Happy Christmas!

Eve

T'was the night before Christmas, and all through the shop,

The computers were whirring; they never did stop.

The power was on and the temperature right,

In hopes that the input would feed back that night.

The system was ready, the programme was coded,

And memory drums had been carefully loaded;

While adding a Christmasy glow to the scene,

The lights on the console, flashed red, white and green.

When out in the hall there arose such a clatter,

The programmer ran to see what was the matter.

Away to the hallway he flew like a flash,

Forgetting his key in his curious dash.

He stood in the hallway and looked all about,

When the door slammed behind him, and he was locked out.

Then, in the computer room what should appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer;

And a little old man, who with scarcely a pause,

Chuckled: "My name is Santa...the last name is Claus."

The computer was startled, confused by the name,

Then it buzzed as it heard the old fellow exclaim:

"This is Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen,

And Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen."

With all these odd names, it was puzzled anew;

It hummed and it clanked, and a main circuit blew.

It searched in its memory core, trying to think;

Then the multi-line printer went out on the blink.

Unable to do its electronic job,

It said in a voice that was almost a sob:

"Your eyes - how they twinkle - your dimples so merry,

Your cheeks so like roses, your nose like a cherry,

Your smile - all these things, I've been programmed to know,

And at data-recall, I am more than so-so;

But your name and your address (computers can't lie),

Are things that I just cannot identify.

You've a jolly old face and a little round belly,

That shakes when you laugh like a bowlful of jelly;

My scanners can see you, but still I insist,

Since you're not in my programme, you cannot exist!"

Old Santa just chuckled a merry "ho, ho",

And sat down to type out a quick word or so.

The keyboard clack-clattered, its sound sharp and clean,

As Santa fed this "data" to the machine:

"Kids everywhere know me; I come every year;

The presents I bring add to everyone's cheer;

But you won't get anything - that's plain to see;

Too bad your programmers forgot about me."

Then he faced the machine and said with a shrug,

"Merry Christmas to All!" as he pulled out its plug.

A Night Before Christmas

Wycombe was not a great place to be last night, especially if you were a motorist.  It started snowing soon after 2:00pm and was still snowing heavily four hours later.

And so it was that we were asked to open our Church as an Emergency Rest Centre for people stranded by the snowy roads and icy hills. Roads normally busy with traffic had only pedestrians struggling between cars and vans abandoned at the roadside.  Read about it here.

Through to 2:00 am people arrived.  Some walked in as though they were arriving for a meeting, some arrived as though they had trekked from the Arctic, one or two looked as though they had been mistakenly delivered by emergency ambulance to us instead of the hospital.

Thirty five people slept for the night at 'Hotel Union'!  About 20 others came through the doors and were fortified and warmed for the next stage of their epic journey home.  Never has the town or Church witnessed the need to be a Town Centre Snow Shelter before!

God, on the other hand, seemed less surprised and to be working to a nicely visible plan (his plans are often invisible of course).

My colleague Pastor Tim has just recently taken on a role as Police Chaplain, and this gave us goodwill and communication from the outset.

Our Church Administrator has been a Hotel Manager and so Calvin might be described as the perfect Staff Member in the circumstances!  He's also a great cook, so the motley collection of material available for Breakfast was transformed into good stuff on the plate.

Our Youth Worker Matt, shortly to depart for New Zealand, was still present, and able to give us confidence with the teens who arrived.  Two of them stayed overnight with us, away from their families.

One of our members, having been inspired to do Street Pastor work, responded immediately and came in to help at this opportunity.

When I was sliding down the hill to help, I heard the familiar voice of one of my Elders in the sea of darkly clad walkers struggling up the hill in the opposite direction.  When we met, he immediately joined me and ended up staying and working with us through the night (moral of story, beware of passing Pastors!)

As our premises host the Wycombe Winter Night Shelter  we had  a good supply of air beds and a magnificent supply of blankets and sheets.

We thank God for His planning, which appears to have greatly exceeded that of others.  He even planned it in his instructions to the first Christian Churches - Share with God's people who are in need. Practise hospitality.  And he'd said it previously to his ancient covenant people too - The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am Yahweh, your God. (Leviticus 19:33,34).

Brrrrrr

Tonight we had our second slot for carol singing at our local shopping centre. We understood that we would be joined by another church but, because they wanted to survive until Christmas, they didn't arrive.

Our survival was threatened by the temperature - which was below freezing - and the somewhat inexplicable design of the centre whereby the roof runs out before the shops do. This afforded us a site with a wind ambience resembling the deck of a ship, and a floor temperature mirroring a polar research station.

Cinema-goers hurried by wondering what we were doing there (they would have wondered all the more had they been able to identify our average age underneath our multidinous layers of clothes.) A Shopping Centre operative looked over at us, wondering what we were doing there. On another evening he may have checked our credentials, but tonight he was content that the only offence we might be committing was against our circulatory systems. We wondered what we were doing there. We were, in short, a wonder. A bone-chilled, finger-frozen, teeth-chattering wonder.

Health and Safety considerations would have demanded that we instruct any member of the public who had stopped to listen to us to move on lest they sued us for their frostbite - this might even have been a consideration if someone removed their gloves to accept a leaflet.  In the event no-one was irresponsible enough to risk their well-being by stopping.

With a neat sense of timing one of my aunts had sent a Christmas card that arrived this morning.  It pictured a brightly-lit village church.  In a blizzard.  The choirboys are walking through the snow toward the sanctuary.  The very essence of Christmas, I thought, when I opened the card.

