Leighton Carr – Page 19

Living Cities – the need for Creative and Inspired Urban Theology

Living in cities can be challenging, exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time. Some of us love it. Many don’t.

\r\nHow can the church flourish (or even survive) in the modern city, when everyone has so little time and energy for anything but the day-to-day business of staying solvent and sane? In fact, one of the ironies of city churches is that while cities exist because they offer an efficient consolidation of resources, one of the features of many city or urban churches is that they are paired down to the minimum because resources are scarce. I know this having spent all my life in churches serving cities – either city centre, or inner city, or the urban poor.\r\n\r\nAnd yet, one of the hallmarks of the Kingdom of God is growth leading to fruitfulness. It is not scarcity leading to barrenness.\r\n\r\nWhat’s the problem?\r\n\r\nWell, there are lots of problems, but a significant one is that we do not invest enough time in understanding the nature of the urban context in which we witness and worship.\r\n\r\nIt is my firm belief based on years of observation that our praxis (how we act) is weak because our understanding of our context is poor and so our application of theology to our context is immature. I once wrote this:\r\n\r\n“… questions such as …\r\n

… what is this context … how is it formed … how does it form its people … what are its symbols and motifs, its myths and images, and how do they shape the community living amongst them?

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… help unravel our context. When informed by our theology they lead us to the key questions both the urban theologian and the local Christian want to answer:

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“where is God in this context, where does He want to be, and therefore, what should we do?”

\r\nThe praxis of urban life is the concern of the poor, the voiceless, the young, the old, of everyone from the makers of history to the inhabitants of shabby cityscapes. Every participant in an urban context is formed by it in some way … It becomes imperative that somewhere within the urban faith community there should be theologians fully engaged with context to interpret it in the light of their learning.\r\n\r\nSo I’m wondering, how many churches have employed theologians, and maybe anthropologists, historians, sociologists, to help them interpret their context?\r\n\r\nFor those that are interested in how this applies to an inner city context see Experiments in Praxis.\r\n\r\nor click on the icon …\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n

Sowing and Reaping

Many of us experience times when we feel we are not sowing spiritual seeds for a future harvest.\r\n\r\nThis is not about times when we are resting, or when we have stepped out of our everyday routines to gain some perspective. During these times it’s right to hold back and find new energy and direction.\r\n\r\nInstead, this is about the times when we have energy, capacity, and capability … but no opportunity, usually to due to circumstances outside our control.\r\n\r\nLeaders in ministry often experience this, but the problem is not exclusive to leaders. In fact, leaders often have more opportunity and power to change and improve their own circumstances than most people.\r\n\r\nNo, this situation could apply to anyone of us.\r\n\r\nThe solution?\r\n\r\nThe best advice I’ve heard recently is from Pete Davies – church consultant and friend:\r\n

“When you can’t sow into your own field, then sow into someone else’s field\r\nand help them bear a harvest”

\r\n … and then you can do what Pete suggests:\r\n

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant”

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When pruning means cutting growth

We started a new ministry two years ago.

It was popular. It was reasonably well attended.

But after one year we cut the programme.

Why? Because although it had grown, our detailed analysis revealed some interesting facts.

First, although the event had grown its growth was mainly due to people who would have gone to any number of events that were reasonably accessible, reasonably competently run, and populated with people they knew.

Second, it was an inclusive, welcoming environment, and people of all ages and abilities came and worked together on great projects. However, that highlighted the difficulty of bringing established congregation members into something they perceived as too creative and out of the ordinary.

Consequently, and third, the church in which this event was hosted never got behind the programme. In other words (or in our words) the event was not renewing the people we wanted to renew.

So our event was inclusive, and welcoming, and creative, and accessible, and, to an extent, growing. But it was unsustainable. And it was taking a considerable amount of our available leadership resources.

And so we cut it when it seemed to be in its prime. It was sad, but we needed the resources for something more effective.

Anyone who’s pruned roses knows the problem. Roses need pruning in the spring to prepare for growth, and then fast growing suckers need to be removed once the growth starts so energy isn’t drained form the main plant, and they need dead-heading, and they need pruning at the end of the season. All this if they are to reach their best.

In other words, to get a beautiful rose all season the plants need to be pruned surgically and often, from before the beginning until after the end of the growing season.

The only time roses aren’t pruned is in the winter when everything is dead.

And that’s probably true of some churches too.

Creativity – the No1 Skill of the Future

The graphic below was taken from the IBM 2012 Global CEO Study (for the full page on Creativity check it out here or download the study itself here).

The graphic speaks for itself.

