Project Padding1 and my daughter's tears

I'm almost tempted to call this post 'I suggested my children gave a teddy to a refugee. What happened next astounded me'...

A child with teddy and note to a refugee child, from the group facebook page

If you haven't heard of Project Padding1 yet, don't worry - it only started 3 days ago. But it has already attracted a lot of attention, has nearly 3,000 followers on its facebook page, and is establishing regional hubs as I write.

The idea is to get children to send a teddy, with a handwritten note, to a refugee child in Syria. The notes are heartwarming and tearjerking.

But that's not why I'm writing this.

This tea time, I told my children about the project and suggested that some of their vast horde of bears might be usefully shipped off in this way. My ten year old son nodded thoughtfully. My six year old daughter burst into tears.

Tears of real desolation and pain. She wasn't sniffing delicately, she was howling great, loud, snot-laden gulping tears.

'I - don't - want - to give - my teddies - AWAY!' she howled.

My husband and I patted her calmingly and soothingly said we understood, she hadn't got to, nobody was going to make her give one of them away, it was up to her.

That just made the crying worse.

'But I - don't want - them - not - to - have - a teddy - EITHER!' she bawled. 'I don't want - NOT - to give - one away. But I don't want them to go!' Cue a fresh explosion of tears.

And it seemed to me that in her childish honesty she had perfectly encapsulated the mixed feelings most people have about the migrant crisis. We don't want them to be suffering - it is almost unbearable. But we don't want to give up our valued stuff, our valued standard of living, either.

I suggested a compromise. How about we go and buy a new teddy?

 'BUT WHAT  IF I LIKE THAT ONE TOO AND WANT TO KEEP IT?!' she wailed.

Maybe just her brother would like to send a teddy?

'BUT I SOMETIMES LIKE PLAYING WITH HIS TEDDIES TOO! IF HE SENDS ONE I WILL BE SAD BECAUSE I WON'T BE ABLE TO PLAY WITH IT ANYMORE'.

We will send teddies. To be honest, she has so many she probably wouldn't actually notice a giant teddy cull if I didn't tell her about it - and we can easily afford to buy new teddies if sending hers is too much of a jump. (As her brother pointed out solemnly, he thinks of his teddies as almost like family, so it is a big ask to send one away overseas not knowing if it will arrive safely).

But that voice of her uncontrollable sobbing will stay with me, voicing the thoughts of our inner child - the young, toddler Brittania deep inside our country's psyche - who is struggling to hold together the two contradictory impulses, to help and to hold tight to what is ours.

So lets be kind to our inner child in these debates. Let's name and recognise the fact that it is hard to prise that toddler fist open. We know we want to be generous, but it is difficult. We have grown up being trained to hold onto what is ours, to be careful with it, to know the value of money, to know that things don't grow on trees, to know that we should share, yes, but that they should give us our stuff back at the end of playtime.

Shouting 'don't be selfish!' into the debate is unlikely to work. (My eldest tried it at the tea table. It didn't work). Acknowledging the inner struggle, and that it IS a genuine struggle, is much more likely to be succesful.

'The Silver Sword' and migration

One of the books I remember most from my childhood is Ian Serallier’s The Silver Sword. It tells the story of a young boy in the war who is only just able, with his even younger sister, to escape from their house shortly before it is blown up by the Nazis. The two of them then journey through various occupied countries trying to reach Switzerland, where they eventually find a safe haven with other orphaned children. 

There are many other children's books about war that I remember, all of which stimulate the same empathy. From Children of the New Forest to Goodnight Mr Tom, stories of children forced away from home in conflict invite us to imagine how we would cope in similar situations, and give us a glimpse of the human reality behind today's headlines and statistics.

And yet the stories we tell ourselves can also obscure historical reality and so distort our present reactions.

The whole point of the asylum framework that was put in place after the second world war was to avoid a repetition of the situation where thousands more people who could have been saved died in Nazi concentration camps because of precisely the same rhetoric from the British public and press that we are seeing now. We could have saved more, but the population didn't want to be 'swamped'. 

History, as we know, tends to be written by the victors: and so the stories we tell ourselves of the war are primarily of plucky Britain in the Blitz, standing firm against the might of Europe. We conveniently forget the other side of things, the appeasement, the fierce debate about whether we should enter the war at all, or whether Hitler didn't really have a point. We celebrate those children who were rescued, but conveniently forget the thousands of children and less photogenic adults who we turned away to their deaths.

