Several decisions this week in the wardening business, all at least involving the question of where should we spend our efforts when there is so much that could be done lying so close to hand. Not an unusual experience, I have to confess, whether at work or at home or at church. As far as I can see, the only way through involves trying to find honest answers to two questions: (1) "what do we really want to do?" and (2) "what would be the best way of achieving that?".
Very tempting in a busy world to skip over question (1) and go straight to question (2). But how does one know what is best without figuring out the direction in which one really wants to go? That way exhaustion lies ... there's always another task that someone somewhere wants you to do.
So we tried the questions out at Sunday family lunch. Interesting exercise: what is a given church service really for? Easy answers include "to worship God" -- but the Bible tells us that our whole lives are meant to be worship, and worship lies as much out of church, in not letting the world squeeze us into its mould, as in church singing songs. Or, "to nurture our children in faith" -- but how can that be an end in itself, unless we demonstrate in our own lives to our children that faith is something worth living for? One could ask, "what would Jesus do?", and that's a good idea -- but it doesn't necessarily go in a comfortable direction; the follow-up to our Gospel reading of the day sees Jesus more-or-less violently chucked out of his synagogue because they didn't like his sermon. I've got my own ideas about what some of our church services are really for, but that's just me. So I'll be waiting and listening to see what others say, because sometimes one can hear the divine voice far clearer in others' voices than in one's own imaginings.
Anyway, as wardens we found we could make some progress on our particular decisions by sketching some provisional answers to "what do we really want to do?", and then fixing on a couple of tentative shots at "what would be the best way of achieving that?", after which some practical decisions seemed to make themselves. But I think we'll be coming back to these basic questions quite frequently.
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Saturday, 16 October 2010
"We made our own entertainment back in those days"
This week we watched our way through The Lavender Hill Mob, in 10-minute chunks on Youtube. Wonderful filming, superb script, all in glorious black-and-white. Took me back to the old days, back when our family bought its first television, for the express purpose of allowing me and my sister to watch Dr Who. The very first episode we watched was one in which the Daleks appeared, and we found it so scary that we wouldn't come out from behind the sofa. We stuck to Stingray for a long time after that. Have a look for yourselves
(but you won't entirely re-create our original monochrome experience - this introduction and indeed the whole series was filmed in colour from the start).
I love the bit when Marineville starts to descend into its protective underground configuration, and Commander Sam Shore warns "Anything can happen in the next half-hour!". Some people want church services to be like that. Can be a challenging prospect for wardens, though.
(but you won't entirely re-create our original monochrome experience - this introduction and indeed the whole series was filmed in colour from the start).
I love the bit when Marineville starts to descend into its protective underground configuration, and Commander Sam Shore warns "Anything can happen in the next half-hour!". Some people want church services to be like that. Can be a challenging prospect for wardens, though.
Sunday, 10 October 2010
On true magnificence
It's cheesy, I know, but I loved "The Magnificent Seven" when I was a kid. It was something about the dash and elan of the seven gunmen, hired to protect a village of ordinary farmers; and also something about the pathos of the ending, when the surviving gunmen realize their lives only have any meaning when seen in the context of the prosaic, unglorious, and enduring life of the village they have protected.
As the lead gunman Chris says, "Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose".
A couple of decades ago, I was involved in a group for people seeking to learn about Christian faith (so long ago that it was before Alpha!). I was particularly impressed by a lad who was ex-Army, Warwickshire Fusiliers. He told me about the essential rôle of the infantry. They don't do twice-the-speed-of-sound, he told me, nor do they do high-tech armoured vehicles weighing 50 tons, nor are they primarily involved in any of the other glamorous tasks of a modern army. What the infantry do is this; they hold the ground. Once they have dug in, it is extremely difficult to remove them. And (stripped of the military baggage of this analogy) that's the local church for you. Usually not glamorous, sometimes dull, but once they are dug in to a local community then they are the fact on the ground, very very difficult to remove. Paul the Apostle knew this (Ephesians 6:13).
It's easy to get frustrated with a local church; I know this too well. The church can be too slow or trying to rush ahead too fast; the vision can be limited or too extravagant; people may be working hard but wasting time and energy by working at cross-purposes, or failing to communicate properly when they can't deliver on promises made on rota lists; the focus can be excessively prosaic or dangerously super-spiritual; the community may be stuck in a past glory which no longer works or may be jettisoning invaluable tradition in favour of hollow modernity. And yes, it is frustrating, and it's worth struggling to persuade people to do things better. But in the end the church is like the community of farmers in "The Magnificent Seven". All the workshops on church growth, all the books on new ways of worship, all the weekend courses are like the gunmen; useful for a season, but only when they aid those who hold the ground itself.
It seems to me that the late great Mike Yaconelli had the same thought when he wrote A better idea than Youth Ministry (PDF). Westerns, infantry, St Paul, youth workers, all with the same thought ...
As the lead gunman Chris says, "Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose".
A couple of decades ago, I was involved in a group for people seeking to learn about Christian faith (so long ago that it was before Alpha!). I was particularly impressed by a lad who was ex-Army, Warwickshire Fusiliers. He told me about the essential rôle of the infantry. They don't do twice-the-speed-of-sound, he told me, nor do they do high-tech armoured vehicles weighing 50 tons, nor are they primarily involved in any of the other glamorous tasks of a modern army. What the infantry do is this; they hold the ground. Once they have dug in, it is extremely difficult to remove them. And (stripped of the military baggage of this analogy) that's the local church for you. Usually not glamorous, sometimes dull, but once they are dug in to a local community then they are the fact on the ground, very very difficult to remove. Paul the Apostle knew this (Ephesians 6:13).
