rereat day 3 friday

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Today has been an interesting day for emotions. The meeting with the Bishop went well. He asked some questions about things in my final report from SEITE around my thoughts on ecclesiology and the sacraments. It was a good discussion and he made some excellent observations and suggestions.

Everybody seemed to have a good meeting with the bishop which, at this stage, is quite encouraging. This was followed this afternoon by taking our oaths, After doing this there was a great sense of reaching the point of no return.

This process of swearing was followed by the bishops charge which he talked a little about ways of being church. We had a good question and discussion time after.

Today I feel we have really started to gel as a group and started to laugh together.

This is now very much the home straight, Tomorrow we have one last and brief session before making our way back to the cathedral to be ordained after having lunch with the bishop.

I still feel quite nervous and overwhelmed by what is happening and on a shallow not I really hope the rain that I can hear lashing outside my window at the moment has all disappeared by tomorrow – particularly for the party that is happening afterwards!

rereat day 2 thursday

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Morning prayer at 7am is a killer – I don’t believe God is even awake then enough to hear Common Worship morning prayer! A good start to the day. After breakfast I explored the building a bit. The sisters have some great places for silence and reflection: a wonderful Chartes Labyrinth set out in a large room, a sacred space area in the hermitage in the top of the roof, and a blue room set up for reflection. I’ll try some of these out as the retreat progresses.

There were two main thoughts for today based on Philippians – to pray and ask God to guard our hearts and to take care of our minds by continually allowing them to be stretched and educated. One helpful idea was called ‘access denied’ by Michael where things that he keeps churning over in his mind are put to the side and given to God so that he can get on with stuff. This is something I could do with developing in my life.

During today I went for a long walk as the sun was shining for a little while. I walked to Hever and Back which was just a couple of hours in total along some quiet roads and through some nice scenery while passing the occasional massive house. I was struck by the richness of God’s creation as well as the richness of humanity.

I wandered into St Peters in Hever to get out of the rain and found a little oasis of peace of and history. This is the location of the tomb of Sir Thomas Bullen – Anne Boleyn’s dad and so Queen Elizabeth I’s grandfather. I stood before the altar and used the time to outline my nervousness to God. This was a special time as I felt God say ‘I am the God who called you, the God who has been here since long before Henry VIII. I understand your nerves, but your call comes from me.’ I do not profess hear God’s voice regularly in this way, and so this was quite a powerful time for me. Seems odd I needed to find myself in a small silent church to be reminded of something so basic.

Tomorrow will be a different day again as we are joined by the bishops and each have a short interview with one of them.

rereat day 1 wednesday

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Today we congregated in the cathedral for a rehearsal of Saturday’s ordination service. It was good to see old friends again and meet new ones. The rehearsal seemed to go smoothly, and is not very complicated although there seems to be a fair bit to remember. I think the difficult bit is going to be not tripping up over my cassock after kneeling!

After the rehearsal we joined the sisters at Edenbridge where the retreat really started. It is a lot more relaxed than I thought it would be. There are opportunities for silence rather than it being a silent retreat. That makes sense to me as we have opportunity for personal relevance in these few days.

I mainly realsied today that it is not only ok, but very normal, to feel nervous over the days ahead. I feel a fraud, but so does everyone else. It’s good to be with others who realise this is all about God using us, not us taking an option – and we all feel daunted, nervous and scared about that. The best comment I heard today was from Michael Adams, our retreat director,: ‘after 27 years of ordained ministry … I am more excited today about the ministry than I was when I was first ordained … which I remember being quite scared and bewildered by.’ I hope I can share that same sentiment in years to come.

Ended the evening with a couple of glasses of Jura – although I could only find one fellow person to join me.

nervous retreating!

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Today I start with 10 others on the retreat before ordination.

I feel quite strange, nervous even, which has come as a bit of a surprise.
I am nervous about what is going to happen on retreat, I am nervous about the reality of this step and feel totally inadequate for the task ahead of me.

The retreat is being held at The Sisters of St Andrew in Edenbridge. I will join this community today and then then not see my family again until we all meet up for lunch with the Bishop of Rochester on Saturday afternoon before the ordination service in the cathedral.

The program looks good as we have five sessions looking at Philippians with a sub title of ‘Models from a missionary pioneer and master pastor’, although I hope the bar is not set too high as I feel very lacking already!

I doubt the sisters will have a wifi connection – but if they do I will possibly be blogging about my experiences, although to keep in the spirit of retreat I will not be answering emails, replying to comments or visiting facebook.

