Men, Women, Children and the new Bishop of Durham

It's a really big question: Why are there more women than men in the British church? I could, and have, write lots about this subject, but I was forcibly struck by one possible answer to it last Saturday. The occasion was the East Midlands Baptist Association Day and our main speaker was Bishop of Durham Elect, Rt Rev Paul Butler. This question was raised and he talked about reaching out to men, but stated very clearly that he didn't believe that the so called 'feminisation' of the church was the cause of the problem.

After the main session, I was leading a workshop on children's ministry and I think part of the answer might be found in that seminar. Of the twenty or so attenders only three were male. John Westerhoff talks about the 'hidden curriculum'; in other words our practice sometimes doesn't match our words, and it's our practice that teaches children what we are about. If little boys are taught that church is 'women's business' from their earliest days, they will struggle to see it as something for everyone regardless of gender when they are older.

It's a challenge to the men in our congregations: do you ever consider working in the Sunday School? Or is that women's work? Patterns of child care in the home are changing so where once men would actually be incompetent with children because they never looked after even their own children, they now regular care for, and spend time with small children. Is the problem to do with safeguarding? Perhaps men feel that they might be regarded with suspicion if they work with small children.

Whatever the problem is we need to address it, and we made a good start on Saturday. I'm pleased to say that one of the three men in my workshop was Bishop Paul. Given that he started his ministry in children's work with Scripture Union and has continued to prioritise this side of his ministry, I did feel pretty nervous about having him there - talk about teaching your grandmother to suck eggs! But most of all I think it sends a message that this workshop was as valuable and important as the others, because children are valuable and important, whether they are boys or girls.

A contribution to a debate about Empowerment and Theology

My friends and colleagues Becca Dean and Jo Dolby have been having some blog discussion about these topics here:

http://beccaislearning.com/post/34759763689/empowerment-and-theology-in-youth-work

and here:

http://beccaislearning.com/post/34772684733/jo-dolby-a-response-to-empowerment-and-theology

There were a lot of connections with some of the reading I've been doing so I thought I would put in my two penn'orth.

I’ve been thinking and reading about the end of Christian discipleship.  To clarify, when I say end, I don’t mean the finish of it, but rather the eventual aim of it, what is sometimes referred to as the telos.  I noticed that a lot of writers on Christian education were talking about different sorts of ethics and how at different times Christian discipleship had been shaped by different ethical styles.  Ethics is often divided into three styles: deontological or rules-based ethics, where behaviour is governed by a set of externally derived rules or laws; consequential ethics, where behaviour is governed by the outcome of a course of action, as in utilitarianism where the greatest good of the greatest number is sought; and virtue ethics where the character of the person is so imbued with virtues that in any given situation that person will behave in accordance with those virtues.  

In the Christian education context, the different styles have prevailed at different times, so at times Christians were taught that in order to be good they need to follow God’s rules, at other times they were taught that they needed to seek the good of others.  At the moment the underlying ethic seems to be moving towards virtue ethics and there seems to be some biblical warrant for the importance of shaping the character of a person so that they will then do what is right.  Educationalists such as Westerhoff and James K A Smith base their arguments on the originator of this approach, Aristotle, and it could be argued that the call to be transformed inwardly described in Romans 12:2 and Romans 5:1-5 is in line with it.

I think this is significant to the discussion Becca and Jo are having for two reasons.  The first is that it connects with the idea of absolute truth.  I think I agree that there is absolute truth; I’m just not sure that I (or anyone else) can be absolutely confident that I know what the meaning of that is.  I’ve noted elsewhere in my blog that Jesus says that he is the truth, and so I think my calling as a disciple is to know him rather than to seek for truth.  Absolute truth tends to fit more with a rules-based ethic and way of teaching; it suggests that if we could just know what the rule is, we could get it right, and we could then tell our children that rule and then they will be good.  It even tends towards a form of Gnosticism, which is not helpful (it’s actually heretical!) 

The second connection with Becca and Jo’s discussion is more methodological.  If the telos is to develop Christian virtues and character then we need to be equipping and empowering young people to develop those Christian virtues in themselves.  Aristotle develops his virtues based on Plato’s virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and prudence and suggests that these virtues and other minor virtues are developed in children by doing virtuous acts and thereby developing good habits leading in turn to human flourishing.  Wikipedia summarises it:  “people become virtuous by performing virtuous actions, which they might not have chosen themselves when young. They must develop proper habits during childhood and this usually requires help from teachers, parents, and law-makers.  A good community is normally required for the development of good people.”   This seems to me to connect with Jo’s scaffolding idea; young people need to be surrounded by a scaffold that supports them as they develop the inner habits of virtue.  These habits then become the ultimate empowering because young people are able to act in ways that make for the good life, for human flourishing not because of rules imposed on them, but because of their own internal virtue.

