Theology Everywhere

by Tim Baker.

The title for this comes from Tim Hughes’ worship song, God of justice, which ends with an invitation to ‘keep us from just singing, move us into action, we must go, we must go’. A lot of my work involves inviting churches to think about how they can engage with justice meaningfully, and doing so in the context of leading worship (typically on a Sunday morning). I work for a charity called All We Can — a Christian international development agency with a passion for partnership.

I wonder what the word ‘partnership’ means for you? For many of us it conjures positive images of togetherness and community and trust, but I expect most of us also have a negative story to tell.

It’s a word that covers all manner of sins, greed and power-politics. However, it’s a word we are committed to at All We Can (at least until we can think of a better one!) because it is what enables us to move from leading-from-the-front when it comes to tackling poverty around the world, and focus more on enabling people, communities and whole nations to be in charge of their own transformation and development.

So I’d encourage us to think about committing to partnership in our worship, in our justice-seeking, and in our own lives.

In our worship, we are seeing this change happening already in many churches — as we move away from an assumption that worship is done for us, or delivered to us, by experts, to a recognition (or re-recognition) that we all have a part to play. Worship isn’t produced and consumed, it’s shared. As we have been reminded, liturgy literally means: ‘the work of the people’. That’s about all of us.

In our justice-seeking, we can most effectively see this as an extension of our worship if we commit to the same principle of partnership — not that we ‘fix’ the people in our communities or ‘export’ our ideas into the world. But we enable local people with lived experience to be in the driving seat of change.

Not the gift of a shoebox, or the sponsorship of a child, but the support for a community to set its own agenda, to lead its own transformation. As Victor, the leader All We Can’s partner in Malawi would say: ‘everything local is sustainable’, and local people have a PhD in their community, so we should probably listen to him.

When we route our action in worship, it changes the way we ‘do justice’ at all. We listen more, we wait for the movement of the spirit, we learn. We are prepared to put the communities we serve in the driving seat of change.

So yes, Lord, we pray: keep us from just singing, move us into action, we must go — but not as heroes, rather as partners, as listeners, as enablers. Not as messiahs, but as a people joining in with the work of The Messiah, who is still at work through The Spirit in our worship, in the places where we live, and around the world.

You can find out more about All We Can’s work here: allwecan.org.uk

To Consider:

• Should worship always be led by the ‘person up front’?
• Think of ways in which group preparation may be effective.
• Would participation in this way help churches to grow?
• Read: Isaiah 58:6-12

We are pleased to continue our partnership with Spectrum, a community of Christians of all denominations which encourages groups and individuals to explore the Christian faith in depth. This year the study papers are on the theme of ‘Heartfelt Worship’ by Rev’d Jan Berry (author and former principal of Luther King House, Manchester) and Tim Baker (Local Preacher, All We Can’s Churches and Volunteer’s Manager and contributor to the Twelve Baskets Worship Resources Group). This is the second of six coming through the year.

by Paul Bridges.

For over 20 years my repeated experience of cancer and its treatment has been a significant context in my life. I like to believe that my life is not defined by cancer but I have to accept that it is one of the things that defines me.

When I was diagnosed with cancer for the second and then the third time I struggled to make sense of it. I found that creative writing helped me to process my thoughts and feelings. My writing took the form of letters, sometimes to people and sometimes to ideas. What follows is an abridged version of my letter to God. I offer it as an example of how the context of our life can influence our theological thinking, both its is themes and direction.

As you read this window into a part of my life, I invite you to ask yourself a few questions?

• Does this letter give you a different perspective about serious illness and God?
• What have been the significant contexts in your life and how have these affected your theological thinking?
• To what extent do you agree with Stephan Bevans who said “There is no such thing as ‘theology;’ there is only contextual theology”?[1]

Dear God,

As I am sure you are aware I have been writing letters to people and things connected to my cancer. I am not fooling myself that they are only about cancer. They are a way of working out things, of recognising the good that is happening in the midst of struggle. And they are a way of coping when people say crass things, and I have to smile sweetly. People say lots of strange things about cancer – “I hear that a good one to get” for example.

You often get mentioned too – people blame you for cancer or to be more accurate they use cancer as their reason for not believing in you. Cancer is such a cruel and horrible disease that a benevolent God could not possibly allow cancer to happen. I have never understood you and the world in this way, but I understand why people do. You are not a vending machine to be used as and when we want you. In fact, if that was the case and you just did what we asked then that would make us God.

For many, life has so many cruel and horrible things in it, surely if a loving God exists they would do something about it. I have not blamed you for my cancer but I do wonder sometimes why there has to be cancer at all.

Occasionally people put the blame elsewhere, they suggest that there is a reason we have cancer. Obviously, they don’t say it in these words but they say things like “everything happens for a reason”. Or “God will work through this cancer”. Are they really saying I am being punished or that somehow giving me cancer is part of your masterplan?

Do you scream and shout, with me, when people say that? What sort of being could punish people or try to achieve something through cancer? No, I reject this thinking. I do not and will not believe that you give people cancer.

