Category: Uncategorized

by Philip Sudwoth.

This is part of two of a series which began with last week’s article.

It is often suggested that the world God designed was good and did not originally contain any suffering or evil. It is expected that, when Jesus returns, he will remove suffering and evil from the world and return it to a state of perfection. But would an absence of suffering and evil really create an ideal world?

Once all danger, effort, and suffering are removed, there’s no scope for the best human qualities.  Without danger there’s no courage; without shortages, no generosity; without struggle, no achievement; without hurt, no compassion; without uncertainty, no hope or faith; without sacrifice, no self-giving love. If there were no death, none of us, and none of those whom we have known and loved, would ever have been born, because the world would have been full up long ago.  Without the deep inter-personal feelings that can lead to grief and heartache, we would never be able to enjoy the wonderful intimate love of the special people with whom we’ve shared so many moments of joy, fun and quiet togetherness.  Without the freedom to act wrongly, there’s no virtue.  If everything were perfect, there would be no room for development and progress, for vision, or for challenge.  This may seem to be an imperfect world, but our responses to these very imperfections have given rise to all the creativity, love and self-sacrifice and the glorious diversity that God has developed in humanity. 

For parents one of the most difficult things is to allow your children to make mistakes, particularly ones that can lead to them into harm.  Yet, if we want them to grow into mature and confident adults, we cannot always be there to catch them before they fall.  Few learn to ride a bike without incurring a few grazes.  As they grow up into young adults, they will acquire emotional hurts too, as they learn to handle relationships.  Part of our love for them is to help them to become independent from us.  While continuing to offer support, we must gradually give up all control over them.  When they make key life decisions, we can offer advice, but the choices – and the consequences – have to be theirs. 

If we have free will, God can have no direct control over us.  We cannot be free to choose good unless we are equally free to choose evil or to hurt others or ourselves.  We must take the consequences of our decisions and actions and of those that flow from other people.  We cannot expect God to suspend the physical laws of the universe every time we or others make a wrong decision. 

If one believes in life beyond death in which the person continues to develop spiritually, suffering in the present life can be seen in the context of a much broader total picture.  It is one experience amongst many, a way of giving people insights into what is really important as a preparation for a new existence. John Keats saw this world as a ‘vale of soul-making’.¹  ‘Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul.’[1]  Several of the epistles show that the early Christians, many of whom suffered persecution and even martyrdom for their faith, not only gained comfort from Christ in their adversity but considered it a means of grace, and a cause of joy, to suffer for him. 

Romans 5:3 sees the role of suffering in creating “perseverance, character and hope.”    However, while a saintly person may be helped to new heights of spirituality through the experience of pain, what is the possible benefit to a once intelligent and caring person who has a severe stroke, and spends their last months unable to recognize their family, doubly incontinent and in constant pain?  How does the painful death of a young child contribute to its spiritual growth?

Those who feel that pain is ennobling maintain that God never asks us to carry more of a burden than we can bear.  However, there are also those who are crushed by tragedies that befall them, some who are bitter for the rest of their lives, or who are scarred mentally. Suicide is the greatest cause of death in the UK for men aged between 19 and 49. Legislation to make available assisted dying to relieve intolerable suffering is now within parliamentary process in the UK towards new law being enacted.  When a drunk driver kills a pillar of the community who is the parent of a young family or a fatal disease strikes down a child, there is a sense of lack of fulfilment.  In each of these situations, there is the effect on those left afterwards to consider. For many people the suffering they bear continues to be without purpose, and there are no simple resolutions.

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[1] Forman M.B. (1952) – The Letters of John Keats (Oxford University press).

by Philip Sudworth.

A glance at one typical day’s international news provides ample evidence of the widespread suffering and evil in the world and many of us are all too aware of individual personal tragedies.  The Christian teaching that God is both all-powerful and loving can seem difficult to square with the existence of painful diseases, mental illness, famine, natural disasters, war, or violent crime.  In many cases, the victims of tragedies, violence or diseases are faithful Christians who have spent their lives helping others. This can seem to run counter to a “a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”  (Psalm 86:15). It is a prime argument for atheists and a major cause of a loss of faith among Christians.

One Christian response is that we live in “a fallen world.” This is based on the Biblical story of humankind’s fall in Genesis.  This tells how God originally created a perfect world but Adam’s disobedience brought death and disorder into it.  The explanation that ‘we live in a fallen world’ seeks to show that any evil is the fault of man, not of God.  In this view, all suffering is the result of sin.  It may be a sin committed by the sufferer himself or by someone else, or it may be due to our inheritance of Adam’s original sin.  New Testament passages such as Romans 5:12 – “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” – reinforce this understanding and the interpretation of Jesus’ role as redeemer, ‘the new Adam’.  The question arises, however, as to how all this fits into the divine plan. Did Adam’s disobedience cause God’s original plan to go wrong and necessitate Christ’s crucifixion as a Plan B, or was an inevitable Fall always part of God’s strategy? How did putting the forbidden fruit within human reach fit into God’s plan? Was it always intended that Adam and Eve would eat it?  Did God know the outcome before putting the tree there?

