Sabbatical

Here I am, with months of Sundays and not a sermon in sight. Is this a waste of a gifting? Of a life portion? Of a vocation?

Bishop Alfred Quayle, American Methodist Bishop (1860-1925) "Preaching is the art of making a sermon and delivering it. Why no, that is not preaching. Preaching is the art of making a preacher, and delivering that. Preaching is the outrush of soul in speech. Therefore, the elemental business in preaching is not with the preaching but with the preacher. It is no trouble to preach, but a vast trouble to construct a preacher. What then, in the light of this is the task of a preacher? (or of anyone sharing his or her faith). Mainly this, the amassing of a great soul so as to have something worthwhile to give. The sermon is the preacher up to date."

Pliable or Obstinate

Lent is a time for self-examination.

Sunday morning we had read to us in Church the story of Pliable and Obstinate talking with Christian in Pilgrim's Progress.

There is no question about it.  When it came to following Christ as I grew up I was obstinate.  Or at least I thought that was true - until, well, I thought about it.  Even listening on Sunday morning it occurred to me that although these characters are allegedly opposites they are (and Bunyan cleverly makes this point) two parts of the same. They are always on the road together.

Obstinate and Pliable in pursuit

The reason I was obstinate and not willing at all to be baptised - to be a committed follower of Jesus - was because I wished to remain pliable.  That is, I wanted my options open, not my Self crucified to rise in new life from Someone else.

On further reflection I thought of the groups of young people in my home church who would return from camp or conference to be baptised in flocks while I watched obstinately.  Some are still my Christian friends, plenty fell away almost, as it were, before their towel was dry.  They were pliable.  Yet in meeting them occasionally - or hearing of them via their families - it turns out that they are now obstinate!

Broadly speaking the most obstinate people spiritually were previously pliable.  And any Evangelist will tell you that there is no more obstinate pairs of ears than the ones either side of a mouth that has said, "No, I've changed my mind about being a Christian".  Or as the writer to the Hebrews scarily and clearly puts it:
 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,  who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age  and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.  Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.  But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.

Induction

So many people kindly travelled to my Induction today.  Many, many thanks to them and those kind enough to write their greetings and promise their prayers.  Here's the statement I read:

 

My calling to Christian ministry in its dedicated full-time form came when I was working for NatWest Bank.  I was at the Keswick Convention in the Lake District, a large annual gathering of people seeking to know God better.  Following that clear sense of call the first role I enquired about was in administration for a medical facility in Bangladesh.  I was told it would be a good idea to go to a Christian training college first. 

So I left my home in North London and went to BTI in Glasgow, the furthest I’d ever travelled up to then! I wondered what far-flung place or places in the world my commitment to follow Jesus might take me.  I wonder where then I’d have guessed I’d be called to in 2014?  To what obscure desert, mountain range, city ghetto or jungle valley?

What I wouldn’t have expected was to be just 2¾ miles away from my then home in Finchley and be here in Muswell Hill.  Not only that, but I have been called to Pastor a Church that I occasionally attended when I lived up the road.  In the event, I used to travel twice as far as this from Finchley commuting each day to work in Central London.  It is, I suppose, a reminder that the adventure of Christian service is not to see the world but to change the part of it the Lord calls us to serve in. 

When the opportunity arose to explore a call to this Church I was excited by the opportunity to work for God in our capital city.  Through our multi-national congregation and the church’s long history of support for missions we will yet touch many parts of the earth in the years ahead even though we don’t visit them.

At the same time our Church offers the privilege of ministry in a real local community.  In our years of local church ministry Diane and I have enjoyed immersing ourselves in genuine community.  We have felt very kindly welcomed to Muswell Hill and we look forward to doing good here in the name of Jesus Christ bringing comfort and challenge in the Good News of the Gospel.

I am especially grateful to be called to Pastor a Church which was founded, to quote its original Trust, holding ‘the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Sole Authority of the Holy Scriptures and that interpretation of them usually called Evangelical’.  These are the roots from which, by the grace of God, we will seek to bear fruit in this community for his glory.   

Together as Pastor and people we do not appear to amount to very much in a great city.  But as Pastor and people with the Spirit of God and the Word of God and the Love of God I believe that in the unfolding years we will make a real difference.

A Son's Tribute - Introduction

It was at this time that my Dad passed into glory.

