Future Jobs Fund

I spent most of this morning until well after lunch time interviewing prospective candidates to work at our centre under the terms of the Future Jobs Fund. This is a government scheme which pays unemployed young people, aged 18-24, to do 25 hours a week in a six-month work experience placement. Nationally, The Salvation Army is promoting the scheme through its Employment Plus initiative, and a number of placements are now running at various Life Houses (the new name for our social services hostels), as well as Salvation Army churches similar to our own.

As a church with our own Employment Plus project we decided some time ago that we should get involved supporting local unemployed young people. Subsequently, we put our bid in for two childcare placements as well as one opportunity for someone to develop our Employment Resource Centre and to provide some practical admin support around the building.

And so our candidates came for interview, those that managed to show up at least, each of them seemingly inexperienced in everything but with one thing in common – the need to be given a chance. And if the church of Jesus Christ can’t give them that chance then who will? That challenge has stayed with me as, in the next couple of days, we make decisions about who, if anyone, will get that chance.

In our foyer hangs a banner that says, “A Church For Everyone.” I am often challenged by it. Are we really inclusive? Are we really for everyone? Are we prepared for what everyone really means? I hope and pray that it is, and always will be, the case – for the people of God are made up of those that found a second chance, the opportunity to begin again, the people He graciously accepts even though He has no reason to.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. (Ephesians 1: 7-8, TNIV)

Facebook good, Facebook bad

It’s fairly well-known that I love technology, enjoy the benefits it gives us, and I enjoy using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, although I am a recent convert to Twitter and still not really all that sure about the point of “microblogging.” Still, that’s for another time.

Occasionally, I have reason to pause and reflect whether maintaining an online presence on Facebook is something I want to do. Some people will laugh at the very idea that I might stop. Just to be clear, I don’t do Farmville, sheep-throwing, jewellery collection or pointless quizzes about people. I don’t reject friend requests from anyone unless it’s obviously someone dodgy. I enjoy the interplay with people I don’t necessarily know personally, the exchange of ideas, the banter with friends. Of course, as a responsible parent, I am not allowing my children to have accounts and even when they are old enough they certainly won’t be online friends with anyone with whom they aren’t already real life friends. However, back to me…

What I value about Facebook is being able to maintain some connection with people who are unlikely to call me and vice versa. I like being able to maintain a connection with some of the young people connected to our church, some of whom we don’t see very often. I like being able to share a joke or blow off some steam at no one in particular.

Today, however, Facebook has intruded into my day in a most personal way and I find that I am totally resentful about the whole thing. A long, and ultimately fruitless, conversation (in which I was not personally involved) started this morning as a courteous dialogue and kept on going all day, intruding into personal family time, and gradually spiralling into something entirely unpleasant and personal. And it was all entirely predictable because questions that invite discussion are very rarely genuine lines of enquiry, rather often behind them lies a supposition, an agenda, a prejudice. Rarely, if ever, do these online debates, be they on Facebook, blog sites or other platforms, ever result in someone having the grace to say they have changed their mind, had their thinking challenged or are grateful for the dialogue. We all say we want dialogue but none of us is really prepared to be vulnerable enough to allow that dialogue to shape us.

Social networking is about community, and in community people see things differently. But sometimes social networking can become a community of cowardice as we hide behind our keyboards and smart phones, lobbing in comment after comment with nothing but text to inform our thinking, and with only text to play with we miss the nuances, the passion, the body language, the confusion, the hurt. And before anyone reaches for the comment button (which you are most welcome to do) I know that I am guilty of this too from time-to-time. My friend Adam Couchman who blogs over here, found a piece by N. T. Wright some months ago which says it all, really, and which is worth repeating (here). Wright himself has had a very public dispute on the nature of justification (with John Piper) but readers of both protagonists will know how this has been conducted with courtesy and consideration at every turn, so it is possible.

Over at the Rubicon, Commissioner Joe Noland has written a very helpful piece about the power of the publisher, “Much ado about…” The Commissioner hits the nail on the head: technology has made anyone who wants to be an all-powerful publisher. We can say what we want, how we want to, but someone once said that with power comes responsibility. Maybe part of that responsibility is about how we treat those who see things differently.

In the early part of the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah and the Lord dialogue about Israel, the failed community of holiness. Today, for me at least, the online community of social networking failed as a community of holiness. God is not honoured in this. Those who believe they have a prophetic voice to the community of faith need to examine the assumption of that position carefully (Jeremiah 14:14-15). Harsh? Perhaps? But I am the publisher here so what can you do?

In the meantime, may we seek to honour the Lord and bring glory to His Holy Name in every community that we call home.

