...no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not to believe. The skeptic will always find a reason, even if it's one the rest of us don't think is a good one. Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission--which is emotional connection....and if that's true for business, how much more for religious belief.
New Year is the somewhat cliched - but singularly appropriate - time for taking stock.I spent the last seven months doing this [job] and I have nothing to show for it. If I had known I would have spent seven months and gotten nothing, you can bet I would have done something a lot more fun.
...so back to All Souls' 10th birthday year, we're asking that sort of question. There's simply no point 'hunkering down' and just keeping things going. If all we have to show for it in seven (or ten, or fifty) years' time is a church that is still here and keeps on going, then we've missed the point of why we were planted.Seven years from now, what will you have to show for what you're doing right now?
If your answer is, "not much," perhaps you should consider a new plan, one that might generate a different answer, or, at the very least, be a more fun way to waste seven years.
We finished with a bang - party poppers seemed to fit the occasion of celebration, even though the combination of paper streamers and suspended lit candles was perhaps a little on the risky side...
Here's the moment we shouted Merry Christmas!!
Numbers over the five Christmas services were very encouraging - especially the number of visitors (many who know us through Little Souls in particular). I remember Andrew Watson (then Vicar of St Stephen's, now Bishop of Aston) once saying something like "Bums on seats isn't everything, but every one of those bums is loved by Jesus!"...
In a day when people speak of the death of the church, the fact that attendance topped 750, with perhaps 500 different people (adults and children) seems something to cheer about today... :-)
Hope you enjoyed your present-giving and receiving today... I'll be back on the blog in ernest (finally) in the New Year - have a great few days!
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London Mission from London Diocese on Vimeo.
All the info about the Charter is available online at the movement's website and, perhaps most engagingly, here's Karen Armstrong's 'pitch' for it at TED in Feb 2008...In just over two months the Charter for Compassion will be unveiled to the world. On that day, November 12, 2009, Karen Armstrong will read the Charter at a global press launch. This briefing will be followed by a week of celebratory events - from concerts to art fairs, lectures and readings - and a weekend of sermons coordinated in houses of worship large and small.Also on November 12, a plaque inscribed with the words of the Charter, designed by Yves Behar, will be hung in important religious and secular buildings in ten or so cities around the world. Images and video of these "hangings" will be shown at the press launch and then posted on the Charter for Compassion website, re-launching that same day.
Compassion is one of those big all-inclusive, feel-good words that, I hope, every Christian should be lining up to cheer for, but what do you make of this particular take on it? Karen Armstrong's take on "belief" isn't quite the one I'd go for, though she makes a good point that it's not merely an intellectual ascent, but it's about behaving a particular way.
Listening to Armstrong above, I want to cheer about "only understanding doctrines when you put them into practice" and it must be true that "compassion" is a great linking word/lifestyle across faiths.
The problem is that what she pitches is (to quote her) "a test for true religiosity"...
According to whom?
For Jesus, the test of true religion was loving and following him - which, sure, is to be lived out and shown in lifestyle, nor mere intellectual belief... but he was absolutely clear that no lifestyle, however pure and compassionate, is enough to be right with God, nor to change the world.
On the other hand, I'm reassured by these words on the website itself:
The Charter does NOT assume:
- all religions are the same
- compassion is the only thing that matters in religion
- religious people have a monopoly on compassion
The Charter DOES affirm that:
- compassion is celebrated in all major religious, spiritual and ethical traditions
- the Golden Rule is our prime duty and cannot be limited to our own political, religious or ethnic group
- therefore, in our divided world, compassion can build common ground
What do you think? Do these sort of declarations change anything? Do Christian water down their faith in signing up, or is this exactly the sort of thing we need in a fractured world?
Update: Link to read the full assembly now works!
It's rare, you'll know I suspect, that I have a script to reproduce for any of my talks or sermons, but there are occasions when I make doubly sure I know what I'm going to say by at least writing it down beforehand... even though I don't go on to read from it up front."It's odd, isn't it, how we think God won't be interested in our emotions - that he might even look down on how we feel.]]>
I wonder whether we think that way because of how we see the Bible - that it's a quiet and respectful book, talking about religious themes, in a religious way, for religious people... But it's not!