It's easy to get frustrated with a local church; I know this too well. The church can be too slow or trying to rush ahead too fast; the vision can be limited or too extravagant; people may be working hard but wasting time and energy by working at cross-purposes, or failing to communicate properly when they can't deliver on promises made on rota lists; the focus can be excessively prosaic or dangerously super-spiritual; the community may be stuck in a past glory which no longer works or may be jettisoning invaluable tradition in favour of hollow modernity. And yes, it is frustrating, and it's worth struggling to persuade people to do things better. But in the end the church is like the community of farmers in "The Magnificent Seven". All the workshops on church growth, all the books on new ways of worship, all the weekend courses are like the gunmen; useful for a season, but only when they aid those who hold the ground itself.
It seems to me that the late great Mike Yaconelli had the same thought when he wrote A better idea than Youth Ministry (PDF). Westerns, infantry, St Paul, youth workers, all with the same thought ...
Sunday, 3 October 2010
Made in Dagenham
This Friday, Catherine and I discovered we were temporarily childless (convocation of three in London, another enjoying the student life in Aberystwyth). So we decided to eat out, and then go to a movie. It's been a couple of decades and more since we had such freedom of action; a startling novelty.
We chose to dine at the Royal Bengal Restaurant in Earlsdon, whose efficient and cheerful service and delightful food exactly hit the spot. (I'd love to get a voucher for a free meal as a result of this post, but somehow I don't think that is going to happen.) We then had an hour to spare before the film, so we wandered through Coventry city centre - before then we'd never been in Coventry on a Friday night - and strolled over to the café at the Belgrade Theatre. That's quite the watering hole to visit in Coventry, or so we discovered; just the place to run into friends going to this play or that. Now we know our next choice of a place to go to when the next free Friday evening turns up.
And then it was time for the main event: Made in Dagenham at the Odeon Skydome. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was very impressed; I enjoyed the photography, the subtle acting, and the passion for fair treatment of all workers. Sly digs on the way at the marxist cant of the male trade unionists (but there's more than one kind of obnoxious cant, as any Anglican can testify from sad experience); good portrayal of a trophy wife whose History First from Cambridge is ignored by her rich husband; and especially a fine scene when the heroine speaks at the TUC congress ("When did we stop fighting?" - strong resonances with today's problems). But best of all is the depiction of real effective and enabling leadership displayed by the heroine; the kind of leadership that works with people instead of dominating them.
Highly recommended.
Of course, brought up in a large family of two brothers and four sisters, I'm not sure I've ever been really able to convince myself that women can't be as effective and powerful as men. So the film did not have to work to persuade me of the justice of the cause. And now, after years working in an academic department with a strong complement of highly impressive women, and two decades as a worshipper in a church where women routinely serve in all kinds of leadership rôles to great effect and with charisma, without ever compromising their femininity, it's hard to imagine why any rational man might want to shut out or restrain the other half of the population. Of course men and women tend to take different approaches, though I suspect many of these differences arise from social conditioning and the demands of societal rôles. But there is so much to be gained by allowing the two approaches to challenge and refine each other.
So there is no need to tell you where I stand on the issue of women bishops, is there?
We chose to dine at the Royal Bengal Restaurant in Earlsdon, whose efficient and cheerful service and delightful food exactly hit the spot. (I'd love to get a voucher for a free meal as a result of this post, but somehow I don't think that is going to happen.) We then had an hour to spare before the film, so we wandered through Coventry city centre - before then we'd never been in Coventry on a Friday night - and strolled over to the café at the Belgrade Theatre. That's quite the watering hole to visit in Coventry, or so we discovered; just the place to run into friends going to this play or that. Now we know our next choice of a place to go to when the next free Friday evening turns up.
And then it was time for the main event: Made in Dagenham at the Odeon Skydome. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was very impressed; I enjoyed the photography, the subtle acting, and the passion for fair treatment of all workers. Sly digs on the way at the marxist cant of the male trade unionists (but there's more than one kind of obnoxious cant, as any Anglican can testify from sad experience); good portrayal of a trophy wife whose History First from Cambridge is ignored by her rich husband; and especially a fine scene when the heroine speaks at the TUC congress ("When did we stop fighting?" - strong resonances with today's problems). But best of all is the depiction of real effective and enabling leadership displayed by the heroine; the kind of leadership that works with people instead of dominating them.
Highly recommended.
Of course, brought up in a large family of two brothers and four sisters, I'm not sure I've ever been really able to convince myself that women can't be as effective and powerful as men. So the film did not have to work to persuade me of the justice of the cause. And now, after years working in an academic department with a strong complement of highly impressive women, and two decades as a worshipper in a church where women routinely serve in all kinds of leadership rôles to great effect and with charisma, without ever compromising their femininity, it's hard to imagine why any rational man might want to shut out or restrain the other half of the population. Of course men and women tend to take different approaches, though I suspect many of these differences arise from social conditioning and the demands of societal rôles. But there is so much to be gained by allowing the two approaches to challenge and refine each other.
So there is no need to tell you where I stand on the issue of women bishops, is there?
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