Why would God think it justice for all humans to be punished throughout the generations for the disobedience of our first ancestors? That doesn’t seem to fit with “The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against Him.” (Daniel 9:9)? The suggestion that people’s suffering today is an original punishment on the whole of humanity conflicts rather starkly with the notion of a God who loves us  

Against the background of the Fall, it has been suggested that probably as much as 85 percent of the suffering in the world is caused through what humans do to each other or through our abuse of the planet’s resources.  It is man’s selfishness and consequent disregard for others and for nature and for God’s laws that lead to wars, to obesity in some countries and starvation in others, to many accidents, to factories and cars pumping out toxic fumes.  In this view, suffering comes because people do not have the right relationship with God or with others and do not live as God intended.  The disobedience was, therefore, not a single act for which we are all punished but a continuing series of mistakes, to which each of us contributes and for which we are jointly responsible.  As a species, and as individuals, we are reaping what we have sown. However, the basic problem of why a loving God should allow suffering remains, even if we can explain away all but 15 percent of the actual pain in the world – or even all but 1% of it.

The snake who successfully lured Adam and Eve is equated with the Devil or Satan who tempted Jesus.  He is seen as a personal, spiritual being in active rebellion against God or as a force working to harm God’s creation and leading human beings into damaging behaviour.  In baptism and confirmation many churches pose to the candidates (or godparents) the question: “Do you renounce the Devil and all his works?” It is not always clear, however, what powers the Devil is believed to have.  Does he cause earthquakes, droughts, floods and disease?  Is he limited to persuading us to do wrong?  Why he is allowed to operate at all, if God is all-powerful?  certainly, there is within each of us the potential for evil.  Whether that is within our own human nature or the work of a being or an external force is a matter of belief.

Whether we take the account of the Fall in Genesis as history or a universal truth expressed in story form, it is far from an explanation that satisfies all the questions that suffering and evil raise in the 21^st century. We will consider in the next article in this series whether suffering and death, and the possibility of evil were not a punishment but were built into the original design of the world.

by Caroline Wickens.

It was William Tyndale who gave us the word ‘scapegoat’. Translating the Bible into English in 1530, he ran up against the complex account of the rituals of the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16. Two goats were involved, one sacrificed for the sins of the people, the other sent away into the desert to cleanse the people, bearing the high priest’s confession of all their sins (Lev.16:21). Reflecting on the Greek and Hebrew descriptions of this goat, sent out into the wilderness, Tyndale came up with a new word: the goat who escapes, the scapegoat.

Since then, the word has picked up a life of its own. In literature (think Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm) and in real life, societies have responded to pressure by identifying individuals or groups to be ‘sent away’, pushed out into the wilderness.

The philosopher René Girard put the scapegoat concept at the heart of his account of how societies work.[1] Social conflict arises from our tendency to be jealous of each other, seeking to achieve some goal that we see, and desire, in others. This rivalry intensifies when societies experience economic pressure or other factors which limit opportunity. Violence follows, in a cycle of revenge which endangers the wellbeing, stability and survival of the community.

Girard believed that human communities cope with this by externalising their anger into blame directed towards a group or single individual, who is then pushed outside the boundaries of society, expelled (playground bullying) or even killed (witch hunts, mob lynching). This process, he argued, is usually driven by unconscious bias. The result of the violence is the short-term restoration of peace to the troubled community, as everyone shares in approving the scapegoating of the victim. Yet this peace does not and cannot last, for it depends on a mistaken analysis of society’s problems.

Christian tradition, from the Gospels onwards, has acknowledged that this account creates a powerful framework for describing the death of Jesus, the innocent, scapegoated victim. John Wesley saw this, linking Leviticus’ teaching with Isaiah 53:6 ‘the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all’.[2]

Girard understands the Gospels’ teaching, more radically, as a move which demolishes the scapegoat model altogether. By refusing to accept their community’s attribution of blame to Jesus, the Gospel writers show that the model explains nothing and changes nothing. Instead, they set out Jesus’ offer of an alternative and far better route towards social cohesion.

The background to Jesus’ message is the strand of Old Testament prophecy in which God longs for ‘mercy, not sacrifice’ (Hosea 6:6). This informs Jesus’ own vision of a kingdom where there is no need to compete for limited goods or limited love. The kingdom banquets symbolise a new society where all have enough (Mark 6:42) so that competition and rivalry are irrelevant. Therefore, says Jesus, you can take the risk of turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:39) and live at peace. Yet he recognises too that this is controversial in a community hard-wired to respond to crisis with violence, and knows that he will bring not peace but division (Luke 12:51).

