Monthly Archives: January 2016

Ideas and food = agapai

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FullSizeRenderOne of the new things we have started as a church community is meeting to eat together on a Wednesday night. This has started as a way to discuss what kind of church we want to be. I’ve guided us in this exploration by using an ‘ideas tree’ as seen in the photo by asking people to write what we want more of and what we want less of …. e.g. more hospitality or less formality.

After filling the tree with post it note ideas we then looked for patterns in our thoughts and, thankfully, found some. The next couple of weeks have been focussed on taking a ‘more of’ idea such as community engagement or hospitality and then chatting through ideas of what that means and how we can do it in the context and restrictions of our lives.

This week we had a good strong direct conversation about the reality of our situation as a church and the reality  of our ability to develop things in the midst of a busy city life.

The task is not an easy one!

A result of that honest discussion is that the Wednesday evening meal will be ‘tweeked’ a little. Rather than talking about what sort of church we want to be every week we are going to see what alternating a discussion with a check in, eat and pray for each other would look like. I other words we will alternate between talking church and being church …. although I know we are being church when we talk church as well …. but i think you get my drift!

Although the conversation was tough, even awkward at times, it was good and needed. I firmly believe that if a group of people are seeking to birth something new then honesty needs paramount in discussions. The fact we jumped to honesty rather than stay in politeness so soon is a real encouragement to me. It’s an encouragement because it means people care.

So … this Wednesday we will eat, talk, hear each others stories and pray together ….. so if you are on The Peninsula and fancy eating with a group of people that want to birth a church and bless this community ….. then join us. I just ask that you let us know you are coming so we can cater correctly.

We call this event agapai – a word used by the early Christians derived from agape (meaning God’s love) to describe ‘love feasts’ when they got together to eat and pray together as well as share bread and wine as part of the meal. The name seemed to fit a little with what we are trying to do here.

 

 

 

Sharing stories 

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  Last night I joined the St Luke’s community in Peckham. Ian was licensed here a few days after I was licensed in Greenwich. Tuesday night has become community meal night for this community and I was invited to join them for prayer before eating and talking together. I simply shared my story and how it relates to new monasticism along with my dreams for the community I am involved in birthing on the peninsula. 

I spoke for some of the evening beefed we had a bit of a Q and A thing ….. You can hear what I said on their website here. 

Living for Today

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Affirmation5Below is a copy of the homily I gave at Holy Trinity on Sunday evening. Hopefully we will sort audio and podcasting of these soon from the Holy Trinity website.
This has also been copied to the discussion area of the HT website for questions and discussion …. why not go there and have your say …

The bible reading for the day was Luke 4 : 14-21:

14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

I have an issue with how I live my life.
A life where, if I am totally honest with you, I find it hard to focus on the task in hand ….. my mind always shoots ahead.
What will happen next week? where will I be in 5 years? 10 years?
Will I still be in Greenwich?

Will I be at a cathedral again …. and what about being famous in the future….. well maybe not being famous … but being known. Known for doing something good … then maybe the Bishop will reward me! Maybe if I do something good that  he will guarantee my post beyond the 3 years it has …..in the 2 years and 7 months I have left here what should i do….

What will my children be doing?
Where will I live? who will be my friends ….
Sometimes I think so far in the future I confuse myself and forget where I am.
I wake up with a start in meetings ….. and I’d like to say I’ve disguised it well ….. but I think people notice …. it’s in the stare!

As much as I revel in this …. I don’t actually like this side of my character …. but there seems to be nothing I can do about it!
I can limit it, I can ration it ….. but I always always …. always look for what is next!

It does not mean I am unhappy with where I am or what I am doing …. its just that I think I am always looking for what is next, for the next place to be, the next exciting thing to be involved in. It’s just how my brain works!

What frustrates me too is that I know where this behaviour comes from.
Which makes me so much more want to be able to stop being like this.
It comes from living with a mother that never allowed us to enjoy what we had
If we had toys out we were immediately told about tidying away and warned not to make a mess.

I grew up in weymouth, a seaside town …. a seaside town has sand.
I was not allowed to bring sand into the house … in any way, shape or form. So i spent hours on the beach thinking through strategies of how i would de-sand myself on the way home. This involved bizarre stuff like hanging upside down from trees, running against the wind, and other things I won’t mention

But of course I couldn’t get rid of the sand. Sand hides ….. it’s like it sticks in unknown places waiting to get you in trouble! Sand would always follow me home …. into every room, every space, every lightly treaded footprint!

Always thinking about what I was to do next.
Scared to enjoy too much what I happened to be doing through fear of what was around the corner

And as an adult
I can still think that way
Still think what horror or delight is around the corner
Struggle to live naturally in the moment
Struggle to enjoy what is happening right here and now
Unable to enjoy the moment
Incapable of fully enjoying today.

And yet today is where it is at
Today is the first teaching word that Christ utters in the bible

Jesus reads these words from Isaiah which announces both a fulfilment of prophecy and what Jesus is all about. These words come from Is 61, a servant song. If we take this literally the passage says Christ is God’s servant who brings into reality the longing and the hope of the poor, the oppressed and the imprisoned.

