I’m forever blowing bubbles

In our final week of change we got very creative. Quick recap, we have it in us to be many different people and we change quite a lot, usually a internal shift brought on by an external influence. This is where Jesus did most of his work, bringing out the good in people. The opportunities for us to do likewise come along from time to time and we have to be ready to take them.

It was pentecost on Sunday, the day when the spirit came upon the disciples and they were changed. The spirit it depicted in a number of ways in the bible, as a wind, or a fire or a goose and we chose some of these depictions to create something that might indicate a change in us or something/one around us.

I made some bubbles and gave one to everyone to carry around with them. This is to remind them that God might float into their lives at any point in the coming weeks.

He might float into yours, be ready.

Whole Lotta Love

Continuing the theme of change we got our Bible out on Sunday. You may recall from a previous post that I got a rather snazzy metal Bible for Christmas this year. The trouble with it is that the print is very small so I have to wear my reading glasses to read it.

Anyway the first thing I read in it was from Acts (chapter 5) where Peter and John are brought before the council for healing someone. When I was planning Sunday this came back to me along with other parts of Acts. So we read these bits, there is a part of chapter 2 where the apostles are told that only God will appoint the time and place for stuff to happen and then there is another bit where they describe how they met in each others houses and shared the lords supper every day. There is also the bit about pentecost where the spirit changes them and everyone thinks they are drunk. The bit that appeals to me most though is where the council describe them as ordinary men who have no special training and yet here they are doing stuff in the name of God and according to what Jesus had shown them.

There are lot of people living part of their lives. Jesus came to show how we can live life to the full.

God decides when (a Sunday of course).

The spirit empowers us.

Jesus has demonstrated all we need to know.

Sounds so simple and  yet how hard is it to do?

This Sunday is our response to what we have heard, I will, of course, keep you all posted.

In the meantime, those of you in the UK, have a fine bank holiday and, given the weather forecast, enjoy the Carry-On/James Bond/Great Escape type films they are bound to show on the telly.

Like a Virgin

I watched this programme last night.

I thought this:

Ch ch ch ch changes….

I could have used a number of titles for this entry. I was strangely drawn to ‘Everything Changes But You’ but quickly realised that I risked someone mistaking my homage to Take That for a ‘Graham Kendrick style’ love song to Jesus, and we definitely cannot have that.

This month’s theme is ‘Wind of Change’…. We started, as we usually do, in the world. Beauty and the Beast provided us with an introduction, the bit where the beast is transformed into a ‘handsome’ prince. An outward change to reflect the inner turning from self centred arrogant monster into lovable heart of gold cuddly pet. A bit corny but, as with most Disney productions, gets the point across.

I took the children into the hall where we talked about how they might like to change themselves. I asked them to name a super power that would enhance their lives. We then dressed up as our new super hero self but discovered that, whilst we had the look, the super power eluded us. Thus the only way to change ourselves was from within.

This is, interestingly, in contrast to the other, older, group who, at one stage concluded that you could chnage the person you are by changing the way you look. Evidence for this came from the likes of Trinny and Susanah who take dowdy shy unconfident ladies and transform them into bright shiny bold women a with just a visit or two to M&S and a few well chosen word of support. I think that is where the real work is done, those few well chosen word of support. It would be interesting to see how the partners and families of these new women reacted to their mum/wife going from comfy, cosy, docile and reliable to sharp, cool, active and independant. And how long the new her lasted back in the context from which she was first removed…

What it does demonstrate is that it is within us all to be the people we want to be, for some it needs a bit more TLC to bring it out. Here is the space that spiritual people of faith need to be operating in.

I heard a story in the radio this morning about a catholic priest who fell in love with a widow in his flock and had a 22 year relationship with her. The rest of the congregation are in full support of this but the church has decided it is unacceptable and he must go. They have appointed a replacement but his masses have been boycotted by er… the masses. One woman was quoted as saying how hard it is for everyone because they are torn between their love of the priest and their duty to God.

Surely their ‘duty to God’ and ours is the love and support of this priest and people in general who need it?

Remember me, I’m the one who had your babies eyes

I always liked that line, quite a good tune as well.

We finished our month on remembering last Sunday in BCLC. We talked about the ‘institution of the last supper’, Jesus having the passover meal with the disciples and telling them to ‘do this in rememberance of me’. Do what? was the first question that I am not sure we answered. Also as we don’t have any memories as such of Jesus how can we possibly do things in them?

What has the church done with this simple sharing of a meal and fellowship? We have institutionalised it, we have made it into some sort of rite of passage for a would be Christian. We have regulated it so that we partake at a particular time on a particular day of a particular week. Have we lost the central message ?

I started to write this a week or more ago and got stuck with it, then the other day I came across this. As you can see there are certain similarities in the thoughts expressed. I reckon that my comment on that site completes my thoughts here.

Last year’s model

The line that precedes the rather delightful, ‘they call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie (I don’t want to go to Chelsea)’ byt Elvis Costello. Easily my favourite track by him.

I was sent an email this weekend. It was from someone in the URC bloggers ring thing that I have a link to somewhere on this page. The email is something of an entreaty to get some of the stuff me and my fellow URC ‘emerging church’ bloggers are writing about out to a wider audience. Something I am all for, should be compulsory reading for everyone in the church. The email ends ‘The sense of urgency I feel is that we are in the best place yet to do some significantly different things and explore new ways of operating. We’re just desperately short of models!’.

Readers of previous entries on this site will already be aware that I am very wary of ‘models’ or ‘blueprints’ for ‘doing church’ (sorry). The whole idea of emerging church to my mind is that it does just that, it emerges. You can’t necessarily take what works in one place (BCLC) and try it somewhere else because it just won’t work. BCLC works for us now at the time we do it. That’s to do with the leaders, the location, the structure, the themes and the people who regularly come along. You could in theory take anyone of those elements and use them as the seed to grow something new elsewhere but you cannot take the whole tree and re-plant it and expect it to flourish. If we extend that metaphor we know that transplanting living things into new environments invariably requires a great deal of work to stop them being rejected and dying.

Why are we looking for ‘models’ of how we can structure ourselves when we should be looking for opportunties to enable people to encounter God?

This leads me very nicely into our inability to get ‘Encounters’ off the ground. To save you the bother of looking this up, Encounters is our attempt to do something BCLC like on a different day of the week in a different place with different people. We hoped to do it on a Monday night in a restaurant near us for people we think might be interested in the stuff we want to do. All very laudible and something that a number of people have shown quite an interest in. And yet we can’t seem to get it going. It has only just today occured to me as to why that is the case. I think it is because we are trying to create something based on some things that we have heard work elsewhere but haven’t come out of our situation or experience. For instance, the location, a local Indian restaurant that always seems to be empty hence they would be grateful for us to fill it once a month on a slow Monday night. Something similar could be said of some of the other ‘ingredients’. Basically this idea is emerging but the pieces aren’t in place for it to work yet. At some point in the future something will happen that we can then hang the rest of the stuff onto, at the moment that thing has yet to develop.

This idea of things happening when they are ready to happen rather than when we’re ready to do them is very much in keeping with the notion of the spirit moving opening up opportunities that we have to be ready to take. This is not the same as us inviting the spirit out for a curry once a month on a night when we have nothing else to do because we have heard that it is partial to bit of balti.