Why does the ancient account of the scapegoat continue to matter? In contemporary societies across the world, people live under increasing pressure, competing for goods and opportunities, facing crises of many kinds. Girard argued that whenever people react by locking themselves into a given identity, the pressure to create scapegoats is strong.

So where do we recognise scapegoating at work in our own communities?

And what, as Jesus’ disciples, can we do about it?

In a divided society, Girard was adamant that judging others is inexcusable (Romans 2.1) and that the answer is not to ‘practise a hunt for scapegoats to the second degree, a hunt for hunters of scapegoats’.[3]

And Jesus shows us an alternative when he engages with Zacchaeus, the Roman collaborator ostracised by his community (Luke 19:1-10). Reconciliation happened through honest conversation in Zacchaeus’s space; and everything changed.

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[1] René Girard, I see Satan fall like lightning (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 2001), esp.chapter 12, ‘Scapegoat’

[2] https://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/john-wesleys-notes-on-the-bible/notes-on-the-third-book-of-moses-called-leviticus/#Chapter%2BXVI, accessed 24.08.2025

[3] Girard, I see Satan fall, p.158.

by Paul Coleman.

Disability and long-term illness are issues which effect every church in the UK and many disabled people have experienced harmful teaching related to disability. While there is a growing body of work and resources on the theology of disability this has not yet made its way into theological education and has had little impact on teaching in local churches. This blog explores three common models for understanding disability which are prevalent within the church and reflects on how they shape our reading of stories like John 9, “the man born blind.”

The medical model sees disability as a problem located within the individual, something to be treated, corrected, or cured through medical means. This perspective implies that healing equals wholeness and frames the blind man’s disability as something Jesus fixes. The problem to be addressed is his lack of sight rather than the way in which he is excluded from society.

The moral model interprets disability as a result of sin, divine punishment, or moral failing. This approach often leads to shame and exclusion. It places the problem within the individual, much like the medical model, but with a religious or ethical spin. The disciples’ question in John 9: v2, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”, reflects this mindset. Although Jesus rejects this reasoning, the text still appears to suggest that the man’s blindness serves a divine purpose. The danger here is that the person becomes a theological object lesson rather than a subject with agency.

The social model, in contrast, sees disability as arising not from an individual’s body or mind but from societal barriers, physical, structural, and attitudinal. This shifts the focus from “fixing” the person to challenging systems that exclude. Read through this lens, the real issue is not the man’s blindness, but the way society treats him, and the assumptions made about him. The first question the disciples ask is essentially who’s fault is it that he is blind. There is no real concern for the man himself.

These models not only shape how we read scripture but also how we translate and interpret it. While my Greek is limited, I’m grateful to my friend and colleague Dr. Charlotte Naylor-Davis for sharing this approach to interpreting the story in John 9. 

“‘neither this man nor his parents sinned’ Jesus said ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work.’” John 9: 3-4 (NIV).

ἀπεκρίθη ὁ Ἰησοῦς Οὔτε οὗτος ἥμαρτεν οὔτε οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα φανερωθῇ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐμὲ εῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντός με ἕως ἡμέρα ἐστίν·ἔρχεται νὺξ ὅτε οὐδεὶς δύναται ἐργάζεσθαι

One of the things we know about the Greek is that there is no punctuation and also none of the useful little headings which tell us what each story is about. So, breaking that down we get this:  

ἀπεκρίθη ὁ Ἰησοῦς  Οὔτε οὗτος        ἥμαρτεν     

Answered Jesus    neither this man sinned     

 ……………………………………………………………………..

οὔτε                   οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ 

nor/neither    the parents of him

 ……………………………………………………………………..

ἀλλ᾽    ἵνα  φανερωθῇ  

but     so/in order that might be displayed 

……………………………………………………………………..

τὰ ἔργα    τοῦ θεοῦ    ἐν αὐτῷ ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι

the works    of God          in him we must work

……………………………………………………………………..

τὰ ἔργα             τοῦ πέμψαντός με        ἕως 

the works       of him who sent me      as long as

……………………………………………………………………..

ἡμέρα   ἐστίν       ἔρχεται           νὺξ        ὅτε     οὐδεὶς      δύναται        ἐργάζεσθαι

day        it is         is coming      night     when no one        can/is able   to work

……………………………………………………………………..

Translators also add various other things, especially when translating the word ἵνα in verse 3, e.g.:

‘this happened so that’ (NIV, as above)

‘he was born blind so that’ (NRSV)

…whereas ‘ἵνα’ just means ‘so that/in order that’

Here’s what happens when we change the punctuation, or use ‘but’ as punctuation keeping the whole thing as one sentence, and not assuming the ‘so that’ clause refers back to being born blind, but instead points forward in the story to ‘doing the works of God’?

“Jesus answered ‘not this man nor his parents, (but) so that the works of God might be displayed in him we must do the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one is able to work.’”

In most bible translations Jesus answers their question with ‘it’s God’s fault he is blind so that a miracle can now happen’ (moral model). If the way the sentence is punctuated is changed, Jesus leaves the question of blame unanswered, but then says ‘However, in order that God’s work can be done, let’s look after this man.’