As I look ahead for these next 4 days I continue to feel apprehensive, not just about the rereat and ordination, but also as I feel I am pretty much presenting myself to the Trinitarian God in a way that I do not think I have done before and so I couple that with a desire to look for what God will be doing and saying.

the hidden side

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I had a kind of taster day and started my induction at the cathedral today.

I joined others at Morning Prayer at 8.00am in the Quire.
I then joined others for Eucharist in the Crypt at 8.30am.
By 9.10am I was sat in a cafe with a coffee thinking I could get used to this life.
I joined staff meeting at 10am and then met with the Dean for a couple of hours at 11 top have a tour around the cathedral and meet some people.

This was quite an exciting time for me. As we wandered I became more and more aware of not only how privileged I am to have this role, but also how many others have walked around this building in the many centuries that have gone before.

There were not many people at the services, but that is not really what it is about. As I chatted with the dean we were looking at some of the statues around the cathedral. This statues have been carefully crafted hundreds of years ago by stone masons who took every bit of care with the back of the statue that lies against the wall and is never seen as they did with the front of statues that is continually on display.

Why make so much effort on something that will never be seen? The only answer is that it was done for the glory of God, not for the praise or notice of man.

I think there is something in that about daily cathedral worship – it is not about numbers, nor is it about style – it is about God.

another era ends

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Well … I have now done my ‘last Sunday’ at St Marks. It was an odd feeling and I was very moved when people prayed for us as a family and said kind words afterwards.

My time at St marks ended in style with a few of us going up the road to out local curry house where we had lunch, laughed, and enjoyed each others company. I am very privileged to have great friends and a great family.

Tomorrow I join my new community at the cathedral for morning prayer at 8.00am before attending staff meeting and other induction type stuff. I’m quite looking forward to it.

quick set up lifestyle Roman style

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Today will be my last day as a member of the congregation of St Marks which has been our spiritual home for a good 20 years and so it will be interesting to leave.

I’ve kindly been given the preaching slot for the morning and have chosen a passage from the lectionary (what a good Anglican I have become!!) I shall be sharing some thoughts on Romans 12: 9-21 as well as saying goodbye, thanking people and sharing a little of what I hope to do as an ordained pioneer minister.

As I’ve been reflecting on Paul’s words I believe God hit me with something yesterday. Yesterday I helped a friend called Keith buy a laptop. Keith is retired and was not entirely sure what he wanted and I offered to help him buy one and set it up. Keith got a great bargain of a 1MB RAM laptop with a printer and insurance. We brought it home to set up and had a choice, as with many electrical things, of looking through a big manual or using the quick set up guide.

To fully understand the computer and its possibilities, its range of port, sockets, capabilities and so on, you needed to read the manual (or play around to find things which is what I would do). But their was this option of the quick set up guide to enable Keith to start using his laptop immediately. The quick set up guide tells you the basics to get you up and running.

I’ve been challenged as I’ve been reading these few words. If the Bible is a manual (an illustration that many use which like any illustration is incomplete) then it strikes me that the letter to the Romans is the quick set up guide. In this letter you have everything you need to get you started and moving on and living a good Christian life, but if you want to experience more of God, see more of God’s wonders in your life then you will need to investigate other parts of the Bible.

These few verses which talk about living are incredibly challenging. They start with a clear command to be authentic – ‘don’t just pretend that you love others. Really love them.’ That opening verse could take all day to look at. I can think of people in my church that it is difficult for me to love. I’m being honest and guess that is a shortcoming, but it is reality for me. I could gloss over it and talk about the different types of love that there are, but the Greek word here is ‘agape’ and so this is the type of love that is used to describe the love that God has for Jesus. That’s an amazing ask, but it is an ask in the quick set up guide – this is part of the basics to get you going. Agape love is not an add on extra – it is part of genuine discipleship.

Paul moves on to hospitality asking the reader not just to invite people home or practice hospitality but to ‘get into the habit of inviting guests home’. That word ‘habit’ has never jumped out at me before. I have been thinking recently of breaking a bad habit and finding out how difficult that is to do. Habits are second nature, they are automatic, we do them without thinking, they are hard to break because they ahve found their way into our subconscious attitude. When we are relaxed and think others are not watching we fall into habit mode. Paul is saying we should be so into hospitality that it is a habit we cannot break.

Paul then moves to relationships and particularly at the area of justice and getting even. can’t help; but think of my children as I read these words. My chidren’s cries of ‘unfair’ or ‘she did thinks and so I did that’. We are built with a strong sense of justice in our DNA and we are wronged, our loved ones are wronged, we want to get even, we want to balance the scales, we like to take things into our own hands.