Some say that you will teach me something through my experience, but I reject this too.  Yes, I have learnt much, about compassion and humanity, but the idea that you gave me cancer so I can learn these things I must reject. Was I not a good enough student the first and second times I got cancer is that why I got cancer a third time!

We want answers, don’t we? We want to know why and how. But you are the great I am, that’s what you said wasn’t it when Moses asked your name. I am the I am. Well, it seems to me that you are the great I am and life is the just is. That is no rhyme or reason, no why or how with cancer, it just is.

Like so many things that horrify us, cancer also shows us the depth of humanity and compassion that we are capable of. I see you clearly here.

I think of the woman that spent the afternoon gardening with my wife during my first operation.

I remember the doctor who let me play my favourite music as he put me to sleep before an operation.

The new neighbours who left a meal on our doorstep.

The friends that drove hours to see me but only stay a few minutes because I was too tired.

I remember the nurse who told me to be kind to myself.

The man that help me back to physical and psychological health with walks and cherry pie, oh that cherry pie.

The care assistants who dried and dressed me with clothes and compassion when a simple bath had taken all of my energy.

The volunteers who gave up their time to listen to me or give me some complementary therapy.

I see you in all these.

But there are some things I still struggle with.

I don’t believe in miracles, well not with bangs and flashes and science defying changes. I believe in the miracles of life and of love, the miracles of forgiveness and compassion. So, I have always struggled with prayers for physical healing. If you are a loving God why would you need someone else to pray for my healing before you intervene? Nothing would stop me rushing to my children, surely the same is true of you too.

I think you heal us through the skill and compassion of doctors and nurses, through the love and care of family and friends. But yet there is something. As I lay in my hospital bed I would recall all the people who told me they were praying for me. I would get a message of support on texts and emails, and somehow, they helped. People of faith sometimes use strange phrases, they say holding you in prayer, and actually that’s just what it felt like.

Feeling held, gave me the courage and confidence to keep going, but also to give up. To give up worrying, to give up the weight of responsibility, sometimes even to give up caring. I could do this knowing you held me and these things for me. Real safety means being able to be totally vulnerable without any of our usual barriers trusting totally in the protection of another. To those we love and we know love us we don’t have to be strong.

There is a story I have always liked, I am sure you know it already!

A little girl and her father were crossing a bridge over a raging river. The father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter,

‘Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you don’t fall into the river.’

The little girl said, ‘No, Daddy. You hold my hand.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Asked the puzzled father.

‘There’s a big difference,’ replied the little girl.

‘If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens, you will never let my hand go.’

I think this may be what prayer is, you holding our hand.

So, I am grateful for every prayer spoken. Thank you and Amen

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[1] In my last piece for Theology Everywhere – “The only way is up” – I considered whether the development of our theology may not be linear but contextual – affected by what is going on in our lives.

by Kerry Tankard.

This is the third in a series of articles about theology and music culture…[1]

Previously, I rejected the idea of the profane as a space somehow apart from God. I will touch on that theme again by exploring the reconciliation of eros and agape in Nick Cave’s song Brompton Oratory.[i] The album The Boatman’s Call explores themes of love, loss, faith, and God, as songs reflect variously on the end of his marriage to Viviane Carneiro, the end of his short intense relationship with the singer/songwriter P J Harvey, and another of his stays in rehab to address his heroin addiction. This weft of experiences is woven onto the warp of the divine, and the tapestry created became one of the most significant albums in Cave’s extensive catalogue.

In an amusing interview in the film 20,000 Days on Earth,[ii] Cave reflected on how he would go to church on a Sunday morning to pass the time as he was waiting for the heroin dealers along the Portobello Road to be up. The song, Brompton Oratory, captures something of that unorthodox balance of the good and bad in his life at the time, while threaded with the end of his relationships and his shifting engagement with the idea of God.

In his lecture, The Secret Life of the Love Song,[iii] he writes:

Though the Love Song comes in many guises – songs of exultation and praise, songs of rage and of despair, erotic songs, songs of abandonment and loss – they all address God, for it is the haunted premises of longing that the true Love Song inhabits…It is the cry of one chained to the earth, to the ordinary and to the mundane, craving flight; a flight into inspiration and imagination and divinity.[iv] 

That longing is echoed in these words from Brompton Oratory where the encounter of the sacred and the seemingly profane reveals something of the relationship of desire, eros, and agape.

The blood imparted in little sips
The smell of you still on my hands
As I bring the cup up to my lips[v]

Cave recalls receiving the sacrament from the cup and so also recalls the smell of his lover as he touches the chalice, the holy and the seemingly profane meet. Some will find this moment disturbing, even offensive. Here it appears sex, often the greatest taboo of the profane, and the sacrament, the most sacred of Church celebrations, meet in one man’s actions. This raises the question of whether these hands are ‘contaminated’ not only by the body of another, but morally and spiritually as well?