But now I know it is a fraud.

You can stand in the freezing cold.  You can stand and sing carols. 

What you can't do, is do both at once . . .

Hallelujah (Silent Version!)

My daughter sang this peerless piece of sacred music in her school Christmas Concert. It was great.

But the world is made up of two groups of people. Those who've seen this version, and those who haven't . . .

Copenhagen

As the United Nations Climate Change Conference descends gently and inevitably into inter-nation political squabbling, we can only pity those unpolitical scientists who claimed this was the 'most important conference in the history of the world.'

Bombs in Baghdad have simultaneously reminded us that Climate Change takes an early back seat when power takes over. Especially power expressed in war and violence. Tanks running on biofuel? Eco-friendly bombs delivered by low energy bombers? Nuclear warheads that preserve rare species? Dolphin-friendly depth charges?

This is the kind of Conference that only happens in peace time. It has laudable aims but there will come future days and places when human beings are so busy trying to kill each other that the fate of delicate ecosystems will be the last thing on their minds.

The chief planetary problem is in the heart of its dominant species. A heart that doesn't always seek peace, but always seeks more things for itself and its interests. The problem is more Greed than Green.

Christmas, because it points to how God changes souls, matters a lot more than Copenhagen. And the humblest conference, or Carol Service, that applies the lessons of Christ likely offers greater hope than any portentous gathering of the political elite. For we need the power to lay down the power, and that is a very illusive form of power indeed.

UFOs

Reports have now confirmed that the British Government has stopped checking on sightings of UFOs. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said, "Any legitimate threat to the UK's airspace will spotted by our 24/7 radar checks and dealt with by RAF fighter aircraft"

Yeah, right.

I can't help thinking old King Herod would have kept the department open, given the problems he once had.

When Jesus was born in the village of Bethlehem in Judea, Herod was king. During this time some wise men from the east came to Jerusalem and said,
"Where is the child born to be king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him."
. . . later Herod secretly called in the wise men and asked them when they had first seen the star.

Advent

Unshakeoffable

Yesterday I spoke about Psalm 139.

Where could I go to escape
from your Spirit
or from your sight?
If I were to climb up
to the highest heavens,
you would be there.
If I were to dig down
to the world of the dead
you would also be there.
Suppose I had wings
like the dawning day
and flew across the ocean.
Even then your powerful arm
would guide and protect me.
Or suppose I said, "I'll hide
in the dark
until night comes
to cover me over."
But you see in the dark
because daylight and dark
are all the same to you.

God is unshakeoffable. On the one hand, in the words of Skevington Wood,

We can never talk about God behind his back.

That includes blogging - he finds the bits Google misses!

Scary? Not really. Only if I make an enemy of potentially my best friend imaginable,

Card

Today the first Christmas Card arrived! All the way from . . . .

. . . the Royal Mail.

We are blessed by many cards usually. I like to look at cards for at least one interesting or ridiculous thing and the Royal Mail card does not disappoint.

It has 'Merry Christmas' on it! This is something of a welcome surprise given the secularisation of such things. This is devalued upon opening it and realising that it is the announcement of Christmas postal arrangements dressed up in the form of a card.

It also has, on this symbol on,

Which is very confusing indeed. After all, if I recycle it now I will not have the card in Advent, let alone at Christmas. And if I recycle it now I will also lose all the information which it has been sent to convey.

This card is already a front-runner for my 'Most Contradictory Card Award 2009'

Coliseum

It seems just a little ironic that this stunning and acclaimed performance of a Christian hymn takes place in an arena in Pula that once hosted the slaying of Christian martyrs by Roman emperors.

Don't Say

Spider

One great thing about pulpit ministry is that you never know what's going to happen as you step up to the platform. Despite the reputed boredom of congregations, it is a rare sermon that doesn't illicit any response and I rarely feel that the time has been completely wasted.

But even if the spiritual side of things can be a let-down on occasions, there are a whole variety of possible excitements to make ministry interesting.

Last night it was a spider.

There on the lectern was a scampering spider which proceeded around at a pace without ever looking likely to head off the edge and go somewhere more convenient. It was a small spider. I figured, 'I'll leave it and it'll go away'.

It didn't go away. It seemed perfectly content to do a circuit of the Bible, order of service sheet, hymn book and sermon folder. That was all this pesky spider wanted.

Ah well, I could just leave it there. Then I realised that the first song had almost passed me by as I watched the spider and there was no way I was going to concentrate with this thing running around.

At least, I thought in sexist mode, the people doing the reading and prayer tonight are both men so there shouldn't be any shrieks! But how are they supposed to concentrate if I can't. The spider has to go.

Providentially I had gone for three songs together at the start, so there was still time. Of course the congregation couldn't be expected to worship if I was flaying around trying to crush a nifty insect so I decided for a cool, calculated response. When it runs on a book I'll pick up the book and drop the spider surreptitiously to the floor. The spider, with alarming wisdom, started to take a liking to the lectern and avoided running on any book, but disappearing behind them before re-emerging - grinning, I assume.

The singing was not great. I'd chosen something many people didn't know. This was especially good because it bought me extra time as we went back to verse one. Then it happened! The creature walked onto the hymn book (presumably also not knowing the song!) and, bingo, I could pick up the book, look the part of a Pastor, yet also dispose of the animal.