The healing is for the man, not for those who observe.

The man is centred, not the disciples’ question being answered.

This also fits better with the story in its narrative context. The story centres the man so much that Jesus says one of his ‘I am’ sayings, ‘I am the light of the world’ (John 9:5). Just a few minutes later when the man is asked if he is the person who used to beg, he uses the same words as Christ simply saying Egw eimi: I am (John 9:9). 

Our bibles will have ‘I am the man’ (e.g. NIV) but in the original Greek ‘The man’ isn’t there.

Having at least a basic knowledge of disability theology allows us to interpret stories like John 9 very differently. When we interpret this passage in light of the social model of disability, we discover a story where disability is no longer stigmatised and disabled people are seen as whole, rather than as convenient sermon illustrations or opportunities to demonstrate God’s power.

by Neil Richardson.

    The Old Testament contrasts very sharply the ‘living’ God and lifeless gods – those forces and powers which make us less than human. Biblical writers identify Idolatry as our fundamental, besetting sin, (e.g. Psalm 115.4-8, Wisdom 13.1-9, Romans 1.18-32). Our hope lies in the real, the living God, engaging continuously with us and making time a school of love, so that each present moment is potentially a channel of grace.        

      But the flow of time brings with it a challenge. From its origins onwards Christian  faith has wrestled with the tension between continuity and change. ‘Christianity is always turning itself into something which can be believed’, (T.S. Eliot). Put less provocatively, Christian orthodoxy has to be re-discovered in every generation, (Rowan Williams).  Both a fossilized, unchanging faith and  untested or unexamined change are likely to lead us into sectarianism and heresy.

   In this crisis-ridden time two articles of faith should especially concern us. I refer to what we have called ‘original sin’ and ‘the second coming’.

   The phrase ‘original   sin’ is problematic if it implies the historical reality of Adam and Eve. But belief in the universal sinfulness of humankind remains an essential part of Christian faith, wilfully blind and incurably optimistic as we tend to be.

  I find two themes of St Paul helpful – one challenging, the other encouraging. In Romans 7.7-25 Paul speaks of the sinful ‘I’. That has led us, naturally, to focus  on the individual’s sin. But  ‘the good which I want to do I fail to do…’ describes not just the individual, but every nation, and even the international community. Think of the woolly, often vague  resolutions there have been about increasing overseas aid or reducing stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and, most recently, carbon emissions. Paul’s words now begin to sound more like an epitaph on the entire human race unless -by God’s grace- we repent of our idolatries.

  Clearly, we are not where our Creator meant us to be – or where God intends to leave us. As Paul says, ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, (Romans 3.23).Psalm 8: sheds light on what that means: our Creator made us ‘a little lower than God’, i.e. in God’s image (Genesis 1. 26-7).

   But the story of our ‘original sin’ and our divine ‘image’ doesn’t end there. Jesus is the one who reveals the glory of a human being made in God’s image. Christ crucified and risen reveals most fully the divine glory and beauty intended for us all. That beauty, as Dostoevsky says, ‘will save the world’.

 There is challenge and good news, too, in a fresh, orthodox understanding of the Second Coming, (not a scriptural phrase).  As with the Ascension of Jesus, a literal understanding has to be left behind. For example, a returning Jesus will hardly ‘touch down’ in Jerusalem. (I believe Christian Zionism has this year been identified as a heresy). That contradicts what Paul says about Jerusalem ‘now’ and Jerusalem ‘above’, (Galatians 4. 25-6). It also contradicts what Revelation implies. The holy city’s descent from heaven describes what began to happen with the coming of Jesus,(Revelation 21.1-6; compare John 1.14). The aorist in Revelation 21.6 could not be more emphatic: ‘It is done!’

   This is the good news: there is a new creation, (the Kingdom) inaugurated with the coming of Jesus. It is unbiblical and immoral to believe that God will ‘intervene’ and rescue us from nuclear war or a climate disaster. Instead, we face God’s ‘formidable non-intervention’.[1] The Old Testament refers to God ‘hiding his face’ (Isaiah 64.7), the very opposite of the life-giving promise of the Aaronic blessing, (Numbers 6.24-6).

    This is the eschatological – i.e. ultimate- tension: God will not save the world without us – and God will not give up either, because God is wholly unchanging love.  Paul is surely describing the ‘second coming’ in this verse from Romans:     ‘the created universe is waiting with eager expectation for God’s sons (sc. ‘and daughters’) to be revealed’, (Romans 8.19).

 In the meantime, we have our idolatry to fight. An over-powering capitalist way of life has taken us all captive. The more affluent we become, the greater seem to be our economic problems, and we ourselves less happy, and more anxious. Which brings us to the world’s poorest people,  –increasing in number, their poverty deepening. In the parable of the Sheep and the Goats neither ‘the righteous’ nor ‘the unrighteous’ seem to know that, in encountering the poor, they are encountering the Son of Man – surely, the everywhere-ness of the coming God?