I’m still pondering the practical outworking of this, and my reading continues but I think it’s the beginnings of a paradigm shift for me in terms of my understanding of the task of discipleship which fits with the youth work value of empowerment.

p.s. In the interests of academic probity I should say that my thoughts and ideas at this stage are being shaped and refined by reading James K A Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, Samuel Wells’ Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics, John H. Westerhoff’s Will Our Children Have Faith, Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, as well as Wikipedia.  I also own a copy of MacIntyre's After Virtue...but I haven't read it yet!

p.p.s I am aware of the irony of using a pre-christian philosopher in my thinking but arguably both Plato and Aristotle have always been influential  on Christian education.

Handing on the flame Part Deux

On Saturday I blogged my reflections on the Olympic Opening Ceremony and had a few positive responses.  Since writing I’ve continued to think about what I mean and so I’m writing “Handing on the Flame, Part Deux” to carry on my internal conversation.  Feel free to join in.

Somewhere in the “Money” Chapter in Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster says (my summary) that Money has spiritual power because we want it and hold on to it.  By giving it away we break that spiritual power and free ourselves to have the relationship with money that God intended.  He suggests that we give away money not for the good it will do the people we give it to, but for our own sake, for our own spiritual health.  I think it’s the same principle that’s at work in the idea of the year of Jubilee.  If, every fifty years you have to give land back to the original owner you can’t become dependent on it for your sense of who you are;  you always have to know that everything we have belongs to God.  It forces a radical, paradigm shift in your understanding of wealth, power and privilege; it stops you from creating an identity based on what you can hold on to and instead forces you into a radical reliance on who you are in God.

I think that the model suggested by the Opening Ceremony has the same effect.  The Olympic heroes were in effect saying “This doesn’t belong to us; it’s bigger than what we have been and what we want” and the same would be true in the church.  We think that we can’t let young people be involved in the running of the church because they aren’t mature and wise; they don’t know enough to run it as well as we do.  What we’re really doing, though, is hanging on to our power and privilege.  Maybe this is why so many found the ceremony so moving, and why some others found it so offensive.  It was moving because it offered an opposite vision of what could be, and it was offensive because it challenged people’s ideas about a world based on prestige and success.

Cyd Zeigler on SB.com said this, which rather epitomises this attitude:

“The grand finale, the moment I was waiting for most, was the revealing of the lighter of the flame. So many great options were floated out there...and they chose one more boring and more forced than any other I'd heard: Seven no-name young athletes. I'm sorry, you've got to earn that honor. You've got to achieve greatness before you get to light the Olympic flame. You've got to inspire a nation. Instead, the event producers decided to hand the honor to a bunch of kids.”

I rather think he missed the point; that by giving away the honour to “a bunch of kids” Danny Boyle did indeed inspire a whole nation and maybe even further afield.

The Opening Ceremony programme says this:

“But we hope, too, that through all the noise and excitement you’ll glimpse a single golden thread of purpose – the idea of Jerusalem – of the better world, the world of real freedom and true equality, a world that can be built through the prosperity of industry, through the caring notion that built the welfare state, through the joyous energy of popular culture, through the dream of universal communication. A belief that we can build Jerusalem. And that it will be for everyone.”*

Maybe the same applies to the church: if we give the future of the church to our children, as terrifying as that sounds, the shift in our souls will be so profound that the church will be transformed into something we never dreamed possible. 

*Isn't it interesting that the image Boyle used is of Jerusalem, the city where God meets his people.

Handing on the flame

I watched the Olympic Opening Ceremony last night and was moved in many ways, but the part I found most moving and resonant was the lighting of the cauldron.  There has been a tradition of the person lighting the cauldron receiving the highest honour, and it is given to an individual whose achievement is above and beyond any other.  The British media and blogosphere has been speculating about who will receive this honour, with some cynicism.  The underlying feeling has been that it will go to someone who doesn’t quite deserve it but who has managed to somehow wangle it because of privilege and position, and I must admit to sharing some of that cynicism.

How wrong I was!  The flame was brought into the stadium by someone who is indisputably our great Olympian, Sir Steve Redgrave.  But then a miracle occurred.  He handed it to a group of young, unknown athletes.  The commentator Huw Edwards described it as “the transfer of the privilege and honour of lighting the flame.”  It was handed to seven unknowns, young people who are just starting out, as yet untried and unproven, but full of potential.  It was handed on by an older generation who recognised their potential and saluted and supported them in that.  The rest of us watched and cheered them on.  Huw went on to observe “Seven Great British Olympic heroes offering that honour to these young athletes”.  In other words it was freely given in recognition of hope in the future, offering, but not imposing on them, a vision of all that’s best in our life together.