I picked up the book. I pulled back from the lectern. The spider headed rapidly north and jumped. Back onto the lectern. The song continued exploring the grace of God as I contemplated murderous thoughts far removed from the beatific St Francis of Assissi, known for his love of animals and all nature.

The song was getting near the end! I put down the hymn book, moved the Bible to encourage the spider back on, and it worked. I picked up the hymn book again, whipping it away quickly this time.

But the spider didn't jump. Instead it nestled in by No. 965 and used its God-given capacity for hanging on. I'd had enough. I shook the book. The spider hung on. I held it upside down and shook it. The spider remained.

As the last line of the song died away I held the book vertically behind the lectern and scraped the spider to the floor.

We should never assume that we can see who is really in control of a worship service . . . .

Lilleshall

This week dozens of Sports Chaplains met at the National Sports Centre, Lilleshall. This is annually a truly inspirational conference with some great insights into the world of sport and faith.

For example we heard about one English Football Club where, after the Manager's team talk the players are offered the chance to go to another quiet room for prayer which includes meditating on a verse of the Bible.

So, of the 11 players plus substitutes, how many - in deeply secular 21st century Europe -might be found in the prayer room?

Up to ten.

Or to put it another way; a rather higher proportion that most churches manage at their prayer meetings!

Now if they were at FC Barcelona, they'd even have a proper chapel . . .

Harvest-time Prayer

Claimed

I read this week of a family pet from my home town.

The family had a monster of a tortoise that lived free-range in the family back garden. Not being content with having the whole outside grass and shrubs at his disposal, he often decided to do a Steve McQueen and pull off daring escapes. OK, there were no motorbikes or wooden vaulting horses involved, he simply burrowed under the panel fences and (in some cases) made it four houses down. Upon the third ‘prison break’, the family decided drastic action was needed to avoid losing him forever. They took a brush to his shell and painted their full home address for all to see on his back. Upon personalising that tortoise, they made an oath that it was theirs for life - for all to see.

It's amazing that God does the same with his people,

See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands (Isaiah 49:16)

Revelation Song

Kari Jobe's song is the worship song of the moment so I thought it ought to reach my blog.

Having lived the Texas life in the past I had a smile when I found out that Kari's church has a Senior Pastor. And it has an Executive Senior Pastor. And it has several Associate Senior Pastors. Goodness knows how far down the chain a mere 'Pastor' is!

Meeting

One thing every minister knows about is meetings. Recently I went to one that will live long in the memory.

We reached our scheduled starting time and - alas and alack - we were one person short of a quorum.

It was pointed out that this therefore was not, in fact, a meeting. We talked and waited with messianic attentiveness. And waited. And waited.

The missing one did not arrive.

Well, we'd all taken the trouble to be there so it was suggested that we give some news even though it wasn't a meeting. And some more news. And more news.

The meeting that wasn't a meeting finished 90 minutes (yes, you read that right - an hour and a half) after it hadn't started.

So the next time someone complains that a meeting has taken 90 minutes I shall be sorely tempted to tell them that, even if the meeting hadn't started it might have taken 90 minutes anyway and when it was over it would never have happened . . . They should be thankful for their meeting being a meeting!

Columbus

We wandered around Barcelona in the blazing sun and came upon this chap.

He's quite hard to miss but, not having my guidebook in hand I didn't recognise him at first. I felt a bit embarrassed when I discovered that it is no less than a statue of Christopher Columbus. It was a mistake no American would ever have made!

I plead two things as excuses.

1. His hand is pointing out into the Mediterranean. From this I'd assumed he was some Catalan general or admiral who fought upon that sea. America is, after all in the other direction (at least when you head the way Columbus went)

2. Each evening, when the building fascias on the waterfront are floodlit and each palm tree is also lit by floodlights poor old Columbus was left in the dark. From that I wrongly deduced he really couldn't be very famous, who ever he was, because he was deemed less worthy of a floodlight than a palm tree.

I reflected that in a funny way it reflects how our society honours Jesus. He is still thought of quite highly and worth some substantive piles of stones and art.

At the same time although he clearly pointed one way (I am the way, the truth and the life; no-one comes to the Father except by me) he can now be thought of as pointing in any direction we choose.

And when the lights come on, the streets buzz and the bars open, we are much more likely to be thinking about palm trees than about Him.

Dance

Mediterranean

It's that time of year when, in the company of uncomfortably large numbers of fellow-Britons we are off to the Mediterranean.

This picture, from last year in Rome, seems suitably symbolic.

For a start, it was taken in such ridiculous heat that I can remember telling my spouse-photographer to hurry or I would have to move!

Secondly it is of part of a very ancient statue that bespeaks the empire that once straddled the Mediterranean and affected the globe. A little toe the size of my head says it all really.

Thirdly, standing amid history is exactly why my daughter is not and would not want to be with us. This is a very adult vacation. Not adult in the way of the binge-drinking hoards of fellow-countrymen and women who populate various Mediterranean bar strips. Adult in the number of miles walked. For while we will have no hangovers, the repaired little toe on the statue looks, for all the world, like our little toes will look when we've finished hot-footing around another Mediterranean city this week.

Lastly, although I am no lover of the heat, I like the Mediterranean for at least this; that every time I see that sea it brings to mind any number of stories from the Bible whose dramas were played out around its shores and sometimes upon its waves. In fact the P Q R on the plinth stands for 'The People of Rome' and as I'm halfway through preaching Paul's letter to the People of Rome it all seems very appropriate indeed!