Something profound to say

For some reason I feel challenged to write here again, although I am not sure I have very much to say. I am in the middle of writing a literature review for my MA, and am taking some of the writings of Jürgen Moltmann as my subject. I am thoroughly enjoying the subject, although finding it quite a challenge in terms of time, focus and ability. I ought to, therefore, have something profound to say about all of that, and perhaps, in due course, I will.

In the meantime I find myself stuck on one particular verse in Jeremiah, which I keep looking at:

If you have raced with people on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan? (Jeremiah 12:5)

The context is the dialogue between God and Jeremiah in which Jeremiah questions God about the apparent prosperity of the wicked, and God replies promising a terrifying mixture of His justice AND His compassion. Specifically, God warns Jeremiah that he cannot even trust his own family (v6).

We are currently enjoying the relative quite of August, waiting for what I call “the chaos quarter” which starts with Annual Appeal, ends with Christmas Day, and sees me deliver an 8,000 word paper to my MA supervisor somewhere in the middle. However, it is almost as if I hear the Lord telling me not to bite off more than I can chew. As Lynley and I commence our fourth year of ministry at Failsworth we are still excited about what the Lord is doing here now, and what He is graciously going to do next, but somewhere here is the Lord’s warning to take life at His pace and not to fall into the trap of trying to get ahead of Him.

So not much profound to say, but plenty for me to be listening to.

Old conversation, new direction?

I’ve taken some time out for reflection and study this week and have been very encouraged in the process. It is always true that the greatest learning happens in interaction, and I have been grateful this week for a series of thought-provoking interactions with a number of people.

The holiness/mission question won’t go away in my mind, and looking around at the general tone of the “theological conversation” at the moment I find myself increasingly dissatisfied.

There are a number of voices arguing for The Salvation Army to rediscover its Wesleyan holiness roots. They have a lot to contribute to the discussion of what it means to live for Jesus today, and much of what they say is challenging and helpful. However, what I find in some of these conversations is a concept of mission that is confined to narrow personal evangelism. Mission is so much more than evangelism, and I believe we need to rediscover a corporate dimension in mission as well as personal responsibility. It might also be argued that there is too much emphasis on how some people in our movement’s history interpreted Wesley rather than on what he actually taught, but that’s a whole different discussion.

Somewhere else in the conversation are the voices of “new expressions” – in lots of forms – but in all the years this conversation has been running it seems some people can never get off the “inherited church bad; fresh expression good” band wagon and it seems to me that there’s a lot more critical discussion than constructive activity going on. The result seems to be a broad definition of mission, coupled with a poor quality of discipleship that nowhere near matches the rhetoric.

We don’t need an understanding of holiness that induces guilt and legalism, but neither do we need an understanding of holiness that is so liberal that we can all hide behind the missio Dei because God will make a happy ending regardless of what we do.

All these are old conversations, but can we begin to take them in a new direction? Can we rediscover, through Scripture, what holiness means for living a Jesus lifestyle in our age? Can we rediscover corporate dimensions of holiness and mission as well as individual ones? Can we really begin to understand that to live “in Christ” means participation in the divine life, that holiness and mission can never be divided? Can we frame the conversation in a way that respects where we came from?

At this point lots of people, many of whom I respect, will tell me why I am wrong – but I still think something is missing.

Holiness

One of my interests is the crossover between spiritual formation (holiness) and mission, and it is an area in which I am planning to do some more work on as I progress through my MA studies at Nazarene Theological College.

My friend and colleague officer in Australia, Captain Adam Couchman, is writing some good stuff over at his blog, “Set Apart in Christ,” which deserves a wider readership, particularly this post on the subject of holiness.

What right do you have to be angry?

I found the following paragraph in my drafts folder. It was written some months ago and I decided not to post it because of a number of sensitivities at the time. As I reached for the delete option I realised that the lesson I learned then is worth re-examining, especially now that we have all calmed down a little:

We are in a period of great pastoral need with a number of people very seriously ill. Like everyone else we prioritise. Like everyone else we sometimes fail to communicate those priorities clearly. Against this backdrop I visited someone who is not very happy with me and God gave me Jonah 4 to share – a scripture in which God takes Jonah to task for sulking. For a moment I adopted the moral high ground and then I realised that God was talking to me rather than the other person. What right do I have to be angry? Plenty, if I am angry about the same things that make God angry, but how often is that really the case?

Anger is a destructive emotion if it isn’t channelled into constructive change. Maybe I can learn to be less angry with the people who misunderstand me and more angry about the injustice, exploitation and enslavement that we see all around us? Not “angry enough to die” like poor, petulant Jonah, but angry enough to do something.