In fact it's a bluntly noisy read, noisy with people's feelings - full of the sound of weeping... and of laughter... you hear shouts of pain, and cries of triumph; the sounds of friends partying together and of families mourning aloud.
It's written by real people, living out real lives alongside the very real God who made, loves and walks with them.
And so those who wrote the songbook of the Bible, the Psalms, were convinced that God, far from being uninterested in their feelings, held them as absolutely precious... listen to these remarkable words from Psalm 56:You keep track of all my sorrows.An amazing picture of God : collecting our tears in a bottle - each one precious, not a single one lost or wasted - and taking the painstaking time to write our emotions down in a book? What was true for the Psalmist all those years ago is, I believe, true for all of us as we miss [name] today."
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.
It's a wordle - from a terrifyingly addictive website, where you simply enter your text (you can put anything into it - "War and Peace", the lyrics of U2...), it strips out common words (like "and" or "it"), counts the rest and assigns size according to popularity.
Heard about this at New Wine - no idea if it'll take off, but it sounds like a simple idea that has plenty of potential for building community.
Definitely the best image for New Wine - in fact wondering with the cartoonist (from the ASBO Jesus site) should tender for this to be their new logo?
Six households from All Souls headed off for a week at the Christian festival/conference/holiday (never quite sure which description fits best - perhaps a bit of each?) - the photos are online here...
We all came back having had a fantastic week - inspite of the torrential rain, mud and (it has to be said) somewhat variable quality of speakers/input!
I always have mixed feelings recommending New Wine - the conditions are pretty basic (though they improve every year), the teaching input is wildly unpredictable (though this year it was a pleasure to have Mike Breen leading the morning input in Venue 2) and the seminar programme always seems to promise far more than it delivers...
...and yet there's nothing quite like it! Camping together brings out the best in people and friendships are made and deepened in a way it would be hard to imagine happening in many other contexts. The sung worship is often electrifying, prayer ministry plentiful and powerful and the 'after hours' events with music, food and entertainment enormous fun.
Most of all, from our perspective at least, the children's work is of a quality and depth that you'd be hard-pushed to better. The majority of "New Wine regulars" that I know say that the primary reason they go back year after year is the positive impact it has on their children's faith - they find themselves part of something much bigger than just their home church, they are bouyed up by a sense of confidence and joy and (above all else) this is children's work that actually expects God to show up - "it's not just about filling the time and keeping them happy".
Looking round those of us who went, it was very clear God was at work - some specific prayers answered, faith deepened and children encouraged. Great stuff!
Coming with us next year?
Been a while since I've quoted Seth Godin's blog on business, leadership and marketing, but once again he strikes a nail firmly on the head - ask yourself what the church in this country could do if it took this seriously....?
]]>"You've probably seen it. The fish monger sees a decline in business, so they have less money to spend on upkeep and inventory, so they keep the fish a bit longer and don't clean up as often, so of course, business declines and then they have even less money... Eventually, you have an empty, smelly fish store that's out of business.
[Godin then says much the same of "The doctor [who] has fewer patients..." and "The newspaper which has fewer advertisers..."]
As Tom Peters says, "You can't shrink your way to greatness," and yet that's what so many dying businesses try to do. They hunker down and wait for things to get better, but they don't. This isn't a dip, it's a cul de sac. It's over.
Right this minute, you still have some cash, some customers, some momentum... Instead of squandering it in a long, slow, death spiral, do something else. Buy a new platform. Move. Find new products for the customers that still trust you.
Change is a bear, but it's better than death."
After a week blogging my thoughts on preparing Sunday's sermon (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thurs and Fri), the talk itself got 'delivered' and it's now available online if you missed it and want to hear what I ended up with...
[This is the fifth in a week-long series of posts on preparing to preach - the first, from Monday, can be found here...]