What They Don’t Teach You at Theological College

Big Bible Blog

Sorry I haven’t been blogging more recently.  There is a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline (that I will tell you all about when I get a spare five minutes), some academic work that needs doing and a lot of personal stuff going on at the moment.  I’m getting the odd 140 character tweet out into the world as I can do that via phone as I walk from one meeting to another but stringing together a set of coherent thoughts into a blog post is more difficult.

The Big Bible Blog is keeping me going with macroblogging as I have a monthly deadline.  Here is my post from this month.

Blue Like Jazz

I feel a faith and film event coming on.  This may be the film I use most often on a Sunday morning for the next five years.  It may not.

Tents

There seems to be a lot of conjecture and hyperbole around at the moment.

If all the people in the world camped out in your back garden,
Would you write and tell the king or would you grab a tent and join ‘em,
I can see that all the possibilities for freedom,
Could just sway your first decision to subject them all to oblivion.
And do you feel your life is threatened by fabricated stories,
Dreamt up by the sons of campers that you killed back in the forties,
I could see that all the possibilities for conflict,
Could just back up your decision to subject them all to oblivion.

I can’t stand the things that they do to me,
I won’t wait for Jesus to prove to me.

When all the people in the world move out of your back garden,
Would you celebrate the passing of your life as Mr. Badman,
You could see that all the possibilities in peacetime,
Should force a new decision don’t subject them all to oblivion.

I can’t stand the things that they do to me,
I won’t wait for Jesus to prove to me.
I can’t stand the things that they do to me,
I won’t wait for Jesus to prove to me.

Oh goodness, my gracious, I hope its not contagious,
Although it seems its catching it’s best not to get careless.
Oh goodness, my gracious, I hope its not contagious,
Although it seems its catching it’s best not to get careless.

Oblivion

Going to Church for the First Time?

Phil Ritch posted this on his blog with the simple question, “is this what church feels like”?  What a wonderful video.  I have struggled to articulate what it is like for a hairy biker like myself to enter the church for the first time.  It is two evenings ago that I was trying to explain this to a group of cradle Christians using the metaphor of going into a betting shop for the first time.  I won’t be doing that again, I will be showing this clip!!

I must mention this to the Canon Missioner for his “Welcome” training day!

Circles of Trust

Living Distinctively

There are many small group resources out on the market but it’s often hard to find something that is actually engaging.  There is nothing more demoralising than finding a small group leader with a tired looking pamphlet entitled something as exciting as “Judges”.  I often find myself asking “why are we doing this” whilst everyone shuffles their feet and looks at the ceiling.

When I heard about ”Living Distinctively” I was a little more optimistic.  What does it mean to live the Christian life?  What does it mean to be a follower of the way?  What does it mean to be a disciple?  If we are truly following, what does that mean?  How does it change the way in which we live?

Living Distinctively:  The Issues of Life Through Different Eyes deals with the real life situation ethics that society is looking at.  Issues such as wealth and poverty or just war theory are explored by prominent figures in the relevant fields.  The DVD has 15 minute clips presented by Ian Henderson, a young man with an inquisitive nature.  He gently questions each of the guests in their kitchens, places of work and their battle ships (really).  They explore the bible, their understanding of God’s nature and the changes that they have been inspired to make to their lives as they follow.

The booklet contains enough questions to keep a discussion going for at least an hour and a half.  To be honest, the DVD clips are so thought-provoking that we used the booklet to keep us on track but the discussion flowed naturally with little reference to it.

Each session ended when I pointed out that we had overrun by 15 minutes.  I highly recommend it.

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.

The Church and Social Media

Today, the Vernacular Curate has written an interesting post about the interaction between social media and the church.  I recommend reading the whole thing but here is an interesting quote:

98% of Christians, church-goers and other people of faith who will have no inkling about what this is all about. They have heard some of the names on the news, but will have cast them aside in the way that they would anything that held no apparent relevance, or that which had the feeling of fad or voodoo about it. I don’t blame them – but we have a situation where an increasing gulf is developing between social-media aware Christians, and those who are not.

Whilst this is anecdotal, it resonates with the experience of myself and many of my colleagues.  Some of my colleagues have even said that “there is no point engaging with Facebook/Twitter/Whatever as none of ‘our people’ are on it”.  I can understand why this seems to make sense.  In The Church(TM) the population is becoming increasingly elderly.  I can understand why it would seem to make no sense to engage with something that many (not all before you start writing letters to me in little green handwriting) elderly people do not engage with.

Any organisation that seeks relevance in this age must embrace that ages’s self-expression.

Earlier today I posted a blog about QR readers.  I wonder at what point The Church(TM) will notice that everyone else has been using them for years.  I suspect that we will have a training course in 2017 about how to use them.

Does it matter that a poster has something small and insignificant in the corner that “most of our people don’t understand”?  Who is to say who our promotional material is going to be seen by?  What does it matter that there is a convenient link to a social networking site secreted in the corner?  If people don’t know what it is, does it matter.  For those who do, who we freely admit are outside of the ingroup, “our people”, is it not an easy way of connecting in a relevant way with people?

I wonder what would happen if I printed a massive QR code the size of the outdoor notice board that linked to a Facebook Group.  Perhaps people would actually look at it and wonder what it is about.  I suspect that it may have more of an impact than:

Thy will be ‘Gun’

h/t emergentkiwi

Now for almost 2000 years Christians have been ‘lawyering’ the Bible to try and figure out how ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ can mean ‘Hate Thy Neighbor’ and how ‘Turn the Other Cheek’ can mean ‘Screw You!  I’m Buying Space Lasers.’

It is a sad state of affairs when a self-confessed onlooker can do better biblical exegesis than the followers of Christ.

Jesus lays on that hippy stuff pretty thick.  He has lines like ‘do not repay evil with evil’ and ‘do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you’.