It’s notable that it was given not to one, but to a team, as part of a ceremony that valued the contribution of not just the great and the physically able, but included the deaf, the old, the builders and plumbers, the Queen, children, nurses.  It was a ceremony that showed our pride in who we are and our hope for the future, served up with a dose of affection and humour.

It struck me forcibly that this is what the church could, and should be, in particular, and most importantly, the way in which we hand on the flame of faith to the next generation.  Let’s not wait until they have to tear it out of our cold, dead hands, by which time they have grown bitter and tired of waiting.  Let’s put our faith in them and the future and hand it on while they are still full of vision and energy, passion and life.  Let’s not keep the power and privilege to ourselves but lay it down in the hope that something new and vibrant will grow.  

I could go on about the changes that have occurred between how the Olympics was in 1948 and how it is now; training methods, the style of the opening ceremony, the nations taking part, the addition of technology.  Of course the 2012 Games don’t look like the 1948 games, but it’s still the Olympic Games and no amount of politicking or abuse of its values seems to damage what it is.

Paul said, in his letter to the Philippians: “…one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.” And maybe this should offer a vision for us not just as individuals but as a whole people of God.

Spiritual Director? Problem solved!

I’m doing a lot of extremely heavy reading about the theology of Baptist Church meetings for an essay and I need some light relief in between times.  I’ve returned, as I often do, to an old favourite; the Starbridge series by Susan Howatch.  This series of six novels portray the history of the Church of England in the 20^th Century through the lives of some fictional clergymen (they were all men in those days!) from different wings of the Anglican Church as they wrestle with the inner and outer forces at work in their lives.

I first read them probably in the late nineties and have re-read them regularly ever since with a growing sense of understanding.  When I first read them the human stories were gripping but I didn’t understand the references to theologians and theological movements, which didn’t matter in the least.  Now I have done a bit of reading and so when one of the protagonists protests about Karl Barth’s influence on the neo-conservative movement I actually get what they’re talking about and I feel a little frisson of pleasure about it (that’s how sad I have become!) as well as still enjoying the tales of people trying to serve God whilst grappling with their human failings.

In my minister’s cluster we were recently discussing spiritual direction; what it’s for, the pros and cons, how to find one and what to look for in one.  I said “Has anyone read the Starbridge novels, because if you have, you’ll understand when I say I want Jon Darrow for my spiritual director”.  A colleague started nodding and a side discussion of the novels ensued, with us discussing which character we would want for our spiritual director!

What is it Bartholomew?

“What is it Bartholomew?”

“Sorry to bother you Peter, but these kids want to see the Master”

Peter steps out of the doorway.

Twitching about behind Bartholomew are a handful of tatty looking children.  The oldest looks to be about ten, and she’s holding a chubby toddler.  The toddler looks sleepy and has obviously recently eaten something sticky; his hands and face are glazed with a mixture of it and some unpleasant looking mucus.  The girl looks scrawny and wary; her jeans are a bit too small and her coat has a rip in the sleeve.  She’s obviously the leader of a group that includes an assortment of children aging from about four up to a similar size to the girl.

Peter’s heart sinks.  Being the Master’s tour manager is hard enough, what with the groupies, the poor, and the downright wicked, never mind the gang of sick people hovering and humming at a distance like flies.  But children!

Each person takes up so much time; they whine about problems and illness and ask stupid questions.  And the information pack won’t shut them up; they just want to get in to see him in person.  The Catering Manager is trying to get hold of him, the on-site hygiene facilities team has a broken down truck and that Health and Safety Risk Assessment Document is only half done.  Peter can’t remember the last time he was in bed before midnight and he has a constant tweak of pain just above his right eye.

Peter muses about how it all started.  Andrew said he was a wonder worker and Peter instantly saw himself as a big man, a man on the way, a man of importance.  He never thought he would be worrying about Portaloos.

And now this!  He takes Bartholomew off to one side. 

“The thing is” he whispers “The thing is, the whole operation’s geared for adults.  If we’re going to let children in we’ll have to provide chaperones, there’ll need to be a safeguarding policy, We’ll have to get everybody CRB checked.  We’ll need to get changing mats.  It’s all just too complicated”

Bartholomew nods.