The answer to the first part of that question could be yes, and literally so. His hands could really still be perfumed with the scent of the woman he has lost. Obviously, the words could be a poetic construction, but that is secondary to the intent they convey. He wants us to know that he carries her on his hands, that what they have shared is now part of holding this cup of salvation; one longing is being responded to by a quite different gift. This meeting of the seemingly profane with the sacred is powerful and profound. It invites us to ask of ourselves, what hidden things do we each bring to the table of Christ, and do we genuinely believe they will be received there? With such hidden things, are we free to receive from Christ? Can we enjoy still this means of grace and this converting ordinance? And, crucially here, what desire are we coming to Christ with?

Nick Cave brings these questions to the foreground with a deliberate invocation of erotic events to remind us of our yearning, of eros itself. Kneeling by the side of us, he calls us to hold eros and agape together, and not see them as divided or opposed forms of love –  to recover a sense of the relationship between them.

This thinking is not new. Dionysius suggested something similar in the 5^th/6^th Century when arguing, “in my opinion, the sacred writers regard ‘yearning’ (eros) and love (agape) as having one and the same meaning”.[vi] Desire and longing are manifest in eros, but this desire and longing finds itself ultimately fulfilled by God, and in God’s agape. This is different to a tradition in the Church which elevated agape against eros. Agape was portrayed as drawing us upwards, a form of heavenly and holy loving, while selfish eros was an earthlier and material thing which dragged us down. This divided love, rather than seeing these expressions as intimately linked parts of the singularity of love that is shared within the Trinity, and by the Trinity with the world. Andrew Davison concludes that agape is not the end of eros, but that agape is about the reception of eros as love manifest in passion and desire. Invoking Sarah Coakley he says, ‘the way to bring the right ordering of human erotic desire is not to cover it up but to uncover its relation to God. We must “turn Freud on his head”’.[vii] Or as Coakley puts it herself, ‘Instead of “God” language ‘really’ being about sex, sex is really about God.’[viii]

What Nick Cave captures, intentionally or not, is our ultimate desire for God. The desires we feel for good things, are analogous indicators of the deep desire we have for God. In holding the chalice in Brompton Oratory, with scented hands, Cave lays a symbol of that truth before us. His desire for his lost lover is merging with his desire for God, as he sips from the cup. One desire is potentially being renewed by the revelation of the deeper desire for God, all part of what Cave sees as the longing of the true love song.

Twenty five years later, after so much more life experience, that yearning would find profoundly beautiful expression in his recorded Seven Psalms. I leave you with the words of the 3^rd of those:

My heart, my love, my Lord, my one true bride
Sanctuary where the eternal yearning[ix] rest
Unpetal me and burst me open wide
Lay your shining head upon my breast[x]

Amen.

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[1] The goodness of (profane) worship & King Gizzard, AstroTurf, and John Wesley!

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[i] A live performance is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_esUexstdbg; the lyrics here: https://www.nickcave.com/lyric/brompton-oratory/

[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kiDJarn0hM

[iii] Nick Cave, The Secret Life of the Love Song, published in Nick Cave: The Complete Lyrics 1978-2022, pp.1-19.

[iv] Ibid., p.7

[v] Ibid., p.278

[vi] Divine Names, IV.12 as quoted in Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On The Trinity’, p.313.

[vii] Andrew Davison, Why Sacraments?, p.112

[viii] Sarah Coakley, Op. Cit., p.316.

[ix] My emphasis.

[x] Nick Cave, Op. Cit., p.609 from Seven Psalms released in 2022.

by George Bailey.

Increasingly, I think of leadership simply as an inevitable feature of human community. If there are a group of people with a task to do, there will be some form of leadership. It may be intentional and planned, or may just unfold as some people’s personalities, past experiences and skills encourage others to let them guide and represent the group. Hence leadership is a puzzle – to what extent should we seek to control and determine it? Most people have a view as to what constitutes good leadership, and bad. However, these evaluations are determined by what one supposes might be the aims and purposes of the group in which leadership is exercised. The definition of good Christian leadership is inherently shaped by what we think the church ought to be like.

Attitudes to leadership as a topic vary in Christian missiology, and are often connected to the way that theologians approach the ever expanding non-Christian leadership literature. It is a clear that good leadership can help communities and institutions progress well, so there are understandably a wealth of research, guides and ‘how to’ books from sociological, psychological and organisational perspectives. I am convinced though that it is not sensible to see leadership as a separate subject within the Church’s theology. I am wary of books on Christian leadership which fail to adequately ground their insights in the theology of the church. There are obvious dangers when leaders become detached from the body of the community as if they were a special category of people, and making a theological category for leadership thinking can easily play into that dynamic. In a helpful book on Wesleyan theologies of leadership, Kenneth Carder and Laceye Warner hold firmly to the principle that ‘the tools of business and corporate management and the social sciences are subservient to soteriology and eschatology.’^[1]

If leadership is simply a normal feature of human community, then Christian leadership is an inevitable consequence of the way that Christians are part of a close community that we call a church. Leadership should reflect and be shaped by the theology of the church. In a Wesleyan church tradition, sanctification (being made holy) is the central organising focus of our theology – to use the eighteenth-century term… ‘scriptural holiness’ is our primary purpose. People exercising leadership are firstly Christians who are growing in grace and holiness, and as they do this they encourage and help others in the church to join them, just as they are upheld and supported by the community – a mutual partnership for sanctification. This should take priority over any drift of church leadership towards a small group of people, or worse, just one person, having authority and power over others.