Home

Tonight at Church I quoted an amazing hymn which I have never heard sung live but which resonates with the way some of us will get to heaven.

Safe home, safe home in port!

Rent cordage, shattered deck,

Torn sails, provisions short,

And only not a wreck;

But oh! the joy upon the shore

To tell our voyage perils o’er!

The prize, the prize secure!

The athlete nearly fell;

Bare all he could endure,

And bare not always well;

But he may smile at troubles gone

Who sets the victor-garland on.

No more the foe can harm;

No more of leaguered camp,

And cry of night alarm,

And need of ready lamp;

And yet how nearly he had failed

How nearly had that foe prevailed!

The exile is at home!

O nights and days of tears,

O longings not to roam,

O sins and doubts and fears;

What matters now grief’s darkest day?

The King has wiped those tears away

I was astonished to find it even has a contemporary version on youtube! It is hard to imagine a longer journey for a hymn than from Joseph of the Studium to Monks Coffee House Music Venue in Abilene, but here we go . . .

Communion (updated 2009)

In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. However, don't do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me in case you spread a

virus.'

Salvation?

This week Gary Reinbach died in hospital. He was in his early 20s and for half of his short life he had been an alcoholic.

The only surgery that would likely have saved him from a severe case of liver cirrhosis was a liver transplant. But Gary didn't qualify. The NHS rules require several months proven freedom from alcohol before a donor liver is transplanted - so that the new liver doesn't simply open the door for more binge drinking and a wasted gift.

His mother Madelaine told the Evening Standard: "I'm not saying you should give a transplant to someone who is in and out of hospital all the time and keeps damaging themselves, but just for people like Gary, who made a mistake and never got a second chance. These rules are really unfair."

I know nothing of Gary's faith or lack of it and, unlike the NHS, I am not his judge. I do know that if on his death bed Gary had turned to Jesus, as a thief once did upon a cross, his woeful history and doubtful prognosis would not have prevented the Saviour giving him eternal life.

Calvin (2)

What might happen if Calvin's theology was wedded to the Holy Spirit's work in Britain today?

It looks something like this . . .

Calvin

500 years ago today John Calvin was born.

His influence on the Christian church is immeasurable, remaining so today. Week by week, sometimes day by day, he mounted the pulpit steps in Geneva to deliver expositions of the Bible. Like us all, he had his faults and his foibles, but he was one of the greatest examples of a truth sometimes lost in the pulpit - that God should be given the microphone.

In other words, people do not benefit from knowing what the preacher thinks, any more than hearing what the local supermarket manager thinks. Bread for the soul is served when God's word is allowed to speak and the preacher is but the channel - God, in other words, is handed the microphone.

Sola Deo gloria - to God alone the glory.

Gift

Years ago I stood on the streets of an American city giving out leaflets for a Josh McDowell event.

I was not happy. My borrowed car had needed to be returned and I had been given something of a wreck in its place, complete with straw in the back. Diane had been to the dentist and had a sore mouth. I had Hay Fever big-time. The sun was beating down in a way that the British always think we'd like it to until it does and then we don't like it to.

Just standing there was an effort; standing there looking even faintly interested in what I was doing was a BIG effort. The old Christians used to call it 'adorning the gospel', and in those terms I was in a very unpolished state.

Then the girl came by. She looked the part, an elegant friendly-looking young woman. It made the smile easier than usual but still hard to come by.

Then the refusal. This is what she said,

"I don't take anything given away".

Given away!!!??? Hey, girl, I'm suffering here to give this to you (I felt like saying).

This Sunday I'm beginning a series in the Book of Romans in the Bible. It tells us explicitly that God's salvation is given away. Some people, like that girl, don't like that. Yet although it looks free when the preacher, the writer, the evangelist, the teacher, offers the Good News to us we do well to remember that the free offer comes at quite a price; not heat and hay fever but the life and death of Jesus the Messiah.

Bahnhofsmission

Beneath the soaring arches of Frankfurt's central station thousands of people rush past one another and past a few who are going nowhere. It could be London, New York or countless other major cities and their railway hubs at commuting time. But Frankfurt, like several other German stations, also has Bahnhofsmission.

With stations becoming more and more technological, machines replacing people, the mission station is again increasingly utilised.

It has in many ways strengthened and saved lives. They know it as the "Church at the station" prsenting the gospel for all people.

The rooms include a resting space suitablefor a variety of purposes: the business traveller needing an electrical outlet for his laptop, the elderly blind lady waiting over a cup of tea for thenext train to which volunteers will guide her, the homeless man seeking shelter and refuge who may read the newspaper and receive a small snack, or the young woman forced into prostitution who will safely spend the night on one of the Mission’s 20 mattresses, protected from her pimp. To the left of the Mission’s entrance is “the room of silence” where you can leave behind the hectic noise of the main station. An extra room is available for in-depth counselling and advice.

Last year, the Bahnhofsmission took care of almost 100,000 people, among them 6,000 children and teens. Over 20,000 received advice and small scale assistance. 15,000 elderly and handicapped men and women were given travel-related help. In about 4,000 cases, intensive counselling was provided. Such supplementary activities as short prayer services and musical meditations enrich the lives of those who come to the Mission, as do occasional art exhibits.

Die Gemeinde

German was never my strongest language. Die Gemeinde may be one of the reasons why. It is untranslatable into English because it means several different things at once for which, in English, we use different words. But one of those words is 'fellowship'.