Paul tells us to leave this to God to sort and act in a way so that we bless those that do wrong to us. Ignoring and leaving to God is one thing, but going out of our way to bless those that bring harm is another tall order. It sounds bizarre, and it rips against my human desires to get even – but again, this behaviour is in the quick set up guide, this is part of the basics of discipleship, its not an add on extra. It’s part of the central deal.

These three parts of the set up guide for Christian discipleship are pretty amazing. They are a tall order but I have paused and though ‘what if…’

What if people in church acted like that? What if people in church genuinely loved each other? What if people in church had the habit of hospitality? What if people in church did not worry about getting even and left God to deal with things while they blessed people through their actions?

The result would be a radically alternative community. A community that grabbed the attention of others. A community that people would have to have an opinion on. Would people want to join a community like that? Would you want to join a community like that?

As you think about that … I’m off to preach!

Great Opportunity

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Great opportunities don’t arise often – but if you know of anyone that is thinking of a gap year, a great opportunity has arisen with Oxygen, a YFC centre in Kingston, London.
This will be an amazing experience with a massively creative and fun bunch of people. I received this last night:

Due to a last minute drop out, Oxygen are unexpectantly looking for one more male or female who can join our new gap year / intern team. If you know of someone whose plans for Sept onwards are yet to be decided, who is either looking to learn more about themselves and God’s call on their lives, or who is considering a career in work with young people, but would like to learn about youthwork options before they do so, then tell them to check out www.oxygen-online.org/mindthegap

Go check it out

Firefox 3

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Just upgraded to Firefox 3 – its fun!
If you are still using the explorer browser you really should change now!

Wall e

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We went to see Wall-e earlier this week. It’s a pretty good Disney/Pixar film which has, for me, echoed, albeit poorly and incompletely, some of Tom Wrights views that I have been reading in Surprised by Hope.

The background to the film is that the earth has been wrecked by the rubbish of humanity. Humans have left in a spaceship leaving robots to clear up the rubbish and make earth inhabitable again. The spaceship left on a planned 5 year cruise and we pick up the story around 500 years later!

In that 500 years people have ‘evolved’ – they are transported in chairs, have everything they need, and are in a kind of ‘paradise’. People are actually unaware of each other as they float around their paradise cruise.

Wall-e meets Eve, another robot, one of many routinely sent to find signs of life on earth in a way that clearly echoes Noah sending doves from the Ark.

I was struck by how ‘pathetic’ people were portrayed at the start of the movie. Humanity was a collection of self centred obese people who were carried everywhere and had everything they wanted at the touch of a button. While I don’t think the traditional Christian view of ‘heaven’ sees us becoming obese and selfish, I do think it embraces the similar view of paradise providing everything we want and that everything being to our own personal preference. I remember one big well known preacher a few years ago preaching that for the golfers heaven would be one big golf course in which they would never have to queue again for the tee off, for the coffee lovers it would be a never-ending supply of the best coffee … and so on. Quite an individual and selfish outlook – with personal needs paramount and being met. This does not strike as much of an alternative society which Jesus implies the Kingdom is all about.

The turning point in the film is when people start to see an alternative when they notice the beauty around them and that they have an ongoing mission or role. They have been on the cruise since birth and after falling out of her chair a middle aged woman says ‘I never realised we had a pool’ although her chair had been taking her to the pool deck every day for the last 40 or so years. The classic comment comes later, being ‘I don’t want to just survive … I want to live’

This is then backed up with people realising that they belong on earth, that this ‘paradise’ was only ever meant to be temporary and that their real ultimate destination is on earth where they have a role in and responsibility for its renewal.

People that have been reading my ramblings for far too long are aware that I believe God attempts to reach us and speak to us through film and music. While the message is incomplete, the fingerprint of God is, nevertheless, identifiable in this film.

I was excited to see whisperings of Wrights view of heaven here in this film. A paradise, or heaven (in this case a spaceship), that is a temporary holding place until God decides it is time to act and recreate the new heaven and the new earth as told in Revelation. In the film the people rise up out of their reclining chairs. In reality, we will rise up in new resurrected bodies as promised by Jesus. A new earth that we then inhabit, in our resurrected bodies, with God … such an amazing thought!

I am not sure where I am totally with the view of our future that is held by Wright – but it is starting to make a lot of sense to me. I have never been comfortable with the idea of life being all about getting to heaven, as that does not sound much like good news to me. But … a new body, and working with God on a new created earth which is the planet how it was always meant to be does sound pretty exciting to me.