There are New Testament precedents to help with this. Although some see Paul as an authoritarian leader, he always made efforts to work alongside others and not to lead on his own. He also considered himself an apostle amongst other apostles, and the New Testament church is governed by synodical consensus (e.g. Acts 15). The Greek word synod comes from the root ‘to walk/travel’ and the prefix for ‘together’. Paul’s leadership was grounded within his theology of the church as a diverse body with diverse gifts, all of which are valued and need to work together (1 Corinthians 12). I might go as far as to argue that whenever one Christian person is elevated as leader and given authority in a way which de-values the gifts of others, the result is detrimental to the mission of the Church. In my own experience of ministry, I have shared in several teams and currently work in team ministry within a Methodist-Anglican congregation, and also as Co-Superintendent for a circuit. I know that, personally for me at least, shared leadership and partnerships of gifts are better than being in a sole leadership position. If nothing else, it helps me avoid my own weaknesses affecting the way I exercise leadership in the church.

This is in line with Methodist heritage. Although, like Paul, some also dismiss John Wesley as an overly authoritarian leader, and we must acknowledge that he did display various weaknesses and failings, the Methodist revival movement was though drawing many people from diverse backgrounds into mutual leadership frameworks. Lovett Weems describes a Wesleyan practice of ‘multiple leadership’ – leadership comes from different social locations and is recognised in people with widely varied gifts and experiences, and leadership is sometimes ‘for a season’ and a particular situation.[2] This ‘multiple leadership’ is based primarily on the centrality of sanctification alone. Weems develops this thinking further in a 2016 collection of chapters on Wesleyan leadership: ‘Effective leadership in the church begins with God’s call, God’s people and a vision of God’s reign. From the beginning, the focus must be theological, not personal.’[3]

‘The reality is that all are leaders and all are followers.’[4] However, if this principle is applied thoroughly, perhaps there is a danger of the dispersal of effort and loss of clarity about the mission of a church. Again, Weems echoes my experience in ministry: ‘If multiple leadership is to be the rule, then it is essential to make sure that God’s vision for the church at this time in history is discerned, articulated, and shared.’[5] The more that leadership is seen not as a personal vocation, but instead as a shared communal expression of community life, the more important it is that theological grounding and vision is discerned and shared. This becomes the primary leadership activity. Rather than the practical achievement of short term goals, which are best realised by collectively drawing on a diversity of gifts, leadership is about communal responsibility to discern and express theological vocation, and for each disciple to live this out personally.

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[1] K. Carder and L. Warner (2016). Grace to Lead: Practising Leadership. United Methodist Church: General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. p.14

[2] Weems, Lovett H., Jr. (1998) Leadership in the Wesleyan Spirit. Nashville: Abingdon Press. section 2.5

[3] Weems, Lovett H., Jr. (2016). ‘What makes Leadership Wesleyan?’ in Perry, B. and Easley, B. (eds.) (2016), Leadership the Wesleyan Way: An Anthology for forming Leaders in Wesleyan Thought and Practice, Lexington, KY: Emeth Press. p.28

[4] Weems 1998, Leadership in the Wesleyan Spirit. sect 5.2

[5] ibid.

by Christine Odell.

In part one of this article, (11^th September)  we considered the question ‘What can ‘life in all its fullness’ (Jn 10;10b) mean for the Christian with chronic illness?’ The common experience of chronic illness challenges both the ‘norms’ and the expectations of ‘the good life’ in society today.  It is also an experience that challenges the ways we think about it and respond to it in our churches. In part two of this article we look at how we can help those with chronic illness receive the gift of life in all its fullness, the gift of wholeness that is offered freely to all, to be experienced even in the brokenness, limitations and frustrations of their everyday lives.

We need to start by understanding the nature of the chronic illness, how it affects those who live with it, and by considering our theological understanding of illness. This will also involve us in challenging commonly held myths about chronic illness (see part one for a list of these).

We have to resist the temptation to offer simple explanations or quick and easy fixes. These can alienate rather than incorporate those in our Christian community who are ill. Liuan Huska, in her book Hurting, Yet Whole[1]talks about the tendency of Christians to think they can ‘fix’ chronic illness.  This is not helpful to those who are seeking a ‘new normal’ for their broken bodies and lives.  We do not choose illness, but illness is a reality of human existence, and we seek to discover a ‘real’ God in that reality alongside us.   We cannot dispute the role of Jesus as healer in the Gospels, but that physical healing can be seen as just one aspect of the drawing in of those outside the ‘norms’ of society to a shared ‘life in all its fullness’.

We have all been exhorted to learn to be good ‘listeners’, and listening to those with chronic illness, their carers and loved ones is what should facilitate their continuing incorporation into the life of the Church.  It can be very hard for us to understand what having a chronic illness means to an individual.  Listening to them attentively can be painful and disturbing, when our instinct is to want to ‘fix’ things.  But that listening is essential if we are to:

1. Follow Christ in sharing their pain (physical, mental and emotional);
2. Include their experience in the life-experience of our community;
3. Make our responses and offers to them appropriate to their needs.