Recently it was a special joy to get at last to Kelkheim, Germany, during my weeks away. Kelkheim is the twin town of High Wycombe and for a long time our church has had a link with the Evangelical Baptist Church there.

I set out from nearby Frankfurt on an early Sunday morning train in warm spring sunshine. I was probably unique on the train in not having a bike with me - I was certainly unique in not having a back pack! Walking and cycling are the draw to the Taunus Hills on a sleepy Sunday morning and the train wound its way upwards past neat villages until it reached the more substantial town of Kelkheim.

At this point it is worth recording that I had been in Germany for 24 hours, and previously never before. I was a long way out of my comfort zone.
Armed with my map I walked from the station through the warm sunshine and the quiet, hilly streets for a few hundred metres and there ahead of me was the Evangelisch-Freikirchliche Gemeinde (Baptisten). As befits a former shop it looked like, well, a shop!

When the service began the generous visuals on powerpoint and my low level GCSE German meant that I was never far off what was going on. Mysteriously, somehow these hundred or so people were not passing acquaintances but everlasting friends. Our language was often handshakes and smiles more than words but we were one people. I felt at home.

The only point at which I completely lost track was, strangely enough, the very last song. Following the benediction I leaned over to the worship leader and asked if she could tell me what it was about. It turned out it was a song about Christian fellowship and looking forward to meeting again soon.

I thought that was appropriate. The mystery in the whole morning was about fellowship, for which the phrase is Die Gemeinde. Intangible yet real across the borders of history and language I was more at home with these believers than in a body of unbelieving Englishmen. What a privilege it is to have been saved into the Church of the living God!

Headfirst

If you are going to be a Christian, this video reminds you that you may as well throw yourself into it (or rather Him)

In a State

Norway and Denmark (but since 2000 not Sweden) have State Churches. This means that, literally, the parish church (Lutheran) is an arm of Government. This is anathema to Baptists of all shades and varieties. But surely it must provide mighty stability and resources?


Perhaps so, but when you read this introduction from the Kultur og kirkedepartementet (Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs) you can't help thinking the Government is struggling to know what to do with the Church:

The Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs was established in 1982, at which time it was called the Ministry of Cultural and Scientific Affairs. Until then, the Ministry of Church and Education had had the overriding responsibility for cultural affairs in Norway. The Ministry changed its name to the Ministry of Church and Cultural Affairs in 1990. From 1991 until 2001, Norway had a Ministry of Cultural Affairs that was responsible solely for culture. From 1 January 2002, church affairs were once again amalgamated with cultural affairs and the current Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs was established on the same date. In January 2005 the Minister of Culture and Church Affairs was assigned responsibility for the voluntary sector. This was the first time the sector had been given its own minister.

The Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs is responsible for culture, church affairs, the media (films, broadcasting, press and copyright) and sport, and for gaming and lotteries. Several other ministries also deal with cultural matters.


So there you have it. The Church and the Lottery go together!

Servant

My friend Richard passed away on Tuesday. Some of you knew him too. He was a servant of the Servant King. This was his favourite song, and I post it in his honour and memory.

This song always reminds me that the Christian life is work as well as inspiration. Not only because of the meaning of the song words themselves but because Graham Kendrick wrote it not in some great flash of inspiration. Instead he grafted away with studies and commentaries to prepare a song for Spring Harvest 1984, an international Christian Conference with the theme that year of 'The Servant King'.

Sometimes our perspiration can become someone else's inspiration!

Alexander

The last of my Sabbatical books I want to comment on is this one. Alexander is an evolutionary biologist who is also a professing evangelical Christian and as you might imagine this book is an attempt to marry those possibly unweddable positions. Does he succeed?

Calamitously not, I'm afraid. I have little doubt that Dr Alexander is something special within the assumptions of his workaday discipline, but in mine - Biblical interpretation - he falls woefully short. His chosen method of interpreting Genesis 1-11 is to wonder whether anything actually means what it plainly says.

This is a legitimate academic approach. We call it liberalism. I can understand it, though I do not believe it it is right and I do not agree with it. I can also understand the Dawkinsian rejection of Genesis as myth or indeed gibberish. That, too, is consistent. The problem comes when a man says, "I believe in the Bible as much as anyone" (Alexander addresses his readers as evangelicals who are just like him faithwise but just not as knowledgable) and then sets about the Biblical text as though it is basically incomprehensible whilst the Theory of Evolution is received Truth.

No reader of the New Testament - I can include Richard Dawkins here I think - seriously doubts that Jesus and the apostle Paul regarded Adam and Eve as the first human beings and derived deep significance from that yet Alexander accepts the idea that not only were they not the first - they were in the later half of the years of the human race. (Of course while his dating of human origins makes sense in his biological framework it makes much less sense when compared to population growth or the development of language - his generations of early humans must have spent aeons of generations sitting watching the trees without reproducing or talking [Did they have souls? Does anyone, comes the question]). His problem is that he does not doubt scientific speculation, he doubts the Bible instead.

Should you read the book, I commend one of many demolitions of it at this link where David Anderson points out the problem I cited above, and, if you have time to read it, a lot more.

So what are we to do with a Genesis account that, even in its own terms, begs many questions (e.g. evening and morning with the Sun not created, creatures designed for a bloody, not paradisical world) when set against chains of leftover genes from our monkey years?

This is what we do.