You see for people like me who live in the future …. or for others who live in the past …. we live in danger of totally missing the present … the now! We become oppressed and imprisoned to what went before or to what might be in the future. Our life is impoverished, small, and empty. We are absent to God, others, and even our selves. We are unavailable to those we love, to the needs of the world, and to the fullness of life that God offers.

Thats no way to live. Because Jesus offers us freedom …. a freedom to be ourselves, to be fully alive, the freedom to be fully christlike. That can only happen in the here and now … today!

We all come with different stuff that means we are the oppressed or the poor or the imprisoned. In the midst of these circumstances, when life gets really difficult, it is easy and tempting to run away, to get stuck in the past, or fixate on the future. Yet, Jesus comes to us today, here, now.  He is not lost in our past or hidden in an unknown future. The only place we can meet Jesus is today, in this present moment, in whatever the circumstances of our life might be.

So … today, the age of God’s reign is here

Today we are church
today we are where God intended
today we are making a difference with God
today we are anointed
to hear the gospel
to have our brokenness healed
and to be set free to be ourselves.

Today ’s good news is that we are able to receive Jesus

Amen.

so … how’s it going?

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a day to contemplateI am in that position where I need to start reflecting again. I have allowed myself to get out of the discipline of writing here as a reflective practice. That needs to start again.
This blog will become, yet again, a place where I will think aloud. It’s a blog in the public domain so please feel free to comment.

So … to answer that title question …
It’s  a challenge!
Leaving a community you have known and loved for 30 odd years and moving into a new community where you know very little and understand even less is a challenge.

So what is my major challenge?
I was asked that recently and had to think.
I think … my toughest challenge … is a feeling of being in this alone.
There is a lot to do, so many opportunities, so many people and organisations to engage with …yet, although I am in a team, … it feels pretty much that I am doing a lot of this stuff alone as everyone here s incredibly busy.

I already know that the life of a pioneer is a lonely one.
In many ways it needs to be.
I have written in the past a lot about the power of vulnerability and I still hold by that. I think ministry of vulnerability is incredibly vital in my context.
Thats has always been the case and I have experience of that.
I accept that is ho this has to be.
In Medway my life as a pioneer was lonely, but that loneliness was in an environment of familiarity. In Greenwich that loneliness is in a place of unfamiliarity and I realised I have underestimated the effect of that.

Being an advocate for change can be quite draining.
Looking for ways to engage with a community hidden behind electronic doors can be frustrating. From limited research and talking with professionals working in this area I am pretty convinced that loneliness is an issue for people … and yet trying to engage with that is hard as people here are protected from people knocking on doors.

Despite the challenge, I am confident. I am convinced that God has called me here for this point in time and that we, Holy Trinity, will find ways to engage with and support this community.

But …. I need help.
So I am looking for a core of people that may or may not already be involved in HT. This core of 2 or 3 people would regularly meet to pray with me about the peninsula. These people would be at virtually everything  we do as well as in time take on some responsibility for running and or planning stuff. Currently I am praying that these people will become pretty obvious very soon.

If you are the praying type … you could pray that too!

the dream on the peninsula …

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htg postcard imageI have now been here for around 5 months. We have made some changes which can be seen on the image of our latest postcard which makes use of one of the photos I took recently of Alex Chinneck’s art on the Peninsula.

In my last two locations I have had a dream. Essentially the dream does not change …. the dream of a new way of living out and discovering faith with other people. The birthing of a new way of being church.

Although the dream does not change, the context of that dream and it’s outworking obviously changes according to the local context.

This is my dream for Holy Trinity Greenwich Peninsula:

I believe there are people, who live, or soon will live, on the Greenwich Peninsula and share a common vision or hope.

These people long, maybe are even too scared to dream, of church being a place which really connects with people outside, but also with them. In a real and obvious way. 

They dream of a church where differences are celebrated and add to the communities flavour.

They are not worried so much about what people believe, but more concerned about how people believe: how they live out faith, how they are Christ-like. How they love the community they are in.

They don’t care so much about worship style, but interested in something that’s authentic and enables them to connect with God where they are emotionally and spiritually.

They really do believe Christianity is a journey, and that we can all exist at different points on the road, or even off it, with no fear of condemnation.

A community that does not judge a person by how they look, sound or by what they believe.

They want to see a community that loves and has people at its heart rather than a program that must be delivered.

They believe a community should be one that meets throughout the week to enjoy relationship with each other and with God, and is not restricted to any one day or meeting.

They are willing to pay the cost that comes with developing relationships.

They want to see this as a place where people belong because they are connected and on the journey, not a place where they can only belong if they turn up at a particular time, day and place.

They want to see a community that really believes in mission, that not only welcomes in strangers, but expects and allows the community to change due to what that new person brings with them.

They believe church is about participation and engagement of the majority, rather than being consumerist and led by a few specialists.

They are tired of being told the same stuff and want to discover together how to live Christian spirituality in their world!

They long for their experience of church to inform their experience of the world and vice versa.

This journey will be tough.

Some won’t want to embark on it. Others will.

I am not looking for something better than church as we know it.

I am looking for something equally valuable.

Something to add to the mixed economy of church.

But I’m putting this out there as I would really love to meet other people that share this vision.

So …. if that sounds like you …. get in touch soon. If that’s not you but you think you know people that it might be for …. please pass this on. Whatever …. please pray for us as we move forward into the unknown!