Huska refers to the thinking of Parker Palmer in his book A Hidden Wilderness; Welcoming the Soul and Weaving Community in a Broken World,[2] where he talks about creating ‘circles of trust’ and learning to ask honest and open questions that make space for ‘the soul to come out of hiding’. Honest and open questions are those that do not presume to know the answers.

Preparation to enable us to do this is not without cost, but starts with acknowledging the reality of suffering.  We need to re-learn how to lament together. The Psalmists knew how; Psalm 88 starts ‘Lord, you are the God who saves me. Day and night I cry out to you. Please hear my prayer. Pay attention to my cry for help. I have so many troubles I’m about to die. People think my life is over. I’m like someone who doesn’t have any strength. People treat me as if I were dead. I’m like those who have been killed and are now in the grave…’ (Ps 88:1-8 NRiV).This psalm that reminds us that we can share our often very mixed feelings with God.

It is easy to ‘forget’ those who are unable to be a physical part of our worshipping community, for whatever reason.  It is as if they have become part of the eternal ‘communion of saints’ without checking in at the pearly gates!  Yet if we accept that God values whatever we can offer, as Jesus valued the widow’s small coins (Mk12:41-44),we must make room for all in the Christian body.  We must allow them to add their experience to ours, to increase our understanding of where God is in this suffering world.  We must listen to their needs and cherish the opportunities for us to grow as we learn how to meet them.

There are practical ways in which we can show our continuing care for those with chronic illness, after consultation with them or their carers – ‘meal ministries’, medical advocacy, physical presence, (or, if more appropriate, online); financial help, inclusive communal events (with the provision of different kinds of accessibility key)– whatever is suited to their condition or need.  And we should not forget to offer love and support to carers and family, who will have their own physical, spiritual and emotional challenges.

The poet, John Keats, took issue with his contemporaries’ description of life as a ‘vale of tears’.  It was, he wrote, ‘a vale of soul making’.  Life in all its fullness can be experienced even in the presence of real suffering.  And it is a life that we need to share together.

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[1] Liuan Huska, Hurting Yet Whole (IVP, 2020)

[2] Parker Palmer A Hidden Wilderness; Welcoming the Soul and Weaving Community in a Broken World (San Francisco Jossey Press 2004)

by Jan Berry.

We are pleased to continue our partnership with Spectrum, a community of Christians of all denominations which encourages groups and individuals to explore the Christian faith in depth. This year the study papers are on the theme of ‘Heartfelt Worship’ by Rev’d Jan Berry (author and former principal of Luther King House, Manchester) and Tim Baker (Local Preacher, All We Can’s Churches and Volunteer’s Manager and contributor to the Twelve Baskets Worship Resources Group). This is the first of six coming through the year…

Worship from the heart? Ways of understanding worship and liturgy

by Jan Berry

Worship can be subjective – relating to our feelings and emotions, or worship can be objective – the duty and service we offer to God, regardless of feelings. The literal meaning of ‘liturgy’ is ‘the work of the people’: as such it needs to be accessible, inclusive, contextual and embodied.

Accessible liturgy

It is important that in worship we use words and images that can be understood and resonate with contemporary worshippers. Worship needs to avoid theological jargon, but also to challenge us to see God, or our faith, in a new way. Liturgy needs to be accessible — something within our grasp — but it can also be aspirational, calling us to reach beyond where we are to where we would like to be. 

Inclusive liturgy

We need both female and male language and imagery for God and humanity. Gender-neutral language may be helpful, but can render the female invisible, and make God impersonal.  It is important to use a range of imagery, encompassing male, female, gay and straight, non-binary and queer. We need to be aware of other forms of inclusivity — avoiding language which equates race and colour, or disability, with sin, for example. Inclusivity takes seriously the doctrine of ‘imago Dei’ — we are all made in the image of God. People of colour, people with disabilities, gay, trans, male, female, non-binary, all need to be able to see themselves in the image of God.

Contextual Worship

All worship arises from a context — this is not always obvious, but we need to be aware of, amongst other factors, the age and health of our congregations, the possible range of emotional states, and acknowledging the shadow side of human experience. Sometimes contextual worship will be spontaneous, but more often we are relying on existing resources. There is a need for care in appropriating words and resources from other cultures. If our worship is to be heartfelt then it needs to be authentic, and true to our own context. 

Embodied worship

The final thing that I want to say about our heartfelt worship is that it needs to be embodied. Our worship needs to be holistic, because we are created beings, made in God’s own image. Christian faith has at its core the doctrine of incarnation the Word made flesh, and our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Thus a Trinitarian theology and worship leads us to an affirmation of human bodily existence as good and holy.

Embodied worship uses all of our senses, makes use of symbols or symbolic action; symbol and symbolic action are not only expressive, but performative — they help to create the mood or understanding, which they symbolise.

Heartfelt worship needs to be authentic and offered with integrity, accessible and relating to our contexts, and resonating with all the God-given richness of our embodied selves.  Then we will be truly worshipping in spirit and in truth, with mind and body, from the depths of our hearts.