We genuinely, completely, unequivically accept that the words of the Bible, including and comparing those in Job and the Psalms as well as Genesis, tell us what God wanted us to know for sure about origins, about His creating work. Another word for this material is the TRUTH. It is what God decided we need to know. It is accessible to the child and, by other means, even to the illiterate. We can know where we came from, something of how, and why there is two-gender marriage, a seven day week, clothes, different species and humans are special but not good. We learn why a last Adam was needed.

Then, wherever we learn anything for certain in the natural sciences we see how that relates to that truth, because it always will. Nothing is greater than truth.

But where there are speculations in cosmology, where (as with leftover gene sequences) there are reasonable guesses that might, like natural selection, prove eventually to be inadequate or wrong, we place them in a sidetray that might say 'Not Important'. They can never tell us more than we already know.

Of course by contrast it is a desperate quest on the part of atheists to explain origins; if they could prove the universe is a Mega Accident faith is dead. But they know they will never prove it; origins, creation, will always involve leaps of faith one way or another. They just hope that most people, especially in education, will leap their way.

Dr Alexander has simply leapt their way too.

Starbucks

Wesley

Today is the anniversary of the conversion of John Wesley, perhaps the only conversion marked by a memorial on a London plaza (in Aldersgate Street, above). There I joined Methodists as they lay a memorial wreath and sang from this Wesley hymn that seem to me to be an apt end to a Sabbatical;

I want an even strong desire,
I want a calmly fervent zeal,
To save poor souls out of the fire,
To snatch them from the verge of hell,
And turn them to a pardoning God,
And quench the brands in Jesus’ blood.

I would the precious time redeem,
And longer live for this alone,
To spend and to be spent for them
Who have not yet my Savior known;
Fully on these my mission prove,
And only breathe, to breathe Thy love.

My talents, gifts, and graces, Lord,
Into Thy blessed hands receive;
And let me live to preach Thy Word,
And let me to Thy glory live;
My every sacred moment spend
In publishing the sinner’s Friend.

Enlarge, inflame, and fill my heart
With boundless charity divine,
So shall I all strength exert,
And love them with a zeal like Thine,
And lead them to Thy open side,
The sheep for whom the Shepherd died

Norway

There are plenty of reasons for the British to be envious of the Norwegians. The kind of landscapes that we travel to the corners of our island to see are found everywhere in Norway. When it comes to Oslo, the capital city, you have on the face of it an orderly, clean city typical of Scandinavia yet with the added attraction that it is based in a pretty fjord of its own. So the view from one side of the City square (think Trafalgar Square in London perhaps) is this:

That it is a fantastic land is not very surprising because Norway is also one of the richest countries in the world, courtesy of oil wealth and a sensible attitude to saving it. You should probably stop reading now if you are in the USA or especially the UK - Norway has a national debt of (wait for it) nil. That is, it doesn't have a national debt.

And it gets better (worse if you're looking from the UK): Norway also has - and expects to continue to have even this year - a budget surplus of 11%. Got that? It takes in 11 % more money than it needs as a nation and has no debt. Americans and Britons alike will never live to see the day when that is true of their nations. Indeed the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund is one of the world's largest - possibly second largest - and yet the nation has less than 5 million people.

So what interested me most about my recent visit to Norway, apart from trying to keep my eyes from watering at the prices of everything, was that there is another story. Being on Sabbatical, I was not there to ferry across fjords, even if I could afford it. Rather, it was to taste the Christian ministries and their settings.

And out of those visits came these kind of pictures. One taken from the doorstep of an Oslo Church after the man who had been there for me had left for his next appointment.

Another taken from round the corner of a Baptist Church in as seedy a city street as you would find anywhere.

They won't make it on to the 'Visit Norway' website. But, if you imagine the scenes and add in some menacing groups of people hanging around (whose pictures I felt would best not be taken!) you will be reassured that humanity can make a mess of things in the face of even the greatest natural and national advantages.

And these were the places that Christ's people were ministering. Even if the sordid streets were a shock, that God's people were there serving was not a surprise!

Expenses

Passing this notice outside the parish church of the House of Commons I couldn't help thinking that its communicants, given recent revelations, should have been able to find imaginative ways of raising the necessary funds . . .

Truth

Can anything be bigger than God?

At first glance this appears to be an unacceptable question. God must be unimaginably greater than anything.

Than anything except truth.

For if, as the naturalistic atheists maintain, the truth is that there is no God that truth is greater than God. God cannot be greater than the truth.

The theory of evolution is sometimes set out as that ultimate truth that dispenses with God or gods. Galileo is often cited.

On discovering, in 1604, a supernova and having previously spotted sunspots the prevailing truth of the academic day - that of Aristotle - seemed to be untrue. Both academics and the Church authoriies of the day resisted his apparent heresy to maintain their truth that was not, in truth, true.

Today, claim the Neo-Darwinists, we have the same situation. The truth is that a natural process made everything. This truth makes God redundant and those who believe in God(s) are deluded.

Well, we've seen that the evidence points exactly the opposite way. Information - that is, an outside agency - is scientifically necessary to make a beginning. But then there are those monkeys. Remember them? The ones that type randomly trying to produce a work of Shakespeare. It cannot be done in the available time and space.

So how, on this theory, did the processes make the complexity of the world we find ourselves in? "Ah, " says Richard Dawkins et al., "You see when a monkey types the right letter, it is compared with the target letter and if correct, he stops". The monkey eventually hits 'W' and, matching the first word of the play, holds it right there to set off the writing of Hamlet. The monkey knows his job is done. In this way the impossible mountain of complexity is scaleable.