“But they’ve been waiting all day” he presses.  “They’ve driven me crackers.  They’ve climbed on everything, eaten everything they could find, the baby has been sick twice, and weed on my shoe.  I swear one of those boys has been picking pockets, and they’ve been shouting rude names at the old ladies”

“Well that settles it” says Peter decisively “We can’t let kids like that in.  And in any case they won’t understand what he’s talking about; I hardly do a lot of the time”

“But they’ve waited all day”

“A problem, Peter?”

Peter spins round.

“No Master, we’re just getting rid of them.  Sorry to have bothered you with such a rabble”

The Master sighs and grins at Peter and Bartholomew, then he sits down on the step and beckons to the children.  He takes the snotty baby off the girl and cuddles it onto his lap.  It promptly wipes its face on his shirt and falls asleep. 

“So what are your names then?  Come and tell me where you’re from”

The children gather round, and the waiting queue of people sees what’s happening and comes over to listen. 

The Master draws one of the little boys towards himself and puts his arm round the boys shoulder.  The boy relaxes and leans against him.

“Let me tell you what my Father’s Kingdom is like”

Am I being persecuted?

Every so often something happens to create a flurry of news about Christians being under siege in the UK.  There’s been another couple of examples this week, and so various commentators and websites have a go around things like:

• ·         This never happens to Muslims/hindus (insert other faith of choice here) because that wouldn’t  be politically correct (the Left Wing/Labour conspiracy argument)
• ·         Christians are being persecuted and they shouldn’t be because this is a Christian country
• ·         All religions are fairy tales so no religion should be allowed to say or do anything in public

And so on.

I’m a Christian, so I’m coming at this from a particular point of view.  I’m also a minister so I have a public role, and am involved in some community things because of it.  I do feel slightly irritated about things like the anti-gay B&B owners row, because it is true that many Jews and Muslims  have issues with homosexuality in the same way many Christians do, and for the same reasons, but they don’t seem to find themselves in the media spotlight in quite the same way.

However, I don’t think that Christians are being persecuted in this country.  I can say and do mostly what I like, as long as I don’t break the law, and I don’t feel that I am in danger of my life because of my beliefs.  There are Christians in the world who cannot meet together to worship without fear, or who are imprisoned or executed because of their faith.  That’s persecution. 

I also don’t feel we are particular victims of any kind of campaign.  I think we sometimes fall foul of the complex web of tolerances and freedoms that are at work in British society at the moment.  This web means that there is freedom of speech, but not if what you say incites racial hatred.  There is freedom of sexual expression, but not if you want to have sex with children.  There is freedom of religion, but not if you are teaching killing people as part of your religion.

In my view, as a Christian, I have to earn the right to a public say on things by what I am involved in.  So in my role as a Youth Pastor I am talking to the local council as they build a new Young People’s centre.  I get to be involved because I am encouraging my youth group to get involved in their community through this.  I don’t get asked because I’m a church leader, though, and it wouldn’t be right if I did.  And I definitely don’t expect to be invited to say a prayer at any point – why in earth would I?  However, I do expect to be able to talk about faith matters with young people if that’s what they want because that’s enshrined in the government’s own agenda for young people*. 

I also wouldn’t want there to be religious exception clauses for matters of conscience.  That’s a slippery slope I don’t want to see.  If we had that, then some sections of the community could argue that it’s alright to mutilate a woman’s genitals when it is done for religious reasons, or that it’s a religious practice to beat up a child because they are a witch.  If I had a job which challenged my conscience then I have to make a choice between staying or leaving, and would have to choose leaving.

As Christians we need to remember our founder’s words about losing our lives, taking up our crosses and be prepared to not grasp at equality but to be servants to the world.  Salt is strong, with a powerful flavour, yeast has an amazing effect on dough, but both disappear into the foods they are flavouring, preserving and leavening.

And we definitely should not respond like the good folks of Cranston, Rhode Island who made death threats against 16 year old Jessica Ahlqvuist and referred to her as an “evil little thing” because she claimed that the display of a prayer on school premises violated the 1^st Amendment of the US constitution and went to court to make her case (and won).

*Every Child Matters

It's a numbers game

I’m reading this at the moment:


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gospel-Driven-Church-Retrieving-Ministries-Contemporary/dp/184227290X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300798109&sr=8-1

and I say AMEN to his critique of our obsession with numbers as the only measure of success in church life. We need to remember, as Mark Yaconelli pointed out, that Jesus only discipled 12 people, and one of them handed him over to be killed and another pretended he didn't know who Jesus was. In the end he died alone because they all ran off. This is true gospel success.

So here's a challenge to my youth ministry friends: try to stop using numbers when you talk about your work. It's very difficult because even if you can stop yourself it's very difficult when that's the only question other people ask you about what you do. And the next hard step is to stop asking your youth ministry friends how many come to their groups.