For Discussion:

• Which has been the most God-centred experience of worship for you?
• What are the merits of both liturgical and free worship.
• Does the Methodist Plan system help to enhance worship?

by Christine Odell.

At the Pool of Bethesda, among the great number of sick people, ‘One person who was there had been disabled for 38 years.  Jesus saw him lying there. He knew that the man had been in that condition for a long time. So he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”’ (Jn 5:5,6 NrIV).  The man reacted by making an excuse for his inability to get into the healing waters. Perhaps, rather than being accusatory, Jesus’s question was seeking consent to touch, agreement to be healed.  But this story speaks of the marginalisation and disabling of those who are ill, as well as raising questions about the search for, and nature of, health.

Our daughter, now in her early thirties, is disabled by three chronic illnesses and also has to spend most of her time lying down.  The relatively recent rise of the incidence of chronic illness in younger people is little understood. My mother suffered from a disabling chronic illness for the last 23 years of her life.  In the United Kingdom almost half of the population is recorded as having chronic illness – of varying degrees of intensity, and often age related.  Most families will be touched by this.  The wholeness of health, mobility, ability to ‘do’ is perceived as ‘normal life’ but, because it is so often experienced as fleeting, this is a perception to be challenged, ‘…any difference is simply between disabled and temporarily able bodied.’[1]

So what can ‘life in all its fullness’ (Jn 10;10b) mean for the Christian with chronic illness? How can they live the life of faith when much that society (and church) sees as ‘normal’, essential and desirable is denied them?  Are they heard when they say ‘I am not trying to be recovered, I am claiming my self-worth’.[2]

In their helpful book, Your Companion through Chronic Illness,[3] Shadbolt and Long set out the myths about chronic illness that Christians should dispel:

1. ‘It’s a sign of God’s displeasure.’ – Suffering is a fact of nature (Matt 5:45).
2. ‘Illness is your fault.’ ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents?’ (Jn 9:2).
3. ‘It is all in your head.’ But it’s your mind and body, you know them best.  Accusations like this have been made against those with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but sufferers know better and medical science is slowly catching up.
4. ‘There’s a simple solution that you’re missing.’ (!)
5. ‘Life will never be good again.’
6. ‘Nobody will want to be with you now.’

All of these myths are destructive of a sense of self-worth, of experiencing the life in all its fullness that Jesus offers.

Modern society worships ‘doing’ and success, health, and self-fulfilment, living ‘our best lives’.  But the lifestyle this society prizes is beyond the reach of those with chronic illness.  Even within the church there is a tendency to expect that Christians will be busy and happy.  ‘Keep busy, Jesus is coming!’ ‘Smile, Jesus loves you!’ The question ‘How can one suffering from chronic illness be a ‘real’ Christian, if the effort required just to live precludes worship and service?’ gets ignored.

Luan Huska writes ‘While there is much about your disease you cannot control, you can control your attitude and approach to it.’[4] Those with chronic illness are forced to find a new way of living and thinking that incorporates and values who they are now.  God coming to us in Christ encourages us to ‘be’ in our bodies, however broken and disloyal.  This is who we are and this is how we experience God with us, and whatever we can offer in return, in loving faith, is acceptable to God. Jesus said ‘Come to me, all who are weary and whose load is heavy; I will give you rest… for my yoke is easy to wear, my load is light.’ (Matt 11:26, 30)- a challenge to our Christian life/work or being/doing balance!

The values of society and our own weakness in bearing one another’s burdens have made the church community a difficult place for some Christians with chronic illness.  There is a perceived need to hide suffering, both physical and spiritual, to wear a ‘shining Sunday’ face. But in churches where we see the Suffering Christ on the Cross, we are reminded that God is with us in suffering, that this is the place to come, to lament as well as to praise.  God does not ‘turn His face away’ (MP 988). The crucifix foreshadows the empty Cross of the Resurrection that gives us hope in the victory of love, the promise of New Life.

And the gift of life in all its fullness, the gift of wholeness is offered freely to all, is to be experienced even in the brokenness, the limitations and the frustrations of our own incarnate lives.

How the church community can help those with chronic illness experience that gift is for another article!

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[1] Deborah Beth Creamer, Disability and Christian Theology – Embodied Limits and Constructive Possibilities (New York: OUP, 2008) quoted by Liuan Huska in Hurting Yet Whole (see fn 4)

[2] Alice Hattrick, Ill Feelings, (Fitzcarraldo, 2021)

[3] Elaine Shadbolt and Nancy Long Your Companion through Chronic Illness (Abingdon Press, 2019)

[4] Liuan Huska, Hurting Yet Whole (IVP, 2020)

by Paul Bridges.

Back in 1998 Yazz and the Plastic population sang to us that “the only way is up”. Other than fondly remembering the days of such delightfully named pop groups, I have been wondering if that is true. And more specifically if it is true in our theological thinking. Now I don’t mean that all our theological thinking is heavenward, because heaven may not be a place in that sense and it certainly does not appear to be hiding in the stars. Rather I am wondering if our theological thoughts and understanding has to progress in an linear fashion, where the more we do it the closer we get to “The Truth”.