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[1] The phrase of the great Methodist historian, Herbert Butterfield. See also my recent book Waking Up to God (Sacristy Press 2022)

by Andrew Watkin, Mae Partain, Graham Edwards.

This is part two of a conversation… part one was posted last week…

Experience challenges understanding, it shapes the way we see the world and the church.   When our experience challenges the things we think, or the things we think we think, then we have to find a new way.  In this reflection we begin to think about how we might see the church in the light of our experiences from the encounter visit to Ghana.

When Avery Dulles argues for different models of the church – institution, mystical communion, sacrament, herald, and servant, he recognises that certain models may be emphasised in the life of a church at different times.  He also recognises that as we assess these different models and their implications, Christians are called to “living out the consequences to which they point” (2002, p. 19).  The same is true as experience shapes our understanding, we are called to live out the consequences of our experiences in both our theology and our practice.  Therefore, as we try to make sense of church, recognising our failures, our imperfection, our sometimes-painful history, how do we live out the consequences of being church now?

Mae: I think we have to live by faith, which is living a life every day, or maybe every moment, where we decide to hold onto God’s promises. When we feel God close, or experience his provision and goodness, faith may feel easy, but we still have to believe that God hears our praise and thanksgiving.  To live by faith is living a life that repeatedly involves turning towards God when it feels easier to give up hope and make our own path.

Andrew: As a young adult in a Methodist context, living in faith must involve speaking up for injustice, caring for the poor and marginalised, and engaging in the world with hope. These aspects are not separate to spirituality and faith, but are in fact spirituality in action – living in faith’.

Graham: The way we understand our faith shapes the way we live, and that shapes the church in which we live out our faith.

Andrew: What is right for one church may not be right for another. But if we were to talk about the church as a whole, the hope is that we can continue to provide a place for people to meet with God, in fellowship with one another.  Church should be a safe space, where we can be honest about the way we share how our experience is challenging us, so we can enable each other in fellowship to grow in grace and in love for one another and with God.

Mae: I believe the hope of the church is to be in communion together with God. Of course, the church hopes to lead others to Christ, live as disciples, and glorify God. But when everything is stripped down, I believe we as the church desire to sit at God’s table and be in communion, to share the good news and lead as many people as possible to God’s table, all the while praising the God who loves us.  Perfect love—God’s love—shows us that despite our shortcomings we are beautiful. Love encourages us to try again, to risk, and to surrender.

Graham: So, risking, and surrendering is how we become who God calls us to be?

Mae: When we know that not only are we accepted, but God loves no matter what, the pressure of perfection fades and authenticity arises. Love settles our striving and shapes us into disciples.

Andrew: I love playing guitar. I love watching football. I love my family, and I love my friends. Love shapes our hobbies, our relationships, what we value.  But to love one another, to love our neighbour, to love our friends, to love the gifts we have been given is not easy. Sometimes we have to love our enemies, forgive those who hurt us.  But in doing that we can become what God longs for us to be.

Graham: That kind of love is, perhaps, about listening to our experience and allowing ourselves to be shaped and reshaped.  Mamia and Lucette Massaga (1999), describe the challenge for the African protestant church in attempting to seek a new model for its life.  Their new model rests on the assertion that every Christian is called to participate in God’s plan, and as such each Christian can act as a “watcher” or “sentinel”.  As part of developing this model they suggested eight ways in which Christians are called to live, these allow for the gifts of different members of the community to be appreciated (1999, pp. 247 – 250): (1) A watcher over the word, who demonstrates the Biblical challenges facing the church. (2) A watcher over culture, who passes on the traditions and cultural nuances in the life of the church.  (3) A watcher over the integrity of creation, who sees that the environment is managed well. (4) A watcher over nourishment, whose concern is that human beings are fed. (5) A watcher over health, who gives information and leadership to facilitate improving levels of good health.  (6) A watcher over human relations, who enables the community to live in relation to one another. (7) A watcher over justice in God’s way, whose role is to promote justice in daily living. (8) A watcher over festivities, who understands how village life can be authentically expressed.

Experience always shapes us, the experience of Ghanaian Methodism shaped us – now the challenge is to become the watchers – those who allow God to speak through experience, faith, and the scriptures as we play our part in re-shaping the church as God calls us. 

References

Dulles, A. (2002). Models of the Church. New York: Doubleday.

Massaga, M. W., & Massaga, L. W. (1999). Towards a new way of Being Church. International Review of Mission, LXXXVIII(350), 240 – 253.

by Andrew Watkin, Mae Partain, Graham Edwards.