 

The silver sword has been brought back to me recently by images of children living in the bombed out ruins of their houses in Syria, or whole families fleeing before the advance of ISIS. Images of parents clinging to their young children as they attempt to reach Europe or Australia on an over-crowded boat.

(image from the independent's twitter feed).

As I write this, the papers are full of the Songs of Praise episode being broadcast from the Calais migrants’ camp. It has attracted a huge amount of comment, both positive and negative. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted his support: “The love of Christ is freely offered to all, celebrated everywhere, for everyone to know, well done #Songs of Praise”. 

Others were less keen, with papers such as the Sun and the Daily Mail deriding the broadcast. Michael Sadgrove, the soon-to-retire Dean of Durham, wrote on his blog:

“What's the answer to the scornful Pharisees at The Sun? It's pretty obvious. Just ask what Jesus would do. He would be in The Jungle, of course, just as he kept company with a lot of other people the establishment of his day found it difficult to tolerate. It's not that Jesus didn't maintain a clear head about the weighty matters of the law such as duty and justice. Nor is it that he didn't grasp the endless complexity of human life. It's simply that where he saw people in need of touch, tenderness and a listening ear without the threat of sanction and exclusion, he was there with them.”

I’m glad that most Christian commentators supported the broadcast. I was glad it was broadcast, though I was a bit disappointed, watching it: there was much more focus in the reporting on the migrants trying to reach England, than on their faith. There was a missed opportunity, I felt, to explore Coptic and Ethiopian Christianity, and the spirituality of people who wanted to build a church before a home. Some people mistakenly thought that because the women in the church were veiled, and mainly sat separately from the men, they were 'really' Muslims! There was a missed opportunity to correct such misconceptions.

But it was still good to see the programme engage with something that is a key talking point in most churches around England today. A 'Christian' response to migration must always begin with a recognition of our shared humanity, as human beings all equally created in God's image and for every one of whom Christ was born, lived, taught, died and rose again. 

Furthermore, Christianity is full of migration and refugees, both in this country and across the world. I've just returned from the Anglo-Nordic-Baltic Theology Conference, this year held in Finland, and questions of national identity, borders, and language were very real ones, particularly for countries such as Latvia where memories of Russian invasion are still strong and formational. We were very aware of how all such questions need to be discussed in the context of our Christian history of migration, evangelism (sometimes, particularly in Northern Europe, at the point of a sword), and inter-cultural engagement/encounter/conflict in so many different contexts.

St. George, patron saint of England, was a Roman soldier who was probably born in Syria. 

St. Alban, the first English Christian martyr, died to protect a Christian priest who was almost certainly an immigrant. 

The Bible is full of stories of refugees (most obviously the people of Israel, wandering in the desert in search of the Promised Land), economic migrants (think of Joseph and his brothers), and displaced people (‘by the waters of Babylon I sat down and wept’). Jesus himself, with his parents, sought asylum in Egypt when Herod tried to kill him in his infancy. 

Of course, we can be worried about the effect of widespread migration on our own standard of living and sense of home. But Christianity challenges us never to seek to protect our own standard of living at the expense of other people. 

Around the world, there are many millions of displaced people. The vast majority are given hospitality and shelter by neighbouring countries, whose generosity and welcome in the face of their own poverty puts us to shame.

Tensions between different countries and peoples is nothing new. A lawyer once asked Jesus: ‘Who is my neighbour?’ In reply, Jesus told one of the best loved stories in the Bible – the Parable of the Good Samaritan. There is nothing in the gospels that encourages us to think that our responsibility for others stops at our national borders. There is nothing in the gospels that encourages us to think that our own comfort is a measure of what we can afford to give to others. 

The Limits of Good Disagreement

Today's gospel reading (Mark 3:20-35) shows Jesus reaching the end of his patience, and snapping out a very hard limit to the edges of good disagreement.

He's under pressure both from those who are following him - whose demands are wearing him out - and from those who are opposing him. He's hungry - we're told he hasn't even been able to eat due to the crowds pressing round. In fact, the implication is that he is 'hangry'. And he snaps, into one of those occasional really fierce statements:

"people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin".

Its one of those statements that we often glide over - surely Jesus can forgive everyone, he is basically nice? But it suddenly seems relevant in a new way. It seems to me that, as we struggle in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion to find ways of doing disagreement well, 'good disagreement', this morning's gospel offers a firm boundary for that.