In many aspects of life there is a hidden assumption that this is the case. The harder the athlete trains and the better they execute their skills, then the faster, higher or longer they will go. The maths or history we learn at infant school is superseded by that which we learn at junior school and this process is repeated once again at high school and even again at university if we reach this level.

Our economy, at least in the West, is predicated on the idea that we need to grow and this is the only definition of success – bigger is better. In so many aspects of our lives progress is seen as only having one direction.

During a recent house group conversation, we were asked to share a Bible passage that had significant meaning to us, and another passage that troubled us. As I reflected on my choices I realised that the meaningful passage (Isaiah 43:1-7), whilst still having real meaning for me, I now understand in a very different way than I first did 30+ years ago. Thinking more about this, I realised that the value and meaning that I have found in this passage has changed multiple times over those years. At the time, when I first felt this passage speaking to me it had a very personal meaning. I can see now that at times it has spoken to me not as an individual but as part of a community, and again at other times I have found meaning in the historical legacy and tradition that this passage is part of.

Each way the passage has spoken to me reflects something of how I understand God, but with the benefit of hindsight I can also see it reflects where I was in my life at that particular time. My theology has not developed incrementally but thematically as my life experienced, joy and grief, health and illness, youth and experience.

Many of us through our lives can see how our understanding of the Divine has changed and developed over the years and it is tempting to assume that our understanding has got better. The problem is that as a collection of God’s people our deepening understanding a s we go through life is not always in the same direction.

This assumption also affect how we understand the faith of others, now and of people of faith down the years. This quote from John Dominic Crossan illustrates, I think, the meaning and understanding that we can miss if we assume that theological development only happens in one direction.

“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”[1]

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) is generally considered to be the most researched and validated psychological tool in existence. It is noteworthy for its use by many Christian communities and the way that it can help people to understand themselves, others and their relationship with God. (If you can find a copy, I recommend Pray Your Way: Your Personality and God, by Bruce Duncan)

MBTI is not a personality test – there is no right or wrong answer, nor does it tell you how you behave, rather it shows what your natural preferences are. But importantly, we can, all when necessary, act in other ways. As we grow older, many of us start to slowly become more confident to behave in new ways. We might discover delight in trying new things and whilst they may never become as fluent as our natural preferences, MBTI practitioners believe that we often find real value and meaning in these later life developments. In his book Bruce Duncan shows how this can be true for the development of spirituality especially in mid and later life. By using part of our personality that are not our go to approach we can open up new understanding of God. The development of mid and older life spirituality is just one example of how we can find God by going backwards or even sideways.

The “Only Way is Up” may not be true after all! 

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[1] John Dominic Crossan and Richard G Watts (1996), Who is Jesus?: answers to your questions about the historical Jesus, Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, p.79

by Jennie Hurd.

My first Spiritual Director was a wonderful, older, Poor Clare nun called Mother Paula. Heaven knows what she made of the young Methodist probationer presbyter who came to visit her, but she listened patiently and offered words of wisdom that I treasure to this day. During one conversation on prayer and the challenge of praying, she floored me with the profundity and simplicity of her advice: “There’s always the Our Father.”

Until then, I had considered the Lord’s Prayer to be predominantly for corporate worship and not for personal devotion. The clue was in its grammar, surely – “Our,” “us” – and I had been taught from childhood that God wanted to hear from me personally, in my own words. Mother Paula’s wisdom transformed my attitude to the Lord’s Prayer. It became an essential part of my daily devotions, but it is especially precious now as a mindful meditation when I find myself on ‘Planet 3 a.m.’ and, over the years, in those pastoral situations and difficult meetings where other words simply fail. As Mother Paula said, “There’s always the Our Father.” As followers of Jesus, it unites us. As an expression of our relationship with God, it brings us into relationship with all who have prayed similarly in very varied circumstances over the centuries.

I am not a Greek scholar, and so my understanding of the Lord’s Prayer has been expanded by the nuances of other different translations and versions that are available to us. Always, however, the pattern remains the same: it begins with God – “Our Father…”; it moves to we who pray – “Give us today…”; it returns to God – “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours…” For me, it gives a pattern for living, with God as our beginning and end, our context, the one in whom “we live and move and have our being”.[1] In spite of these three apparent movements through the pattern of the prayer, I perceive a pivot point which comes when we move from “Your kingdom come, Your will be done” to “Give us today…” – a kind of shift, if you like, as the prayer becomes a more of a conversation, a dialogue, and so the blueprint for all our prayers.

Two words from the traditional version of the Lord’s Prayer have recently repaid further reflection: “trespasses” and “temptation.” According to Nick Hayes, “’Trespass’ is one of the most charged words in the English language.”[2]  Even in its legal context, it still carries a “moral stigma.”[3] He points out the irony that it was the freethinking Bible translator William Tyndale who incorporated it into the Lord’s Prayer and therefore deeply into the English language. Contemporary versions use the word “sins” or “debts,” drawing on the gospels of Luke and Matthew respectively, and William Barclay commends the former for its simplicity[4]. I sense Mother Paula would approve.