What is the church?” and “how do we know?” these are questions that many of us ask from time to time.  The reflections we offer here emerge from a visit to the Methodist Church Ghana earlier this year with a group from Cliff College and members of the Methodist Church Connexional Team.  For many of the group, this experience challenged our understanding of church.  Our experience helps us make sense of the world, and our experience of life and faith often means we perceive the church in different ways.  Graham is a Methodist Presbyter who has been involved in lay and ordained ministry in the Methodist Church for over twenty years; Mae is nineteen, from Montana in the USA and grew up in traditional and later a Vineyard church; Andrew is nineteen and grew up in the Methodist Church in Britain in which his mother is a Methodist Deacon.  We know the church through our experience; Avery Dulles argues we cannot form a completely objective view while being actively engaged in the church, “we know it through a kind of inter subjectivity” he writes (2002, p. 10). Therefore, if those involved in the church cannot fully objectify the church, what our experience tells us is vital; experience helps us see and know the church in new ways.  This reflection is a conversation between us, as we reflect on what our experience tells us about the church.

Graham: I always find it hard to articulate clearly what I think church is, whatever definition I start with never feels entirely sufficient.  I think the heart of the church is a group of people who choose to become a community that listens to and responds to God.

Mae: Church should be a safe place for Christians to gather, in fellowship and praise and to encounter God. Church should be a place to find authentic community and motivate each other to be disciples.

Andrew: Church to me, simply put, is the place for us to gather as disciples to worship and strengthen our relationship with God, for brothers and sisters to come together and praise God collectively.

Mae: Sometimes I think we get caught up in tradition, trying to look professional and successful. Sometimes, church feels like a performance on stage with a group of people going through the motions instead of building connections with God and each other.

Graham: I like what Stanley Hauerwas writes about the church he argues (1981, p. 92) that the church should strive for the formation of a society shaped by the character of God.  He suggests that the community is formed by the story set out in the Biblical narratives “what we require is not no story, but a true story.  Such a story is one that provides a pilgrimage with appropriate exercises and disciplines of self-examination.  Christians believe scripture offers such a story” (p. 149).  As we live the story of God through the church we are shaped and changed, and the way we see the world changes too.

Andrew: This is what happened in Ghana.  We saw a church living in the story of God in a very different way.  There were many different examples of that but one which particularly stood out to me was how much joy was constantly on the faces of the people within this church. They were filled with endless excitement to dance, sing, shout and be with their friends in the church. We saw two opposite ends of the spectrum whilst there. One church in Accra with a huge building, lots of lighting, expensive equipment, a full band with a choir, absolutely beautiful. We also visited a church in Tamale which was just a room with a few pews in and not much else. Hugely contrasting churches but one thing the same – joy. It makes me want to bring that back here. How do we incorporate that into our culture? Is it realistic to expect that? Lots of questions. But I now see church as a place we can come together to rejoice in happiness, which I had not seen previously.

Mae: Yes, the most prevalent and noticeable expression of joy was in the form of dance. The offering and worship consistently included joyful dancing and clapping, and during sermons, people in the congregation would offer frequent shouts of “hallelujah”. Even though these Ghanaian churches were singing the same hymns and preaching from the same Bible, they were bringing new life and joy into the church. While sometimes churches in America and England simply go through the motions of a Sunday service, the people of Ghana passionately expressed their joy and thankfulness of being able to praise and serve God in their churches.

Graham: I found the sense of joy in worship – and in all church life – remarkable too, especially as we explored some of Ghana’s history, and the place of the church in that history.

Andrew: The ‘Slave Castles?’, yes they were difficult.

Graham: The most challenging moment for me was when we were in one of the dungeons where thousands of men and women were held in appalling conditions, held to be sold as slaves, we were trying to process that horror, and we were told that literally above us was the first Anglican chapel in Ghana.  As people made in the image of God endured unimaginable suffering, a church worshipped the God of love over their heads.  I struggled to get past that, and the questions that it raised for me.  What is our church built on? Are we built on injustice?  How do we ignore or injure the humanity of our brothers and sisters?

Mae: Despite that history, the churches we visited were places of joy – perhaps that is about finding a new way, seeking a life-giving foundation for the church?

Andrew: In his book Routes of Remembrance (2008), Bayo Holsey talks about how the slave trade is sometimes minimised in Ghanaian history, because it allows Ghanaians to express their identity in ways that they choose to, rather than be defined by that dark history, and maybe that is where that focus on the joy of God in church becomes the most important thing.

Graham: When our experience challenges our understanding, when it shakes what we thought we knew, perhaps we need to revisit the way we understand church, and the foundations we base that understanding on.

References

Dulles, A. (2002). Models of the Church. New York: Doubleday.

Hauerwas, S. (1981). A Community of Character. Notre dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Holsey, B. (2008). Routes of Remembrance. Chicago: The University of Chicago press.

by James Blackhall.

