You’re own personal jesus

Continuing the theme of last week, interfaith relations, and after hearing a very good radio programme (04 Sep – Jesus) where 3 people of different faiths discussed Jesus’ significance in their religion, I decided it would be good to look at the pictures in the ‘the Christ we Share‘ pack.

Don’t know if you have seen this but it is basically a pack of pictures of Jesus from around the world. There is a booklet that explains where each image is from and its significance. I put them alltogether on the PC with a soundtrack of Johnny Cash singing the Depeche Mode song ‘Personal Jesus’. Then we picked a picture and expained why we had chosen it. Tom summed his up well, he picked a sort of Picasso style impressionist picture and explained how different people could look at the picture and see a different image of Jesus and he felt that this was how Jesus was to him.

He’s a smart lad because that is the whole object of the exercise.

It is a really interesting thing to do though, I recommend it if you get chance.

One more cup of coffee before I go

It’s nearly the wekend so I thought I would leave you with a something to mull over in the next few days. I have just read that a denomination has appointed an ‘evangelism and emerging church officer’ for one of their districts.

I can see where church might need help with evangelism, I think it’s one of those areas where churches can come a real cropper. You don’t want to appear too Billy Graham but equally you want to be telling people what you think is so good about having a Christian faith. I don’t see how an emerging church officer works.

It’s a bit like the ‘fresh expressions‘ thing with me. If it isn’t emerging then it isn’t emerging, you can’t go in there and pull it out, that would be something entirely different. A bit like the sad cafe episode I mentioned before.

Perhaps I’m misjudging things, perhaps this person is like a mid-wife, ‘I can see the head, one good push…’.

Just keep the forceps in the bag eh?

This could be the last time

I am thinking that this will be the last entry I make about the discussions surrounding our move to the Methodists. This is for 2 reasons. The first is that they are probably going to get a bit dull from here on in. We have to get together and start planning living together, some of this will involve us looking hard at what sort of church we are and why and some of it will be working out which cupboards we can use. Either way this is not really what I set out to do with this blog. The second reason is that I understand people actually read this stuff. I know, it’s hard to believe but it is true. Some of those people don’t just exist ‘out there’ somewhere in the ether but actually reside much closer to home. I don’t want to be talking to people who are suspicious that they might, to their mind, be ridiculed in some way on this site. I don’t think I have ever intentionaly made fun of some one for the sake of it and I certainly have only mentioned names when I have been praising people. All the same I don’t want that fear to enter the conversations we are embarking on and potentially jeoporidise a positive outcome.

We had a clear the air church meeting last night and I think that we did just that. I know there has been some urest concerning our plan to move up the road, not least in my own mind but we did our best to address those issues and I think we did alright. People don’t want to leave and I can’t blame them.

But we have to go, we have to take this step so that we can take the next one. Trouble is we’ve been sat down for so long we need a bit of help getting out of the chair. Well, we’re none of us as young as we used to be.

So I may well allude to some of this as it develops but for now we’re going to concentrate on bclc, or whatever we’re going to call it.

Whatever people say I am that’s what I’m not

You don’t need to be Gordon Brown to know that the title today is from the Arctic Monkeys CD. You may wonder why I have used it… a blatant attempt to capture a few unsuspecting monkey’s fans who stumble upon my blog when looking for articles on their heroes, perhaps? If that is you then I am sorry to disappoint you but do stick around and have a read.

I would like to continue with theme of my last 2 posts. Yesterday in bclc we started looking at this months theme – Interfaith relations. As you all know by now the first week is through the world’s eyes. Today, of course, is the 5 year anniversary of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre, a bit of a landmark event in interfaith relations terms. The discussion basically came down to concluding that the agenda for relations between faith groups is largely set by the fanatics on the edge of the groups. Where ordinary people meet there are usually very good stories to be heard of people just getting on regardless of their differences in belief.

Then someone made a very good point and one that relates to some of the things I have covered recently. This was that there would be fewer problems between people if we didn’t identify ourselves so much by what we are interested in or believe or like. For instance, I am a person who holds broadly christian beliefs, likes Manchester City, is the father of 3 great kids, works in IT, enjoys a drink and used to smoke. So I could be lebelled at any time as a non-smoker, a drinker, a geek, a dad, a city fan or a christian. The truth is though that I am all of those things and more besides BUT you have to know me to know which of them is most important to me.

I won’t put a fish on my car because it tells people I am a christian and I would rather they found that out about me (along with everything else) as they go to know me.

It’s Friday, I’m in Love

With life its very self (and my lovely wife of course).

I love Fridays when the sun shines and looks like it’s going to shine all weekend.

So what do I have planned for the next 3 days… Tonight is the first night back at weekenders. What’s more we have 2 new members coming along. My son Dylan and his mate Isaac are both eligible to attend now so they are going to.  I love to see the children coming of age in the various stages of their lives. Dyl is 7 now and growing into a lovely little lad (though I say so myself). Not sure what we are doing tonight as that is Pete’s worry now.

Saturday will find me in the garden or out running or swimming with the kids then perhaps a beer or two with some friends.