For all his protestations, Richard Dawkins does not believe in a Blind Watchmaker at all. He has to believe - because his logical mind shows him the truth - that there is a script on to which Darwin's theoretical randomness is being written.

Richard, who wrote the script? "Ridiculous," says Dawkins. "If you're going to say God is forever and beyond time and the mega-playwrght you might as well say that DNA is, or a spaghetti monster". Except we know for sure - he knows for sure - that DNA is not for ever and outside of time, and nobody actually professes to know a spaghetti monster which, anyway, presupposes a prior spaghetti maker. On the other hand, God is the plausible explanation of all necessary outside agency.

The Bible - and God - do not claim to be above the truth. They cannot be. Rather, the Lord Jesus taught that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Word and Person of God are the most important aspect of the truth, and the part which if neglected leaves humanity's largest hole.

Dawkins

The side blurb on this blog mentions my anti-hero is Richard Dawkins (though I also share his desire to tell the truth as I understand it)

I should say that by anti-hero I do not have anything against Professor Dawkins personally but that his attacks on my Lord make him someone I least admire. You can hear the man himself on this link at the BBC

Listen out for his answer, if you can call it that, to the question "What's the point?". Compare his answer to that of the apostle Paul,

For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain

I think, in his supposed quest for truth, if he thinks 'there's no less of a point if he doesn't believe in God than if he did' I fear he's missed a trick there.

Beginning

Genesis 1:1 in the original Hebrew reads;

(At/In the) beginning created/filled God[Elohim] the heavens/skies and the earth.

Like most Hebrew translations there is, as you can see a different order and several alternatives. Who'd be a translator!? My point however is the simplest and first word of all. Beginning.

For millennia this was taken as insignificant compared to the next two words 'created' and 'God'. However, it turns out to be as important a word as any in the Scriptures. Why? Because in ongoing scientific discovery it has finally become inevitable that the planet and indeed the universe had a beginning. Previously this could only be assumed (or revealed!).

The significance of this can be seen in observation of Professor Stephen Hawking,
Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.

John Maddox, former editor of Nature magazine bewailed the idea of a beginning because it gave creationists 'ample justification for their beliefs.'

But you do not need to be a supposedly clever person to know that if there once was nothing and now there is something, then the secret isn't a selection process but an intervention.

And the question then becomes, whodunnit?

Lennox

Without doubt two of my Sabbatical highlights were listening to a sermon and, on another day, a lecture by John Lennox. He is a Mathematics Professor at Oxford University and applies his knowledge of things like algorithmic incompressibility and other less-than-everyday categories to the Science and Religion issues raised by the likes of his fellow-Professor Dawkins.

He convincingly shows that DNA, by its very complexity and randomness, makes natural selection impossible as an explanation of humans (and a lot else). In a famous experiment monkeys were given the chance to produce a Shakespeare Play. The real monkeys were markedly and hilariously unsuccessful.

Some more imaginery monkeys were put to the task in the form of a computer programme, randomly producing letters and yet their infinite energy and concentration is also doomed to fail.

No, science shows what every believer knows; that there is more to us than natural selection. This extra to natural selection might, in the neutral sense, be described as 'information'. To be fair, Richard Dawkins concedes the need for this himself. In another blog, with John Lennox's help, we can deal with his unbelievable answer to the problem. Meanwhile, here's a clue to the right answer:

Church

If a Sabbatical does anything to a Pastor, it de-Churches him. In a life tied up with a local community of believers it is always possible for him to incrementally mistake the Church for the message or the organisation for the essence of faith. As people, in a sense rightly and in another sense catastrophically wrongly, expect their Leaders to be the guardians of policies, politics and programmes so the normal week becomes occupied by preoccupations.

The Church as people is sacrificially loved by God. The Church as a constituted charitable organisation always stands in danger of becoming not just irrelevant to God but the enemy of His kingdom.

Perhaps the low point of my Sabbatical came when I attended Evening Prayer in the late afternoon at one of Britain's ancient Cathedrals. It was a very pleasant spring Sunday afternoon. The Cathedral had had early and mid-morning Eucharists. This was the third and only other service of the day.

The verger showed me to a seat in the choir - I wasn't expecting many attendees and neither was he. Behind me sat the Canon. A Clergywoman stood at the back togging up. Another member of the Cathedral clergy sat opposite, talking to what I took to be a key member of the Chapter who spoke of resigning over ill health.

The verger took his seat. The Clergywoman walked forward and read through the service. and the other four of us sat, stood or knelt as appropriate.

Concerning which I reflected that the whole voluntary congregation at that service appeared to be Baptist Ministers - or more specifically, me! The other four probably had to be there by rota. Though I might have felt intimidated by being clerically outnumbered I needn't have worried as they gathered afterwards to complain about some upcoming meeting and did not speak to me at all.

Does such an experience make me doubt my faith? Despair of the Church? Absolutely not. It just reminds me that the Church is living stones not ancient stones. Which is somewhat the point of the conversation below;

Lindisfarne

I wanted to be somewhere special at Easter. For me, Holy Island (also known as Lindisfarne) was a place that was just right combining contemplation with inspiration.

This tidal island is forever associated with Cuthbert, one of the more remarkable Celtic Christian leaders of the first millennium. He was for a while, Abbot of the monastery though his preference was to be alone with God. At one time he lived on a tiny island offshore from Lindisfarne, but although he preferred the company of God to that of people he was prevailed upon to be Bishop at Durham because the people so loved him.

