a new hope for amateur church

If you’re a fan of Star Wars, then you’ll love the brand-new crowd-sourced fan film just released online – in normal-speak, that’s where Star Wars nerds made their own versions of scenes in the film, using actors, cardboard cut-outs, puppets and anything else they could find, sent them in to Darth Vader and he cut hundreds of 15 second clips from them to make the whole film. It is random, disjointed, painful to watch but also brilliant, and mesmerising, for perhaps the same reason.

I love the idea of fans – people who love something – being asked to make it themselves. Instead of being passive consumers of the latest Blu-Ray DVD Extended Directors Cut Olympic Edition, you get involved yourself. Yes, of course it won’t match the professionals; it won’t pass for 3-D when it’s made from a cardboard box. But it’s yours!

It reminded me a bit of when we as Christians go to “Big Events” to see professional musicians & talkers at conferences and things like Spring Harvest or New Wine or whatever is your chosen flavour, get all immersed in the wonder of the Hillsong gas-light anthem with 1000 beautiful people on stage smiling about how Jesus made them all shiny and new… and then try and recreate it in our home church with Marjorie and her 83 year old piano. To be honest, it’s a bit,well, crowd-sourced. It’s a fan film. It’s not going to win an award. But it’s real.

We don’t expect it to be brilliant. It isn’t. But that’s the church. You work with what you’ve got. Jesus came and invited us to follow him, to worship him, and he did away with Professional Worshippers who do it for you, like High Priests. So, you’re not meant to get a glossy show, which is why I am suspicious when I do.

Even the C of E, for all our dodgy theology about priesthood, is crowd-sourced. The reason there is no C of E press office is because we are a collection of diocese who agree to work together. There is no-one ‘in charge’, which is why what Rowan says is not the ‘official’ party line. It’s just his.

May we the church forever be crowd-sourced, the best ever fan film, made by people who love Jesus and spend our time worshiping him because we love him. We won’t be shiny and glossy, there’ll definitely be some visible editing cuts, jerky cameras and accidental comedy moments. But you’ll love watching it.

And better, you’ll love being a part of it. 

Jesus > Religion

This is doing the rounds on the web at the moment. I saw it. I liked it.
“If grace is water, then the church should be an ocean,
It’s not a museum for good people but a hospital for the broken.” 

What do you think?

burning questions

A little girl came to church the other day specifically to ask me some questions. Because her grandad had just died. She was about 7. I loved her questions. She had written them down in this order:

• Is heaven made out of clouds? 
• Can we sing ‘shine’ at the funeral [a bouncy kids song she likes!]
• What do you say at the funeral?

Ok so far? Carry on…

• Do you like being a vicar?
• Do you like working for God and Jesus?
• Can you pray for my grandad?

And then comes the crunch…

• Do you burn my grandad? 

How would you answer that? Watching a vicar try and explain cremation to a little girl should be a spectator sport. The wonderful thing is, children accept what you say so readily. So, when I said yes, we do burn grandad’s body but grandad isn’t there any more so it’s not really burning grandad, she was fine.

We keep kids away from death too much. They often deal with it more better (as they say) than us grown-ups who worry to much and try and protect them. Let‘s not do that so much. 

And by the way, heaven isn’t made of clouds.

It’s made of cheese.

frustransformation

They say most preachers only have one sermon. You just hope it’s a good one as you’re gonna hear it week in week out. I think mine has changed over the years but at the moment it is about transformation. That when we invite God into our lives that is part of the great transformation of God’s creation, the reconciliation of all things to God, and the beginning of us living in the way God intended. Basically the kingdom coming. Transformation. With him, in him, by him, for him.

I've got a new sermon! Have you? No not really.

The trouble with a transformation message is that it can sound like triumphalism, or that terrible false promise that if you turn to God all your problems will go away. You will be ‘healed’, which I think means being turned into a squeaky clean smiley and annoying person, of the type we all wish we had more of only so we can fill the spaces in the rotas.