Perhaps those of us who have clipped other skills on to our core skill of Creativity will find it easier to move forward in the increasingly compressed and difficult world ahead?

Embrace Creativity if you have it. Get it if you don’t. Or get near people who have it if you can’t get it.

Connected blog … here

Graphic taken from the IBM 2012 Global CEO Study

The No.1 Competency

Last week a friend said to me ‘You’re an ideas person’.\r\n\r\nI baulked. Cringed. Panicked! Defended.\r\n\r\nAfterwards I wondered why, and then I remembered. Those (many) times over the years when the term ‘Ideas Person’ had been used as a way of excluding or confining or sneering or judging.\r\n\r\nAnd … how many of us like to be pigeon-holed? We like to believe that there’s still scope for change and improvement.\r\n\r\nI took note therefore when this week I read about the ‘IBM 2012 Studyof CEOs’ reported in The Times (I would give the link if The Times was accessible without payment). Checking out the IBM website shows this:\r\n\r\n“According to a major new IBM survey of more than 1,500 Chief Executive Officers from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, chief executives believe that successfully navigating an increasing complex world will require Creativity – more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision.\r\n\r\nSo, YES! I’m an Ideas Person. I practice Creativity on a daily basis. It is the air I breathe and my second language.\r\n\r\nJust don’t forget that I can deliver too … look\r\n\r\nFor the IBM chart on Creativity see here

Serendipity. Coincidence. Guidance?

Not all coincidences or accidents can be taken as guidance. In fact, trying to ‘read’ guidance into dramatic physical occurrences can easily fall into the category of superstition (said Jesus in Luke 13).\r\n\r\nBut sometimes the dramas of life can lead in a clear direction.\r\n\r\nSo it was in the story of Arthur Tappan Pierson, a New Yorker, born in 1837 and named after his father’s employer. He was a bright student, language scholar and Phi Beta Kappa. He grew to be a powerful orator and was a pastor of great and large churches around America, and accidentally also in England, where he had been invited by his friend C H Spurgeon to help with preaching duties at the Metropolitan Tabernacle during the latter’s illness. A Presbyterian not a Baptist, Pierson found himself ‘in post’ when Spurgeon died.\r\n\r\nPierson was the one of the first members of the YMCA, and spoke at it’s first conference in Northfield in 1886 where he coined the phrase “the evangelisation* of the world in this generation”. From this conference 100 men dedicated themselves to overseas missions and became the founding core of the Student Volunteer Movement. By the time of Pierson’s death in 1911 over 5,000 Student Volunteers had sailed to mission fields abroad.\r\n\r\nBut what about the sign?\r\n\r\nWhen Pierson was 39 years old he was a prominent leader in his denomination, a well published writer of articles, sermons and poems, a powerful speaker, and successful parish minister. But he was dissatisfied with his successful ministry in high profile churches because he could not reach the poor in his local city, let alone the un-evangelised populations around the world.\r\n\r\nOn March 24^th 1876 Pierson met with around sixty of his parishioners to pray – not in the church building – that the obstacles that held his church back from reaching the poor be removed.\r\n\r\nWhile they prayed, and without their knowing, their beautiful church building was burning down. Everything was destroyed, right down to the desk where Pierson stored his Bible notes. Only, the Bible notes survived.\r\n\r\nPierson took it as a sign. The church hired the local opera house as a meeting room and in the next fifteen months hundreds of people came to faith under his new style of preaching – simple, direct, challenging. He never looked back from his new focus on evangelism and mission theory.\r\n\r\nComfortable yet Dissatisfied? Talented, Equipped, but Ineffective? Pray. Invite others. Maybe even pray for the church to burn down! (Metaphorically)\r\n\r\nAnd if you have the chance, read the story of Arthur Tappan Pierson.\r\n\r\n* NOTE: spell checker want to put Liberalisation instead of Evangelisation … in a strange way, maybe not far from the truth?

Six Words for a Simple Plan

It’s great to hear a church leader speak confidently and clearly about the aims of their denomination.\r\n\r\nSo it was this morning, when Chris James, Pastor of Vintage Community Church in Portishead, Bristol and Weston-Super-Mare, told us about the aims of the Assemblies of God churches in Britain.\r\n\r\n”We are Apostolically Led, Relationally Connected and Missionally Focused.” he said.\r\n\r\nThat’s it.\r\n\r\nSix words giving a simple and yet dynamic purpose for 600 churches.\r\n\r\nMemorable. Transferable. Legible.\r\n\r\nDefined but with enough scope to allow freedom of thought.\r\n\r\nIs that your church?\r\n\r\nIs that you?\r\n\r\nIf not, try it. Write a six word, memorable, legible, dynamic purpose for yourself or your church.