It is hard not to be moved by the depth of spirituality in such a man, the like of which is embarrassingly rare in Western Christianity today. Bede wrote of him,

He often spent whole nights in prayer, and sometimes, to resist sleep, worked or walked about the island whilst he prayed. If he heard others complain that they had been disturbed in their sleep, he used to say that he should think himself obliged to anyone that awaked him out of his sleep, that he might sing the praises of his Creator, and labour for his honour. His very countenance excited those who saw him to a love of virtue. He was so ...inflamed with heavenly desires, that he could never say mass without tears. He often moved penitents, who confessed to him their sins, to abundant tears by the torrents of his own, which he shed for them.

It is one thing to point out someone's sins. It is quite another to weep toward God over them.

Creeds

"Yes Lord, er, Jesus - We thank you Father that You're here with us, Jesus. That your Spirit is in this meeting Father . . ."

That's a slightly kind rendering of the near-incomprehensible opening by the worship leader at a fellowship I attended the other day. I'm enough of a Baptist to have little time for creeds but that guy needed some sorting out!

He'd be more than sorted out if he attended the church I'd been to just before. They keep religiously to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer where, I kid you not, on special feast days one gets to stand and say with the congregation the Athanasian Creed, yes, I mean ALL of it ...

Whosoever will be saved : before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholick Faith.
Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled : without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
And the Catholick Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
Neither confounding the Persons : nor dividing the Substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son : and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one : the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son : and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate : and the Holy Ghost uncreate.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible : and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal : and the Holy Ghost eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals : but one eternal.
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated : but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.
So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty : and the Holy Ghost Almighty.
And yet they are not three Almighties : but one Almighty.
So the Father is God, the Son is God : and the Holy Ghost is God.
And yet they are not three Gods : but one God.
So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord : and the Holy Ghost Lord.
And yet not three Lords : but one Lord.
For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be both God and Lord;
So are we forbidden by the Catholick Religion : to say, There be three Gods, or three Lords.
The Father is made of none : neither created, nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone : not made, nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son : neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons : one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.
And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other : none is greater, or less than another;
But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together : and co-equal.
So that in all things, as is aforesaid : the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.
He therefore that will be saved : must think thus of the Trinity.
Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation : that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess : that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man;
God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds : and Man of the substance of his Mother, born in the world;
Perfect God and perfect Man : of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.
Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead : and inferior to the Father, as touching his manhood;
Who, although he be God and Man : yet he is not two, but one Christ;
One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh : but by taking of the Manhood into God;
One altogether; not by confusion of Substance : but by unity of Person.
For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man : so God and Man is one Christ;
Who suffered for our salvation : descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead.
He ascended into heaven, he sitteth at the right hand of the Father, God Almighty : from whence he will come to judge the quick and the dead.
At whose coming all men will rise again with their bodies : and shall give account for their own works.
And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting : and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
This is the Catholick Faith : which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.

Well, did you get all that? Well done if you did. As I understand the Bible the Good News is a person, Jesus, not a Creed. In his own words, he is the Way, whether I can voice the complexities of Athanasius or not.

One picture might be that essentially and to start with all we need to do with a lifeboat is climb aboard (he is the Way) but once we're gratefully aboard we'll want know why it and its crew were able to save us when no-one else could. Athanasius describes in detail why Jesus is able to save when no-one else could and who the Captain of our salvation truly is.

Sweden

Someone asked me an obvious question, "Was it cold?".

Perhaps we can clear that one up with a couple of pictures;

I'm very grateful that several people helped to make my visit to Sweden worthwhile by giving me people I could visit.

Any Pastor visiting Stockholm is likely to find himself looking up the Filadelfia Church. For much of the 20th Century it was the largest Pentecostal Church in the world and although we have become accustomed to megachurches in contemporary-style buildings it is amazing to think that this cinemalike building was constructed in the 1930s. It was great to be shown a glimpse of the work of this great church.

Lewi Pethrus was Pastor for nearly half a century and was one of the instruments by which Pentecostalism became a great force in northern Scandinavia (though the original Filadelfia Church was that of T.B.Barratt in Oslo, Norway, perhaps the true Father of European Pentecostalism). Today, in this tradition, one of Europe's largest congregations gathers in the modest-size city of Uppsala at Livets Ord (Word of Life).

Lewi Pethrus began ministry in a small Baptist Church before the Swedish Baptist Union dispensed with him. Not so many kilometres from the Filadelfia Church I was shown round a more modest Baptist Church to which I had been pointed by a contact in Stockholm. The friendly man who showed me round was at pains to tell me what they weren't.

"In Sweden we are not conservative," he smiled. "I wish George Bush had never been born." (A comment that struck me as somewhat obscure to the purpose of a Swede explaining the church's work to an Englishman). And then out of the blue this classic comment,

"I've been coming to this Church for over twenty years and I've never heard hell mentioned. Not once, praise the Lord!"

So were the seats of this church in which you had a cat-in-hell's chance of hearing about hell filled with grateful, positive worshippers? You can probably guess the answer is No. "Young people round here are really sad. There have been a lot of suicides. But they never even think about Church."

A reasonable estimate of the Gospel material from the mouth of Jesus (as some miltant atheists have also pointed out) is that 10% of it is about hell, judgment and/or eternal punishment or loss. Jesus was switched on to a lost world. There is no more point in a Church in a lost society not mentioning hell than there is in an ambulance crew not wanting to upset anyone by flashing blue lights and sounding a disturbing horn.