I have been thinking a lot about who gets to tell their story, and other people’s stories, and who’s reflection on scripture we listen to. I started thinking about this again as I reflected on neurodiversity. The Methodist Church recently accepted a report around Healing Ministry and those with Neurodiverse conditions.[1] These include things such as Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and other conditions – that are a wide range. As someone who is labelled ‘neurodivergent’ I admit that I often find I haven’t been able to tell my own story – because my story is told for me. When I hear of healing, in both the Biblical text and in contemporary discourse, I find it difficult. Perhaps it’s because I’m someone who some would see as ‘should’ be healed, or about whom they make assumptions that I would want to be healed, and I would argue that, for me, neither of those assumptions are correct. This is of course as true in society as the church – even if that healing maybe understood differently. One thing I often seem to wrestle with is what I would like help with and to be ‘treated’ for and what things I would want to embrace as me.

This challenge is true as much in the stories we tell of scripture as in people’s lives now. Within scripture, it was through preaching that I became aware, a few years ago, of how many stories are not present in the Revised Common Lectionary – and that they were particularly ones that involved women. Why do we never have, for example, Huldah who speaks the truth to power – a narrative which I have used to explore what scripture means. Or Rhoda, the maid – or possibly slave girl – in Acts 12 who was the one who recognised Peter. Beneath the comedy of that passage there is something to be said for the fact she is named and yet not believed. Today, in a world still marked with misogyny, too many women are either unnamed, unrecognised or not believed. While the Bible is a complex text there are many texts that show strong women, and if explored would allow many more to see themselves in the story. Even when we do tell stories, do we often tell it from the male point of view or that of the victor? Do we read texts like Hagar, and as we celebrate Abraham and Sarah, underestimate the abuse that is present, and yet it is in this woman who was treated as an object that God is revealed, and she comes to know God as the God who sees (Genesis 16:13). Do we discredit the strong female characters such as Mary Magdalene?

Applying this to neurodiversity, which is where I began, I have become interested recently – and am currently working on – how one can read scripture with attention to neurodiversity and how neurodivergent people can see themselves in the text. This is not about diagnosing biblical characters – I couldn’t possibly do that – but about looking at possibilities. A bit like queer theology has explored characters such as Ruth and Naomi from a different lens, without categorically saying this is what they are, I wonder how a neurodivergent theology could look at some of the characters from the Bible. Again, this has its pitfalls – Naomi Jacobs writes about her disappointment on finding a paper doing something that started off by looking at Peter as if he had ADHD and then, instead of exploring that in a positive way for those with ADHD, used Peter, and ADHD, as a metaphor for the whole church.[2] As we tell stories it is important not to use people as a metaphor. I’m glad that we are moving away from using ‘blindness’ as a metaphor for sin and ‘deafness’ as a metaphor for people choosing not to listen to God, for example. We need to give people agency to tell their story – to not simply be an object but to be the subject of the story and how we discuss what impacts their lives.

I return to healing and the fact that Jesus was known to ask what people wanted rather than force something on them even when what they would want may appear obvious to others. Thinking of where I want to go – I want to read scripture as the person that I am, made in God’s image, which includes my neurodiversity. I want to read scripture attentive to the possibilities of other people’s lives and not just from the lens that has dominated us. I want us to be able to share the stories of scripture and ourselves in a way that empowers all people to see their God given potential, and to realise it.

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[1] Methodist Church, Healing Ministry and Neurodiversity: Response to Notice of Motion 2022/201 (2025).

[2] Naomi Lawson Jacobs, ‘Speaking with Us, Not for Us: Neurodiversity, Theology and Justice’, Journal of Disability &  Religion, 27.4 (2023), pp. 584–605 <https://naomilawsonjacobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Manuscript_Speaking-With-Us-Not-For-Us.pdf&gt; [accessed 8 July 2025].

by Ben Pugh.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement: love it or hate it, it is eminently comprehensible. Subtle it is not (nuance generally has to be added), but there is a certain logic about it. In fact, so great is its elegance that it has become a tract-writer’s dream (I have a small collection of these tracts, going all the way back to 1976). It is completely soundbite-able. It can be summarised easily and without remainder in one sentence. Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is as Tweetable as it is logically compelling.

Trouble is, ideas that are that condensable become part of the furniture after a while. They get woven into our working assumptions. They cease to be examined and become a lens through which we examine everything else. I see it all the time. Many good Christians are locked within a set of ideas that are all about death as the penalty for sin introduced at Eden – all sin, however minor, carries this penalty. Then, we follow the familiar, almost arithmetic logic: Christ died as a substitute to pay that penalty, to take that punishment, all inflicted by the Father who turns his face away. When pressed about what we mean by death (since Adam and Eve did not immediately drop dead) we might sooner or later end up with a variation of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) in Hell.

These are good people who believe this. They are lovely. Yet this version of the ‘good’ news nestles between two pieces of horrific news, one pointing back in time and the other pointing forwards. We are pointed back in time to the cross and told ‘you deserved that,’ and we are pointed forwards in time to Hell and told ‘you will deserve that.’ And the solution in the present is that, by faith, we accept what Christ has done for us. Most would probably not put it in quite such stark terms, of course. But that’s just the problem. Many don’t even think about it for long enough to see that that is in fact what we are saying. 