The “Big Four” of Discipleship – Part 2

If you read The Big 4 – Part 1 you’ll know that the basic premise is that there is too much talking and too little understanding of Christian Discipleship which results in too few disciples…

If you read The Big 4 – Part 1 you’ll know that the basic idea is that there is too much talking and too little understanding of Christian Discipleship which results in too few disciples actually ‘doing’ discipleship and far too few able to teach discipleship.

Before outlining my simple plan of discipleship there are two things to remember:

First, discipleship is inherently simple. If it were not then most of the Christian world would not be flourishing, and it is.

And second, we have to DO it. It’s really worse than useless to keep talking about the same things that are the wrong things and not do the important things that are the right things.

So my simple plan of discipleship includes four things, what I call the Big Four of Discipleship, and they are:

Prayer – which includes learning to pray and to worship,

Witness – connecting us with Scripture and with God’s world

Service – both inside and outside the church

Life – doing life well with increasing wisdom.

If I could do these four things well I believe I would be living as an effective disciple.

And I also believe – without any doubt whatsoever – that a community of people who can do these things well together would be an effective church – with everyone ‘brought to maturity in Christ’ (Ephesians 4:13)

So that’s my simple plan. And my simple aim in life is to help churches do these four things so well that they become mountain moving, culture challenging communities of love and faith.

(… and for an effective church see G.L.A.D. – A Church Near You)

The “Big Four” of Discipleship – Part 1

Ask yourself the question: how many disciples do you know who have the facility to teach you to be a better disciple?\r\n\r\nYou know the sort of thing:\r\n

when you’re stuck in prayer they can teach you where to go next;

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when you are struggling to understand the Bible they can connect passages and themes for you;

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when you stumble over your words at work when trying describe your experience of God they can help you clarify what you really think;

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when you struggle with lowering debt or raising children they can sit alongside you and help you formulate plans that are practical and sensible and yet faithful to the Bible.

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\r\nI’ve been through my contact list (which is extensive). Leaving out clergy, I know only four people who are close.\r\n\r\nLeaving out licensed lay ministers, that leaves three.\r\n\r\nAnd two of them are women.\r\n\r\n(Interestingly all bar one have come through very hard times in which they have had their faith chiselled and beaten into shape).\r\n\r\nHow close are you? How close am I?\r\n\r\nWhile we’re thinking about this we need a plan … mine is here – The “Big Four” of Disipleship – Part 2

Pray always. Really?

Yes, that’s a question. Really? Always?

I was sitting in the ‘New York New York’ cafe/bar on Allee de la Liberte Charles de Gaule in Cannes on a Sunday afternoon during the most dramatic storm I think I’d ever run away from.

I was musing on the faith that exists in the gap between lack and promise (was that from someone else? I can’t remember). My scribbled notes say things like,

the place of faith is misunderstood, so-you-too-will–be-misunderstood

the place of faith is confusing, abnormal, radical, and (in no small way) stupid

But to put this in context.

My scribbled notes were made at a table surrounded by about seventy young, confident, French people also sheltering from the storm at other tables. Most of them smoking – yes, indoors. We were under the full length canopy in front of the full length open doors to the bar (see the photo below for a sunny view of my seat…). The front translucent walls had been lowered to keep out the rain.

Ahh … the rain.

It rained so hard that it was like fog – visually impenetrable, apart from the lightning. And it was falling so hard on the canopy that it was impossible to hear much else, so the young people shouted a lot. There were candles on the tables, even though it was only four in the afternoon. The candles were partly because the storm made everything so dark, and partly because the rain had fused the lights and heaters under the canopy.

The thunder was an event all in itself. Every three or four minutes new catastrophic thunder claps rolled over us. Then every minute. Then every thirty seconds. In this almost continuous thundering and beating rain, with everyone shouting and laughing and with a lot smoking and drinking, it was hard not to think of Noah and everyone carrying on as if nothing was happening.

So I ordered a second double espresso and jotted down some more notes.

faith is the time between the answer and the asking

Then I closed my eyes, and for a while went into that quiet internal space that allows us to pray in the middle of chaos. Quiet transcendence.

Maybe a minute. Maybe a few minutes.

But eventually the noise seeped back in. I realised I was sitting with my eyes closed while God and Noah’s neighbours were playing chicken with the weather. I looked around and laughed out loud at the sheer energy around me.

I stood up, took my coffee and sauntered through the tables into a quiet space in the back of the cafe and watched Toulouse beat Leicester Tigers in the first round of the Heineken Cup.