This is something I’ve been trying to do for a while and I have found it very difficult. That in itself is interesting. What is it in me that wants to boast of bigger? When someone does it to me I feel belittled and inadequate, or superior and puffed up, so why do I want to do that to someone else? And why do I speak about my ministry as God’s work, but if I have a big number to boast of, suddenly feel like it’s because of my own ability as a youth minister? It’s also very challenging when you talk to another youth minister and they ask “So how many do you get to that club” to look them in the eye and say “a good crowd” or “Some nice young people”. Why does refusing to say a number feel like such a subversive act? Maybe youth workers should practice it as a Lenten discipline.

Stackhouse argues that it’s a product of revivalist theology (he makes a very good argument; I would urge you to read the book). I agree with his thinking, but would also add for youth ministers two more pressures. Firstly, the secular model of youth work that demands quantitative data about youth work, rather than thinking about quality, has filtered into Christian youth ministry, particularly those of us who are professionally qualified and paid by churches. And that’s the second pressure; churches who see the youth minister’s job as filling the church, so who look for the proverbial “bums on seats” rather than the quality of discipleship, who see their youth worker lurking in coffee shops rather than herding great crowds of young people through the baptismal pool, and wonder if they are getting value for money.

It seems to me that that the numbers game, however it arises, is based on shaky ideas of what christian faith is, and more importantly, who young people and youth workers are. Fundamentally a young person, or a youth worker, is created in the image of God, and therefore is a unique, individual creation. When what is done with, to, for, or at this young person is looked at through a lens of numerical success, this image is distorted, because they become an object to be counted, not a person to be related to. This is why Jesus was so subversive; he wouldn’t conform to the pressure to achieve success. Every time it was offered to him he turned away from it. The story of his temptation that we reflect on during Lent is an example of this. If Jesus was a youth worker today, the Devil would say to him, “Bow down to me and I’ll give you a really big youth group”. Instead he prioritised people as individuals, meeting them in their need, sharing their pain and challenging them to a life of discipleship. This kind of work happens at meal tables, in coffee shops, walking along together, in sitting rooms, not in vast crowds where nobody knows anybody, but somebody knows the numbers.

What is truth?

As an adherent of a world religion (christianity) this is an important question. Is the bible true? Is it true that Jesus rose from the dead? What does Jesus mean when he says he is "The way, the truth and the life"?

The latter questions seem to hinge on how you answer the first; if the collection of words we call the bible is only a man made set of myths with no connection to any historical reality then the answers to the second two questions might be different. So if we say the bible is true, how is it true? Is it true like the news is true? Which news do you mean? The BBC or Fox, or the newsletter I got from a political party in May? And which bits of the bible are we wanting to call true? the historical narratives might be true, but what truth is there in a song of worship such as a Psalm?

If we want the historical narratives of Jesus' life to be true how are they true? Are they unbiased reports from dispassionate observers with perfect recall and photographic memories? or are they something else in which fact and interpretation are so closely intertwined you can't separate them.

I'm reading "New Testament Interpretation" by Ian Boxall, and "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" by Eugene Peterson. Boxall points out that even the people who first observed the man Jesus and made a memory of what they had seen were already interpreting it and seeing it differently from others who had seen the same thing. I was at a meeting a couple of evenings ago; someone said something about a situation and I heard her concern and irritation with that situation in what she said and the way she said it. The following morning, someone else who had been at the meeting commented in a way that suggested she'd heard something quite different. I'm fascinated by that because everyone is telling the truth, as they see it, but we've already got three versions, and probably another one each for all the other people at the meeting. Imagine how many versions there must have been of the feeding of the five thousand!

Then we take our experience and we use words to communicate it but the words we use are inadequate to describe everything that went on, they only stand for the reality of what they describe, they aren't the reality of it. Peterson discusses the doctrine of the Trinity, describing it as a map of the country of God, but not God himself. It's related to the country and enables us to explore it, but it isn't the thing itself.

Sometimes the words we use are blatantly lies. Jesus did this a lot, except we call them parables. There was no specific rich man who sold everything he had to buy the pearl of great price, so this isn't a true story. But there is so much truth in it because it cuts to the heart of what Jesus was teaching about the Kingdom of God. There is truth at the core of the Harry Potter universe: the truth that a life laid down willingly because of love can have the power to conquer even death, yet Harry Potter is "only" fiction.

So what is the truth? My answer is that I don't know which bits of the bible are true in a factual sense but there is great truth in there mainly because it points me to the one who called himself the Truth. So my answer to the question is to say it’s the wrong question; the right question is Who is the truth? But these are just my words....