However, there are signs that this PSA-ECT superstructure is melting away. I was recently giving a teaching session with a church that most would consider to be conservative. I presented four views of Hell ranging from ECT to Hopeful Universalism.As far as I could tell, not one person in the room was willing to defend ECT. Ok, perhaps I could have presented it a bit more charitably but, reading the room, I got a sense that everyone had been quietly moving away from the idea for some time; they just didn’t know what the alternatives were.

So, one side of the equation: ECT, has become so unmentionable it is fading away for lack of oxygen. But there remains the other side: PSA. There is still, in many sincere Christians, a failure to see how unappealing this message would seem to someone not yet inducted into that way of seeing things.

My summer project is to answer the question: is there a way to explain the work of Christ that might sound like genuinely good news to people, and which is elegant enough to be explained with brevity? The first thing I would highlight is that there has already existed – for almost two millennia – an alternative gospel soundbite. It is a phrase that recurs so often in the Greek Fathers, it is described as a ‘formula.’ Scholars call it the Exchange Formula. The most quoted version of the Exchange Formula is in Irenaeus: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, through his superabundant love, became what we are so that he might make us altogether what he himself is.’^[1]

In the Exchange Formula it is the incarnation that tells us everything we need to know. And it works in two halves: a divine-human union shown in God’s descent to us results in lots and lots of divine-human unions as we ascend in Christ.

This way of seeing atonement welcomes back into the picture the entire breath-taking sweep of the coming of Christ. Through this lens can see how Christ enters every phase of human existence, even to its very depths as he undergoes an unjust and violent death. He assumes and heals the entire human experience on behalf of the entire human race. That’s the gospel.

I call this Easter through Christmas spectacles.

Problem: when we look at things this way, doesn’t his death become a bit less important? It’s no longer an essential piece in the arithmetic of penalty-payment and substitution. Space is limited but, there are some excellent biblical reasons to see the whole consecrated life of Christ, culminating in his self-offering on the cross, as being the key thing that fulfilled the whole purpose of the sacrificial system and the covenant.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve got so far:The gospel is that, in Jesus of Nazareth, we recognise that the Son of God came to live our life and die our death, dedicating himself to God on behalf of wayward and violent humanity and rose again from the dead so that we, by the power of the Holy Spirit joining our lives to his risen life, might get another chance at life, a dedicated life, an abundant life, the life of the age to come.

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[1] Irenaeus, Against Heresies V, Preface.

by Ken Howcroft.

Methodist Conference Monday 30 June 2025

This was a reflection I was asked to give at evening prayer on the Monday evening of the Conference at Telford. The references to particular hills are to those in the region, but in your imagination you can change them to hills that you know. Similarly the reference to the Conference Agenda can stand for anything that you have been doing.

Psalm 121

¹ I lift up my eyes to the hills—
    from where will my help come?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴ He who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day
    nor the moon by night.

⁷ The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
⁸ The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time on and forevermore.

Introduction

Many parts of scripture, and the Psalms in particular, provide words that are intended to prompt you to form images or even short films in your imagination. I hope that you were doing that whilst you were reading that Psalm. I hope that you will continue doing it as you read this reflection on it.

Reflection

At the end of a long, hard day I feel the need to look up from the Agenda and out beyond these walls. In my imagination I look out at the natural beauties of the Wrekin, the South Shropshire Hills and the Welsh mountains beyond. I can also see homes and workplaces, sacred places of worship, palaces of shopping, playspaces of sport and entertainment. Or in my mind’s eye I can look at huge screens livestreaming social media with celebrity gossip and other trivia interspersed with news of natural disasters, droughts, famines, refugees, wars and rumours of wars. All of these things can distract me, but in the end they leave me saying ‘vanity of vanities’, emptiness piled on emptiness. None seem able to help me. 

Yet perhaps to expect them to help me is to make idols out of them rather than icons through which I can know God – the God who comes before all things, goes beyond all things and holds all things and all experience within themselves. As George Herbert put it, I can look at the glass of a telescope lens and only see my own reflection or I can put it to my eye and see the heavens through it. It is when I have done the latter that I have started to find real help.

It is when I remember this that I can start to hear another still, small voice addressing me. Parts of the Psalms and the prophetic writings are like playscripts where the different characters and who is saying what and when are no longer indicated. So, is this still, small voice that I am starting to hear another aspect of me, part of a conversation going on within me? Or is it a prophet, pastor, preacher or priest speaking to me? Or is it God? Or a mixture of all of those? You will need to step into the Psalm to decide for yourselves.

And what is the voice saying? It is saying a mixture of promise and blessing. Above all, in our goings out and our comings in at this Conference and in every other aspect of our life, seen or unseen, (as Mr Wesley reputedly said even on his deathbed) “God is with us.”