In his honour my blogs this month will be about him.  His walk with God, his service of Christ and His church and his evident fullness of the Holy Spirit qualify him for more blog pages than my life can ever deserve but for this day on which he died to this world it is enough to say that I am proud to have been his son both by blood and by his spiritual example.  The former may last me a few more years of earthly life, the latter will benefit me eternally.

John Pac

The death of John Paculabo this week takes to glory a man who was a pioneer of folk worship which, for better or for worse, is now the standard form in evangelical churches the world over (yep, that includes Hillsongs . . .).  I first heard John Pac and Parchment in isolated halls in the middle of the Suffolk countryside.  No self-respecting church would let the likes of them near a town sanctuary.

Still in the depths of Mission Praise you can find Colours of Day, a folk song that I never really understood then and still don't (so I doubt it's a children's song as performed here).  But what a great tune to inject into lives previously lived in the parameters of Free Church Victoriana.  Thanks, John!

 

 

John Stott

John Stott's death yesterday ends a wonderful life in this world that made the Bible live for generations of us.  As a young professional in London I can remember hearing him expounding the Word of God, in those days as Rector Emeritus of All Souls Church, Langham Place.

Expounding the Bible is not the Baptists' strongest point.  A testimony here, a thought there, a cup of coffee, a prayer meeting for revival . . . I think I would have never understood the richness of Bible exposition were it not for those days in All Souls.  My Council Estate ears struggled with his Queen's Chaplain voice but that was a small discomfort in return for understanding that the Bible speaks when the preacher allows it to do so.

Thank God that today there are others of influence, not least in North America, who are dedicated to letting Scripture speak.  Blessed indeed is the Church that, although it has different expositors, only ever has one speaker - the Word of God.  And in John Stott's ministry All Soul's was extraordinarily blessed over a generation, and so were countless others throughout the world.  I thank God for him.

Open?

Today we had our Open House. 

It's the day when everyone is invited to our house all at once for calories (sorry, mince pies) and tea/coffee.  This is Christmas, after all.

Of course an open house is one thing.  As we discovered last year when there was a couple of inches of snow on our hill, an open road is quite another.

And this year?

Let's make that 5/6 inches of snow, at least in places.  Eight hardy souls made it however!

An invitation is one thing, a way is something else.

Although Jesus is both.

55lbs

Today is the Anniversary of the diet I began last September 23rd.

There's 55lbs less to carry about now.  Which is the equivalent of . . .

or



or, perhaps most alarmingly,





Path

On the face of it this is a very ordinary picture of a very ordinary scene.

A tree, some shadows, some grass and a path.

Yet for me this short path has almost as much significance as any place or person in my life.

It is, looked at one way, a very expensive piece of path.  At the time of the incident I am writing about I was working in the City of London in finance.  It is never possible to predict how life might have turned out in other scenarios but by an estimate I worked out a few years ago what happened on this path had already  cost me over £500,000.

Looked at another way it was a place that, for all it cost me, money couldn't buy.  For it was on this path - at or near the spot on this photograph - that God spoke to me so clearly that I left my work in finance and used such money as I had already saved to start paying for a Bible College Course to train to work full-time in Christian work.  Many people have longed for such a calling and never heard it.

Why, though, did I add up the financial cost of the path those years ago?  Because I was fed up with news of someone buying a second or third house when we haven't a first?  Or another new car slotting into the car park next to my ageing homage to the Ford dealer's service record?  No.

The reason I did my sums was to check out a belief I hold that God only speaks unequivocally (in clear visions or audibly) when He has something hugely life-changing to say.  For me that path was the place that utterly reshaped my life by cost and call and adding up the cost helped me to see that.  The call was not in the particular of a calling to a town, pastoral ministry, a country or whatever.  Instead it reflected the most fundamental calling of all - just as the Saviour called his first disciples to leave their nets (in my case net profits) and follow wherever He leads.

Want unmistakable guidance?  Pause a moment before you ask for the most expensive encounter you may ever have in this world!

Ordination

Yesterday we had a fantastic service in which one of our young men was ordained into Christian ministry. Hundreds of people came, and the Word of God was preached from Exodus 3, drawing us to the greatness of God who calls us.  If anything made the day a little less golden for me personally it was the reflection that whenever I've come to such days marking my pilgrimage points I always seem to be given Scriptures that are at once deeply meaningful and somewhat, well, disconcerting.