Jesus is provoked into saying this because people are accusing him of doing his miracles, healings, etc by demonic power. Looking at the Holy Spirit and calling it demonic is, he declares, the unforgiveable sin.

That doesn't mean people have to immediately recognise the Holy Spirit at work, or even acknowledge it. And Jesus carefully prefaces this bombshell by saying that everything else - even blasphemies - can and will be forgiven.

So as we try to model 'good disagreement', have 'shared conversations', and so on - just don't, ever, label something that might, just might, be of the Holy Spirit as demonic. You don't have to think it is of the Holy Spirit - you're free to think (and say) that you believe your interlocutor to be deluded.

So in the 'woman debate' - I can happily coexist with colleagues who don't think I should be ordained, though I will of course argue vigorously with them. But it goes too far if someone claims that a woman who thinks she has heard the call of the Holy Spirit to be ordained must be suffering from a demonic spirit. It goes too far if someone tries to cast out a 'spirit of rebellion' from a woman who speaks out in ways they disagree with. It goes too far if someone equates feminism with satanism or demonic temptation.

And in the 'gay debate' - in the shared conversations that are currently underway - by all means robustly argue your point of view. I'm an academic - I love a good argument. But it goes too far to be within the limits of a Christian discourse if you accuse the love that two people share, which they believe to be holy, of being satanic. It goes too far if you accuse people of being the anti-Christ for interpreting the Scriptures differently to you. It goes too far if you try to deliver them from evil spirits, or refuse to be in the same room as them because you fear satanic contamination.

You may, of course, sincerely believe that these things are in fact true. You may believe that it is those who hold views that seem to you perverse are the ones who are blaspheming. Presumably those outside the house where Jesus was teaching thought the same thing. But if you hold that view then I assume you take the Scriptures very seriously indeed - and note that here Jesus says people will be forgiven their sins, and whatever blasphemies they utter - but don't blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.  
I'll say that again - Jesus says here that Whatever we do or say that may be wrong, or sinful, is forgiveable - except accusing the Holy Spirit of being demonic. Even when you don't realise that it is the Holy Spirit, and genuinely think this is a disruptive, satanic influence.

So: good disagreement. Disagree, by all means. Disagree vigorously. But don't drag the devil into it, to be on the safe side.

And make sure you eat well.

Towards a Theology of Church Growth

Is Church Growth even more contentious a topic than Same Sex Marriage? On the day that Ireland votes on same sex marriage, it may seem provocative to suggest this.

But I think this is the case. The Church of England talks of little else, and it is surprisingly contentious.

Now if you don't go to church you may wonder why on earth the church wanting to grow would be controversial. Most organisations nowadays exist at least in part to evangelise and grow - that is the norm in our capitalist society. Most people also think of personal growth and development as a good thing.

Yet when leaders in the church talk about church growth, they are often decried - not by the angry atheists, but by members of that same church. So why is church growth, as a concept, so controversial?

Partly, this is because we clergy feel under considerable pressure to deliver this growth, and we fear failure.

Partly, it is because we know that growth is not just about numbers - it is as much about depth as breadth.

And partly, it is a reaction against what is often seen as an increasingly managerial approach to the theology of church (ecclesiology). We know that being a good vicar (chaplain, priest, minister...) doesn't always simply equate to extra bums on seats, and we fear the introduction of an Ofsted-culture into the church. Church growth is often derided for being not really concerned with the Kingdom of Heaven but with management metrics. 'Where is the theology?' the cry goes up.


And yet....all the imagery in the Bible for the church implies growth, development, fruiting, building.


A couple of years ago, Durham University held a day conference entitled 'Towards a Theology of Church Growth', and the book arising out of that conference has now been published by Ashgate. You can find it here.


The idea behind the conference was that, although the church leaders who talked about growth were sure that the claims that this was un-theological were unfounded, nevertheless it was a fair criticism to say that the theology had not been fully considered and explained.

I was asked to speak on what medieval theologians said about church growth.One of the key things that the organiser of the conference (David Goodhew) wanted to challenge was the claim that this obsession with church growth was a purely modern concept, and had no counterpart in the historic theology of the church. 'After all', the argument runs, 'In medieval times everyone went to church'. Was this true? he asked me. If so, and even more if not, was there any concept of church growth in the period of medieval 'Christendom'?


