hopefully bringing people closer to God, his purposes for their lives and to the centre of the machine that is called the church...

For a number of years we were good at the outreach and evangelism side of things but appaling at the discipleship and pastoral care of people once they were "in"... More recently we've been more focused on the latter two, and whilst the community engagement is still strong, we haven't had an active evangelism programme operating in over a year... and in talking to one of our leaders he questioned whether we were ready to bring people in yet... I know what he means, but he is falling into the pair of traps that we are guilty of, and that I fall into with alarming regularity:
1) that evangelism is about bringing people in to the church, rather than allowing them to encounter Christ and his good news.
2) that authentic Christian community engagement, evangelism and discipleship can ever be teased apart into separate programmes.

In addressing this, Graham Cray was ticking all the boxes that I had begun to sort out in my own head on this matter, and I was actually feeling quite smug...

Until, in an almost throw-away comment he warned against getting so involved with those "out there" that we forget the needs, and the role that those inside the tent continue to have in God's mission... And that hit me in the face like a wet haddock... Especially when he described those who do that as "despising God's people."

Because I have done that... I have written off people, and indeed in one case an entire congregation, as having nothing left to contribute to God's mission in a particualr place... And my implicit, or explicit deal with them has been that I will continue to be their pastor or chaplain to the day they as an individual or congregation dies, BUT that I will look elsewhere for the ongoing mission of God in the world.

I suddenly realised that I had been effectively saying that those people were of no use to God... Be it because of their age, theological outlook, or mental or physical infirmity... How dare I double-guess God... Its his mission not mine...

So... he may not have fired me up... but he certainly made me realise that I haven't got it all sorted out... Yet despite my shortcomings, I believe God still uses me... So, if he uses me, why can he not use those whom I have written off...

I, genuinely look forward now to being proved wrong by God... Again...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Woman of no Distinction

Don't often post other people's stuff here... But I found this so powerful that I thought I should. It's a performance poem based on John 4: 4-30, and I have attached the original YouTube video below. A word for women, and men, everywhere... "to be known is to be loved, and to be loved is to be known." I am a woman of no distinction of little importance. I am a women of no reputation save that which is bad. You whisper as I pass by and cast judgmental glances, Though you don’t really take the time to look at me, Or even get to know me. For to be known is to be loved, And to be loved is to be known. Otherwise what’s the point in doing either one of them in the first place? I WANT TO BE KNOWN. I want someone to look at my face And not just see two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears; But to see all that I am, and could be all my hopes, loves and fears. But that’s too much to hope for, to wish for, or pray for So I don’t, not anymore. Now I keep to myself And by that

Psalm for Harvest Sunday

A short responsive psalm for us as a call to worship on Harvest Thanksgiving Sunday, and given that it was pouring with rain as I headed into church this morning the first line is an important remembrance that the rain we moan about is an important component of the fruitfulness of the land we live in: You tend the land and water it And the earth produces its abundance. You crown each year with your bounty, and our storehouses overflow with your goodness. The mountain meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are filled with corn; Your people celebrate your boundless grace They shout for joy and sing. from Psalm 65

Anointed

There has been a lot of chatter on social media among some of my colleagues and others about the liturgical and socio-political niceties of Saturday's coronation and attendant festivities, especially the shielding of the anointing with the pictured spoon - the oldest and perhaps strangest of the coronation artefacts. Personally I thought that was at least an improvement on the cloth of gold canopy used in the previous coronation, but (pointless) debates are raging as to whether this is an ancient practice or was simply introduced in the previous service to shield the Queen from the TV cameras, not for purposes of sacredness, but understandable coyness, if she actually had to bare her breast bone in puritan 1950s Britain. But as any church leader knows, anything performed twice in a church becomes a tradition. All this goes to show that I did actually watch it, while doing other things - the whole shooting match from the pre-service concert with yer wumman in that lemon-