Sunday is a bit of a worry at this stage. BCLC are looking at inter-faith relationships. eeek, we have nothing planned yet and no way into the subject.

I am sure it will come though.

So have yourself a great weekend.

A change in the weather

We had a meeting last night at church. A lot of this was mundane, general running the church stuff. We did have one specific section on the situation with the move up to the methodists. I have no intention of going over the history of this, you can find it all if you click on the methodists tag. All I will say is that we, as elected leaders of the church, are now all 100% behind this and looking forward to working closely together with our friends up the road on the weeks and months to come. we do have the tricky job of convincing the rest of the church that they voted for this fairly and squarely (true) and didn’t try to bamboozle them and some people are now claiming. We will do this.

I know that I have appeared to blow hot and cold on this, but hey that’s me. I think about things a lot, I have ideas, some of which contradict other ideas. One thing I have been consistent in is that we need to keep moving as a church and if we don’t we will die. The move in with the meths is the next step for us on our journey but it is the right step and an essential step.

After that, well let’s take things a step at a time. One thing is for certain is that we will try to do something with the old site we will be vacating but I will save that for a rainy day.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing and it’s Friday.

innocent until proven guilty

When I was a teenager there was a poster in the room at church where we met on a Sunday monring. The poster depicted some hapless soul (you and me) in front of a stern looking judge (God?). The caption read something like ‘if you were arrested for being a christian, how much evidence would there be to convict you?’.

I struggle with this on so many levels when I think about it now but at the time it just made me feel guilty that I wasn’t being christian enough. In fact it has probably affected a number of decisions and choices I have made over the years for that reason. The problem was (and is) what constitutes ‘evidence’. For years I had no idea what it meant but thought it was somehow tied up with church and what went on there.

I don’t think that now and I refuse to buy into the guilt that, to me, surrounds so much of my experience of ‘traditional’ christian thinking.

I think I would probably enter a plea of insanity or something, anything with diminished responsibilities.

wwjd

I have always been a bit mildly suspicious of people that wear the wrist bands that ask ‘what would jesus do?’. I have the same feeling about people with fish symbols on their car, what are we supposed to do with that information? If they cut me up when I am cycling or if they nick a parking space that wasn’t entirely theirs (by the unwritten code of the car park) how do we (or more pertinantly they) reconcile their apparent christian faith with their selfish acts?

Going back to the wwjd types, do they apply the wrist band entreaty to all aspects of their lives I wonder?… Christian walks into a pub, ‘Yes sir, what can I get you?’ enquires the barman. Christian thinks….. quite fancy a glass of wine but it’s always such a rip off buying it by the glass in a pub…. hmmmm what would jesus do?…. ‘just give me a glass of water’, quick prayer and bang a nice glass of Pinot Grigio, amen.

Perhaps they only apply it to the big decisions or what they regard as the moral decisions. Or perhaps they don’t really do it at all and they are only wearing the band, like the car driver and their fish, to make something of a statement about themselves. Well it works on that level with me but I had better not say what it says for risk of offending ‘folk’.

Having said that if you actually tried to do things like Jesus did them then you would just end up offending people’s sensibilities. Dangerous ground I can assure you.

Yesterday

What a weekend that was. Excellent. This is despite yesterday mornings worship which, I have to be honest, I don’t really know where to start with.

We had a visiting preacher, youngish sort of bloke, he came in with his screen and his laptop and his projector, which aren’t exactly my favourite worship accessories but it did bode well for the youngsters, I thought, and this was an all-inclusive service.

Then he started, I won’t be too picky about the technology not really working properly mainly because there’s so much else to pick at. The basic premise of the service, it transpired, was that churches, unlike shops, are all empty because they don’t look open, the people in there don’t know their ‘product’ (the Bible), We don’t have the right image and we don’t advertise what we do well enough. (There was a fifth but I can’t recall that readily and I don’t want to waste any more of my brain cells on this than I already have done). So pretty much everything we do is ok we just haven’t put the right spin on it.

I left church yesterday morning more depressed by what I had heard than I have in years. This idea that everything is basically sound and if we just do it in a different place  or if we advertise it more or if we just give the old place a lick of paint, then people will come flooding back into church is, to my mind, so ludicrous that I cannot understand how anyone who has been in a church in the last 20 years could even entertain it.

I have talked in here in the past about how delusional I think some people are about the state of churches today but these people are, in the main, slightly older than me and yet here was someone slightly younger attempting to espouse the same old crap.

Anne did point out on the way home that at least it got people talking about it which I suppose is something but it’s not enough.

Crikey we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Sad Cafe

Great band of the 70’s sadly missed… well when I say great band, they were from Stockport and they did have a rather saucy first album cover, or so me, Mark and Glenn thought at the time.

The reason I refer to them today is a story I heard about a cafe church in Wales that my brother-in-law attended. He said that he thought this might be interesting for him to see, he is a URC minister himself, but after the childrens address and the notices he was starting to wonder if this heralded the dawn of a new era of being church.

He managed to leave during the sermon…