Having worked in Wales for much of my ministry, I have learnt that the Welsh word used for “temptation” in the Lord’s Prayer is “profedigaeth.” It carries the sense of an experience of testing (“profi” means to test, to prove), but it is also the word commonly used for bereavement. A woman once told me after a bilingual service that she had never prayed the Lord’s Prayer in English before and that doing this had a given her a new understanding. She realized that she was not actually asking for God to keep her from bereavement, an experience which, as she rightly said, is impossible, but rather asking for a different kind of help: “Save us from the time of trial,” as one version puts it. For me, the Welsh expresses this better than the English, leading to my interpretation that our prayer is for resistance to temptation and strength not to yield in the trying times. There are occasions when I cling to this like a lifebelt.

I offer a question in conclusion: What would be your ‘Desert Island’ word or phrase from the Lord’s Prayer? To put it another way, what word or words distil the essence of the Lord’s Prayer for you? For me, it is “Your will be done,” but the Prayer is so rich, it will be different for all of us. Thank God for that.

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[1] Acts 17: 28

[2] Hayes, N: The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us (Bloomsbury: 2020), p17

[3] Ibid, p18

[4] Barclay, W: The Lord’s Prayer (Arthur James: 1998), p87

by Catrin Harland-Davies.

From ‘intentional community’ to ‘intentional presence’, the idea of ‘being intentional’ about something has become key to Christian mission in the last decade or so. It often carries an important emphasis on the kind of witness which remains consciously aware of God’s presence and of God’s love for all creation, though I suspect that, as with all such words, it has rather too often become just a piece of jargon, sounding ‘right’, but without meaning anything very specific.

So, in an attempt to reclaim its significance for myself, I have found myself reflecting on what it means to do something intentionally, but also wondering whether there might be an equal and opposite emphasis that is every bit as important? What does ‘accidental mission’ look like? Or, for that matter, ‘accidental presence’ or ‘accidental community’?

To state the obvious for a moment, if I act intentionally, it distinguishes that action from something I didn’t mean to do. It’s not an inadvertent benefit of a main action, nor is it something that I would have chosen to avoid but failed to anticipate. I might intentionally engage in conversation with someone, which is very different from getting buttonholed as I’m trying to sneak past!

The related nouns – intention and intent – are subtly and interestingly different, I think. Intention speaks perhaps of hope or expectation – it is my intention to visit my parents next week, or to get more exercise. It implies planning and expectation, but stops just a little short of the more definite “I will visit my parents.” Intent, on the other hand, feels more to do with the motive behind specific actions. In law, hurting someone with intent to do so is distinguished from the same hurt caused by carelessness or accident. A ‘ministry of presence’ is often (slightly tongue-in-cheek) referred to as ‘loitering with intent’. It is, in other words, intentional presence. There is a purpose behind my loitering; I am not just short of things to fill my time. The intent may be to be available for conversation if needed, or it may be explicitly to share the Gospel. It is not the actual action, but it’s the reason for it.

All of this is good and important. But I am very acutely aware that some of the most important and profound encounters that I have had, which have been transformative and God-filled, have not been done with intent. It’s often when I’m off-guard, off-duty, loitering with no intent at all, that God creeps into my interactions. For that matter, some of the best expressions of community that I have met with have been entirely unplanned and unintentional. When I worked in a university, students would spend Freshers’ Week going to various events to meet like-minded friends, but the deep and lasting friendships were just as often formed in the registration queue, or trying to operate the driers in the laundry.

And, for that matter, those of us who preach will know that some of the most important things that are heard in a sermon, which give most comfort or challenge to someone who needs it, are precisely not what we have planned on saying, or even thought we had said. Because sometimes, God doesn’t work through our careful plans or our intent, but in the unexpected and unintended. Sometimes, God may actually work through us despite our intent.

Or just look at the ministry of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, or that of his earliest followers, in the book of Acts. Sometimes, there is a very clear intent to be available, to minister, to teach, to offer time. At other times, things just happen. A woman touches Jesus’ cloak, while he’s hurrying to a dying child; people hunt him out while he’s praying; his disciples wake him up from a well-earned nap to ask for help in a storm. The richness of Jesus’ ministry comes, in part, from the mixture of his divinely intentional presence in the world and his availability to those who surprise him.

And similarly with his followers. We read in Acts how Saul, on his way to Damascus, found that his own intention might not be the key driver of events, and Peter, summoned by Cornelius, allowed his best intentions to be overridden by the prompting of the Spirit. But we also read how, much later in his ministry, Saul / Paul went to Jerusalem, knowing that it would likely lead to his arrest, in an act of quite intentional witness – as, of course, had Jesus done when his ‘time had come’.

Sometimes, our intent matters. But what matters more is God’s intent. We should be seeking to witness intentionally, and intentionally to live as disciples of Jesus, but our own intentions must not and cannot direct the intent of God for us and for all creation. We need to be open to surprises – to the overthrowing of our best intentions. I would like to suggest that, in the midst of our intentional following of Jesus, we need to ensure that – just sometimes – we are a little less intentional.