This was a fascinating challenge! First of all I had to work out where to look - it was not a question I had considered before, and working out what evidence could be brought to bear on the question took some time. My first idea was to look at archaeological evidence - were church buildings constructed with growth in mind? But as you'll find if you read my full chapter, I quickly had to discard that line of enquiry - there is very little correlation indeed between church building and congregation size in the medieval period. Bigger church buildings said as much or more about the wealth and status of their patron as about the number of people expected to fill them.


There are, however, plenty of examples of local people building additional chapels of ease or places of local worship, nearer to where they lived than the parish church that they legally had to attend and support. These were built, staffed and supported out of the pockets of the laity they served, and provide good evidence for a flourishing lay spirituality.


But the best evidence that I found was in the writings of and about the Friars, and in pastoral letters from bishops to clergy exhorting them to growth. These did not assume that everyone went to church - far from it. Indeed, they sometimes didn't even assume that the clergy knew the basics of their faith! And the passion with which they spoke about growing the church is infectious.

The example that has most stuck in my mind is that of Robert Grosseteste, the famously reforming Bishop of Lincoln in the mid thirteenth century. In 1244 or early 1245, he went on a trip to Rome, and wrote a letter to his archdeacons exhorting them to grow the church in his absence. I wonder how they felt when they read this letter - perhaps a similar rising panic and apprehension to that so many clergy feel now at the latest diocesan directive to grow?

Grosseteste uses very similar 'business' or 'management' imagery to that which is so often decried now. Drawing on the parable of the talents, he uses the image of doing business with the wealth entrusted to you with the aim of making a profit explicitly to refer to seeking and working for numerical church growth.`

I do encourage you to read the whole chapter, and indeed the whole book! You will probably find lots to disagree with, but lots to ponder too.

You may be reassured or appalled to know that an obsession with numerical church growth is certainly not uniquely modern, and that there is indeed a medieval theology of church growth.

Jelly bean Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

For those people who have asked for an outline of this!

I took an assembly today on the value of 'Fairness'. Being the vicar, in my assemblies I try to always relate a Bible story that sheds light on the school's theme of the week. For 'Fairness', the story that came to mind was the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.

This was a whole primary school assembly for key stages 1&2, and would also work as a all-age talk I think.

Equipment needed: a pot of jelly beans (at least 120), and 6 bags to put them in.

Adults, in my experience, tend to really dislike this story! I wondered how children would react, and thought it would be a good way into exploring what our ideas of fairness really mean.

I began by asking them what they thought fairness meant. Answers included 'being kind', 'sharing', and 'having even teams, like in tug of war it woukd be unfair to have ten on one side and twenty on the other'.

Jesus told a story about fairness, I said.

Imagine a farmer. S/he has lots of work to do on the farm - far more than s/he can manage on her own. So s/he goes to find some people to pay to do the work with her. Explain we cant actually do digging in the hall, so i'm going to ask my workers to do star jumps instead to represent work.

A brief explanation of the way people stood in the marketplace if they were looking for work - then I took the role of the farmer and imagined the children were the workers. What a lot of people waiting to be hired! I need some strong people to help me in my farm. (Pick 2)


Now, (i said to my workers) the deal is, you work for me by doing star jumps for the rest of the assembly, and I'll pay you 20 jelly beans. Is that a fair deal? They acceot eagerly, and off they go.

After a minute or so, I stop them. Hmmm, I say. We have got half way through the day, and it doesn't look to me as if we are going to get all this work done with just two workers. I'd better go back to the marketplace and get some more. (A forest of hands flies up! I pick two more).

Ok you two. How about you work for me for what's left of the day, and I'll pay you what's fair. OK? They agree and all four start doing star jumps. After another minute I stop them.

Hmmm. We are half way through the afternoon and it doesn't look to me as if we are going to get all this work done woth just 4 workers. I'd better go back to the marketplace.

I choose one more volunteer (you could choose two but I wanted to limit the amount of time I spent  counting out beans!). Again, I offer them the deal that they work for the couple of hours left, and I will pay them whats fair....

After maybe 30 swconds more of all 5 doing star jumps, I repeat the process, emphasising that there is only an hour left of the day. My final volunteer gets offered the deal again, and they all start doing star jumps again.

After maybe 10 seconds, I stoo them all and announce it is the end of the working day and they've all done a really good job. Now its paytime. Please could they line up in order of how long they have been working for me.