Employment Plus

Yesterday saw the launch of our new Employment Plus initiative, which received some good publicity in our local press, as well as benefiting from some great publicity by local Councillors Martin and Barker. The day didn’t get off to a good start as one of the three new laptops we are using in the cafe area failed on start up – well it was fine so long as you didn’t want to use the keyboard or trackpad!  The employment resource centre is open on a Wednesday, the same day that Lynley runs “Mainly Music” for pre-school children, parents and grandparents. It was good to see new people coming to that, and taking note of the employment resource centre as they went through to the main hall. Even better, we hadn’t been open long before we  had our first user.

It’s also been a week where Debt Matters has been very active, with Lynley and other members of the team working on a complex case (involving interest rates in excess of 50%!!) on and off throughout the week.

People were anxious about so many things, even before swine flu turned up. But it is very much our privilege to be able to do something practical for people – and, thereby, demonstrate something of Jesus and the values of His Kingdom.

As I write I have just received in the post a copy of the Poverty and Justice Bible which the Bible Society kindly sent me as a free gift in return for me completing a survey about their Lyfe resource. Flicking through it, I read:

“I looked again and saw people being ill-treated everywhere on earth. They were crying, but no one was there to offer comfort, and those who ill treated them were powerful.” (Ecclesiastes 4:1, CEV)

Lynley is in London today taking part in discussions about The Salvation Army’s response to debt issues. We’re a long way from fixing Failsworth, but I’ve watched her offering comfort to the ill treated and heard her speaking up for the powerless, and I think it is OK to say that I am very proud of her today, as well as being truly thankful for the privilege of serving alongside her.

Power and Poverty

I have been reading Dewi Hughes’ book, “Power and Poverty: Divine and Human Rule in a World of Need”. Hughes is the theological advisor for Tearfund.

Hughes spends a lot of the book unpacking stuff that lots of other writers already cover well, with a whole section on what the Old Testament says about God’s view of social justice and another section on what Jesus meant by the Kingdom. He does justice to both those topics in a fairly accessible style. However, the most challenging parts come towards the end when he gives us a much broader treatment of what evangelism could mean in a world where we should care about Jesus’ intentions to fix the world as much as we should about people booking their place in heaven.

“Fundamental for those who believe that evangelism and social action are inseparable is the conviction that the purpose of evangelism is to gather people into the community of those who desire to live together under the lordship of Jeus the Messiah. If this is the case, evangelism is a profoundly political activity because politics has to do with government, and here we are thinking about a people who voluntarily come under the government of Jesus Christ. Standard evangelical phrases like ‘coming to know Jesus as personal Saviour’ or ‘believing in Jesus for the forgiveness of sin’ must be placed in a wider context if they are to describe adequately what happens when someone becomes a Christian. . . . The biblical imagery points incontrovertibly to the fact that at the heart of the good news of the gospel is an ordered society under the government of Jesus.” (Hughes, 2008: 200)

If Hughes is right, and I think he might be, doesn’t that have huge implications for how we do church, for how we demonstrate an alternative Kingdom where justice and inclusion are at the forefront?

Cardboard Testimonies and Leafy Suburbs

God has drawn very near in the midst of a very busy Holy Week and Easter weekend.

In yesterday morning’s family service, Lynley used the following “cardboard testimonies” video clip with the soundtrack of Graham Kendrick’s “Led like a lamb.” We sit on the front row rather than facing the congregation, but during the film Caitlin needed me and as I walked to the back of the hall with her I realised that there was hardly a dry eye in the place. The reason? Simple. We can all put names to these cardboard testimonies, and each name is accompanied with the prayer that God will do a work of transformation in that person’s life as well as our own.

Today, Easter Monday, is a public holiday in England. We had our first proper family day for what seems like ages. We went over to Manchester Airport to catch up with our friend Nikki and her new fiance Jonathan who were en route to Belfast. Afterwards, we stopped off at Didsbury where I am a part-time postgraduate student at Nazarene Theological College. Didsbury is a leafy suburb between Manchester and Stockport, the home of the famous Ivy Cottage Church, and a very different place to Failsworth. It was good to stroll in the park, let our children enjoy their scooters in the wide open space, and wander up to the Pizza Express for tea. It was only a twenty minute drive home but, for the sake of a couple of hours relaxation, we could have been anywhere. Once again, we learn the value of having bolt holes close to home but away from our immediate ministry “patch”. Wesley is supposed to have said, “The world is my parish.” That being the case, I wonder where he escaped to for some downtime?

Easter 2009 – Failsworth – Resurrection Day

The Lord is Risen. He is Risen indeed!