It started at my Baptism when, being baptised as a believer, I was blessed with 'endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ'.  I suppose one unspoken practical advantage of the Baptism of Infants practised in other traditions is that you don't get to comprehend any ominous texts if they're spoken over you.

On to my Ordination. The speaker chose for his sermon Ezekiel chapter 2, here translated in The Message,

"Son of man, stand up. I have something to say to you." The moment I heard the voice, the Spirit entered me and put me on my feet. As he spoke to me, I listened. He said, "Son of man, I'm sending you to the family of Israel, a rebellious nation if there ever was one. They and their ancestors have fomented rebellion right up to the present. They're a hard case, these people to whom I'm sending you—hardened in their sin. Tell them, 'This is the Message of God, the Master.' They are a defiant bunch. Whether or not they listen, at least they'll know that a prophet's been here. But don't be afraid of them, son of man, and don't be afraid of anything they say. Don't be afraid when living among them is like stepping on thorns or finding scorpions in your bed. Don't be afraid of their mean words or their hard looks. They're a bunch of rebels. Your job is to speak to them. Whether they listen is not your concern. They're hardened rebels. Only take care, son of man, that you don't rebel like these rebels. Open your mouth and eat what I give you."

When I looked he had his hand stretched out to me, and in the hand a book, a scroll. He unrolled the scroll. On both sides, front and back, were written lamentations and mourning and doom.

My ordination speaker was a good preacher (in the technique sense) though as it happens I can't remember a thing he said - just the forbidding chapter and the preacher himself.  The preacher, who for internet purposes will remain anonymous, a few years later did that 10th/7th commandment thingy of coveting his neighbour's wife and then some.  Not so long after he did it again somewhere else after undergoing the restoration/repentence routine, thus unintentionally giving me a lifelong demonstration of the very characteristics God warned Ezekiel about.

If the Word of God sometimes tastes to the ear like unpalatable cold remedies, it's because God knows the preachers who preach it and the hearers who listen.  As he kind of said to Ezekiel, "Swallow that, it'll do you good".

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 . . . .

Ssshhhhh!

One of the interesting things about a Sabbatical is the challenge of worshipping in other places and in other ways. It is the reason that I always encourage people who go away on vacation or business to find a local place to worship. Sometimes it can make you grateful for your own church! Sometimes it can challenge you in a way your own church never will.

I fulfilled a long-standing intention on this Sabbatical by going to a Quaker Meeting. It seemed that I had been in Buckinghamshire, with its strong Quaker history, far too long without making the effort to attend a Meeting. I thought I knew what to expect. Mostly silence, maybe a few words by one or two present, and a handshake to signal it was all over. I knew that coming from the wordy world of Baptists this might not be easy, or feel very useful or even very Christian.

It was impressively simple to be a visitor (as long as you knew not to speak!). With no music and no interaction, no clergy and no platform, no special clothes and no standing or kneeling it was impossible to get it wrong. How much easier to be a visitor at a Quaker Meeting than your average Christian Church! On the other hand, you left with what you brought. Apart from a two-minute 'Query' (challenging question) read from the Quaker Faith and Practice Book (read after 15 minutes) and 30 minutes later four minutes' comment by a non-Quaker visitor (not me!) applying the Query to the Middle East we sat there, in true Quaker fashion, dependent on our Inner Light. Which would be rough if you visited because you felt in the dark.

To my surprise I discovered that I agree with the Quaker contention that the silence is worship rather than emptiness, though for me this was influenced by access to a Bible in which I could read, meditate on, and understand the voice of God. But every week? What could I do with the New Song that the Scriptures tell me the Lord puts in my mouth?

When hands were shaken and the hour was over I was faintly disappointed rather than, as I had expected to be, relieved. I felt a kinship with these peaceable and silent people even though their hour of worship was like nothing I had ever experienced.

Then, just when I felt we must for ever remain friends but without common experience, the equivalent of the Church Secretary or Administrator stood up, the Meeting for worship being over. And he gave the notices. Familiarity at last! Not just one announcement, not just two, not just three . . . Others chipped in who in worship had remained silent. Seventeen and a half minutes after the hour of silence was over the announcements were finally completed! And that for a body of about thirty Friends. I felt that these good folk would, after all, feel more at home in a Baptist Church than I had ever imagined! And though a Quaker Meeting could find nothing for an organist or a preacher to do, it will always offer an alternative place of service for a Church Secretary.

http://www.quaker.org.uk/