Transformation is very different from triumphalism; being in a relationship with God is very far from a self-help life-improving life-style choice, though of course the complication comes from the fact that hopefully our lives do change for the better. Now, I am sure that some people will be able to point to lives that have been totally transformed. And healed. Hooray! But the gritty and annoying reality is that for most of us, transformation is a bit more incremental. Small steps. No steps. Backward steps?

How do you keep believing that God is and will and wants to transform us and our communities when he doesn’t seem to do very much. Now we are getting somewhere. Because then we start to look.

We ask ourselves, am I dismissing the small changes in people (that are actually massive in their context) because we want to see changes we can write books about and impress people with our stories? Am I dismissing a new openness from someone previously closed to God’s message; am I dismissing the value of being a part of the church community to those with fledgeling faith but lonely hearts; am I mistaking transformation for ticking the boxes of quantitative, measurable change?

It is true that sometimes I get disheartened. Call it transformation-frustration. Or frustransformation, if you will.  Don’t get me wrong – not because I don’t think God is doing amazing things. But because I want more! I don’t want a sort of ‘transformation-lite’, in which a few people feel a bit better and the congregation grows a bit because we’re all lovely. No!

I want to see this community and this church changing in a big way – I want to see depression banished, alcoholism defeated, domestic situations calmer, husbands coming to faith.

I want to see tired old ladies glowing with the Spirit, I want to see men who have never grown up suddenly realising their responsibilities and their potential; I want to see young people smiling and laughing and confident in who they are without needing drugs or sex the thrill of being annoying to get them through.

I want to see the ill healed (and not just made comfortable), I want to see debts got rid off and I want to see people really and actually and everyday believing and knowing that they are treasured and loved by their creator God. And that that informs how we all live and speak. That we may all do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

There’s me and my one sermon again.

So, God. In the words of Coldplay, this is a comma not a full stop, so where’s your answer?

yellow book

So, how was school today?
Fine.

Probably for most people picking kids up from school that’s the most you can hope for. They’ll talk endlessly about anything else, but anything useful about school…?!  

But we’ve got the yellow book. Ah, the yellow book. The yellow book that tells the truth, the yellow book in which the teachers write their own answer to the same question: how was school today? The yellow book never lies. 

I think a lot of people think that God has a yellow book. In which he keeps records of our behaviour, in which he can look to check whether or not we had really been as good and respectable and well-behaved as we may claim to have been. And of course he keeps the books as they pile up. He logs and catalogues all our misdemeanours. And boy does he hold them against us. He keeps the book in church, in the vestry behind the big dusty Bible that used to be on the altar but no-one knows what to do with now. 

I don’t think God thinks like that at all. He knows all that we do, of course. But there’s no need for a yellow book. Because there’s no need to pretend everything is fine when it’s not. So there’s no need for a yellow book that tells the real truth. The truth is out there already. He knows everything.

Trust that there is no secret yellow book in which God stores up things to hold against us. Learning to embrace that may well be the beginning of wisdom and the foundation of a healthy relationship with God. 

Amazing what you can learn from a simple yellow book. And today was a good day at school, by the way.  

 

christmas rush

Carrots. Turkey. Carols. Funerals. Sad. Preparation. Music. Choices. Praying. Hello! Broad smile. Very tired. Same old story. Breathe new life. How?

Oranges. Candles. Dressing up. Chaos. Cough. Smile. Feeling low. Losing voice. Keep smiling. Another service. Who is it for? Songs. Music. Links. Trying to be interesting. Ideas. Will it work?

Funerals. Smiling. Energy. Big. Dr Who. Let down. Rev. Excellent! Sleeping. Children. Traditional Christmas. Archaic Christmas. Don’t mention Father Christmas. Is a fraud. Afraid. Jesus. Stable. No stable? Bethlehem. Nazareth? What to mention. Grown up message. Children there. Rapid re-think. Tried. Tired.

Cough. Forgot tissues. Weary. Joy! To the world? Christmas Day. Encouraged! Break. Good news. Sherlock! Sleeping. New year. Done. Phew.