I take the pot of jelly beans, musing aloud that I had said I'd give the workers 20 beans for the whole day's work, and had said I would pay the others what was fair. I open the box, and start counting jelly beans into a bag.

2...4...6........20.

I hand the bag of beans to the last volunteer. Here you are! Thank you for working for me for that hour, we got the job done!

Then I turn to the next person. You worked for me for 2 hours, didn't you? Hang on, I will just count out your pay....again, count 20 jelly beans into a bag and give it to them.

And so on all down the line.

When I get to the first two, I remind them of their contract and cheerfully count 20 beans out into bags for each of them. (For the last few counts, the whole school joined in counting in twos).

Then i asked the last two (the ones who had worked all day) if they felt they had been fairly paid.

I asked the whole school to think for a moment, then raise their hands if they thought that was fair - or  not. (In this case the vote was about 40/60 fair/unfair).

I then said that Jesus had told this story when some of his disciples had asked what they would get in heaven, since they had given up everything - homes, families, work - to follow him. And Jesus told that story in reply.

I often find people think that God might prefer people who go to church a lot. Because I am a vicar, sometimes people ask me to say a prayer for them because they think my prayers might be put higher up the queue by God! But the great news for those of us who feel other people are probably a lot better at religion than us, is that in this story Jesus tells us that God doesn't have any favourites in heaven. There aren't any special rewards for people who have been more religious, because God loves all of us equally, however much we do for him.

Prayer: thanking God for the difficult bits of the Bible, that make us think, and for giving us minds to think with.
Thanking God for Jesus showing us how much God loves us, and that he has no favourites.
Praying for all those who are not so fortunate as us around the world, and for all those who try to make the world a fairer place for everyone.

Oasis

We recently established a Shared Ministry Development Team at Belmont church. A couple of months ago, the team came up with the idea of trialling a new evening gathering. After some discussion, the name Oasis emerged - along with the idea that this was to be an oasis of peace, a place of refreshment, and a refuelling point for life - an oasis on Sunday evening before a busy week starts again on Monday. A place to relax, reflect, be restored and refreshed.


We met to plan. And we came up with too many ideas that we couldn't decide between! So we have decided that for this three month trial, we will try three different approaches. At the end, we will evaluate and ask for feedback - we might not continue, we might decide one approach worked best and stick with that in the future, or we might decide to continue with a mix of styles from month to month. Who knows?!

This slide presentation introduces the idea: more details below!
Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Roughly speaking, we have decided that the 'shape' of each of the three trials will be similar, following a threefold pattern: relax, reflect, restore. That is, first a section facilitating the particpants to relax into God's presence; then a section of 'input' and reflection; then a section which facilitates returning to everyday life, refreshed by the experience and hopefully taking new insights, or going out having made some new connections between faith and life.

We are loosely inspired by the way in which Messy Church plays with and deconstructs liturgical structure and elements. We want to see if that can be done in a more contemplative, even 'mystical' (dare I say, to quote Mark Tanner, an 'introvert charismatic') way.

 I'll post more in the future about how each of the three sessions are going to be done, and how each went!

Anglo Nordic Baltic Theology Conference/House Party!

One of the things that I love is going to the Anglo Nordic Baltic theology conference!

It is a biennial conference that takes the form of a 'theological house party'. It was founded in the early decades of the 20th century to foster understanding and build relationships between members of the Anglican and Lutheran churches of Northern Europe. That clearly worked really well, as it led to the Porvoo agreement! You can read more about the history of the conference here.

The first time I went was to the 2009 conference in Sweden, and we had such a good time. It makes a refreshing change from other conferences as it is attended by a mix of academics and practitioners, lay and ordained. It also makes a refreshing change from other ecumenical gatherings and church summits, as it has no aim to produce anything official - so there is no pressure to agree a text or communique. The aim is simply to have a good time together gathering around discussion of a common theme.

If you haven't heard of it before, that may be because the conference used to be by invitation only!  However, since 2013 we have re-launched the conference on a new footing and it is now open to anyone who wishes to attend. It is currently convened by a small group of us: myself from England, Mika Pajunen from Finland, and Archbishop Michael Jackson from Ireland.

The language of the conference is English and papers are short (20 minutes) to act as discussion starters, rather than being the last word on a subject.

The theme for 2015 is Theology in the Public Square. Do take a look at the emerging programme, think about coming, and if you wish, get in touch with me about a paper if you'd like to offer one!