aphorisms ..

the only place believers should be nicely ordered in rows, where they can be counted without causing any trouble, is the cemetery

neither clergy nor lay.

Paul had a massive task on his hands - pioneering the Gentile mission while giving the theological and scriptural foundations of how it is that Jew and Gentile are now on equal footing in Christ, how the covenantal and salvation history has panned like this - a concern informing most of his letters -dealing with both the big picture of how God has made the two one, and the pastoral concerns for how they should get along.

So, for example, what of the original Abrahamic status as children of God? What of food, feasts, circumcisions and other markers? Indeed in its in this context that we get the justification by faith discussions - as much as we like to approach them out of original context as abstract theology, the context is re-evaluating the status of Torah and thus Israel -  in the light of the unexpected fulfillment in Christ and outpouring of the Spirit on Gentiles, and thus looking at consequent status of Jew and Gentile.

Galatians 3:28 is a typical summary line (see 3:4 ff):

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Hard to think of bigger distinctive than slave or free -  pause to imagine that for a moment - affirmed as equal in the believing community.  No wonder Corinth was having trouble maintaining this flat position - no elite or commoner either, so radically against their social structure that they default back to it. Or Jew or Gentile - the primary religious identity of God's people now radically redefined. Even Peter had trouble resisting the temptation to re-prioritise the Jewish status. Or male and female - we're somewhat more sensitized to that one - and still struggling with it -  though it was a basic distinction with much stronger sociological demarcations in the ancient world.

So it seems remarkable after centuries of reflection that we take biblical language for the calling of all (cleros)  and the common foundation of all people of God (laos) and turn it back into another distinction and point of demarcation: clergy and laity. As if Paul would have recognised 'ministry' becoming the preserve and mandate of 'clergy' - if he could even decipher what we have done to both terms (and possibly gone ballistic when he did - you have priests! only some can preside at communion! new class of Levites!  No wonder the Chinese - who can't do all that - are outstripping you! ) 

Church leadership, yes. Supporting those who labour among them, yes (though Paul argues that position to indicate he is not taking up the right with the Corinthians (1 Cor 9) - indeed will work with his hands  - with all the  humiliation that implies to them -  rather than let that particular congregation provide his patronage and control his purse strings  - he needs the freedom of no strings attached in sorting them out - and they take offence at him avoiding that cultural norm of patronage (2 Cor 12:13))

But he does sometimes take support from elsewhere, so that principle of paid support for some stands, at least in some cases, in principle.

But the foundational category of who is 'in' is so radically redefined, that one can't imagine a clerical class who officiate in the local body, as against the laity who pray, pay and obey, developing under his watch.

So can we add, in Christ there is neither clergy nor lay?   Or are there some philosophical - or theological - reasons why that distinction still holds primary weight - even though Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free - don't? The weight of history, perhaps. But maybe that distortion is why our numbers don't amount to actually doing all that much? Who really does the Ephesians 4 releasing of the people? So many areas where we have let the church become something else. But thats the next post i think.

Since i think i'm maybe wrestling a larger issue anyway. 

Alan Hirsch:

We needed a new type of leadership, one with the courage to question the status quo, to dream of new possibilities, and to innovate new ways of being the people of God in a post-Christian culture. We needed missionaries to the West, but our seminaries were not producing them. If we take the five categories of church leadership from Ephesians 4:11, they were training leaders to be teachers and pastors for established congregations, but where were the evangelists, the prophets, and the apostles to lead the mission of the gospel into the world?

Missional churches require all Five aspects of ministry Leadership on the team.
Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers—I refer to these together as APEST. But when I looked at my church and most others, I saw congregations dominated by leaders who were shepherds and teachers. What happened to the other leadership types?

Where have all the APEs gone?

During Christendom, the centuries when Christianity dominated the culture, the church acquired a fundamentally non-missional posture. Mission beyond the walls of the institution was downplayed because every citizen was deemed at least a nominal Christian already. What was needed were pastoral and teaching ministries to care for and instruct the congregation, and to draw underdeveloped Christians back into the church on Sunday.

So, these two functions were eventually instituted as the leadership offices in the church, and the other three roles listed in Ephesians 4 (apostles, prophets, and evangelists) faded away as largely unnecessary. The system of church leadership we inherited from Christendom heavily favors maintenance and pastoral care, thus neglecting the church's larger mission and ministry.

          http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/spring/7.32.html?start=1

also says, here and in the 'Shaping of Things to Come'  book: 

In most organizational systems, there is acknowledgement of the importance of these leadership functions:

• The entrepreneur: Innovator and cultural architect who initiates a new product, or service, and develops the organization.
• The questioner: Provocateur who probes awareness and fosters questioning of current programming leading to organizational learning.
• The communicator: Recruiter to the organization who markets the idea or product and gains loyalty to a brand or cause.
• The humanizer: People-oriented motivator who fosters a healthy relational environment through the management of meaning.
• The philosopher: Systems-thinker who is able to clearly articulate the organizational ideology in a way as to advance corporate learning. 

My boss once named me 'chief provocateur'; and current and previous roles have been innovation focussed so i resonate with some of those points. Not that we can do anything apart from God and in isolation of a good team - and finding and evolving roles has not been easy,  but work tends, eventually, in my experience, to release these forms; maybe more dynamic form and expressions for God to work with in many workplaces than in the institutional church?  Certainly much more time is spent trying to optimise peoples contributions.

PS
(I'm under no illusions, that those who potentially suffer this the most are the clergy...

Stop there. I added that  line and the following paragraph as a friend wanted to repost this, and i wanted to err on the side of being gracious to others who serve in the church.   But, i don't know that its true, generally speaking, that the cost is on the clergy, although it does to some extent. Their roles might be difficult in various ways and i will respect dedication. However i think the general cost to the wider church, the lay person, is much higher - a docile and under engaged congregational mentality is a higher cost, i think.  Right, continuing with a disclaimer so its not nasty ...

 - burdened with unrealistic expectations and workload etc around the roles that have inertia in their definition even as the culture changes and makes it harder. And i have no desire to add to their load with an ungrateful critique from the side .. given this is really where we have all got to, is the common shape of many churches, I'm convicted we need honour those in these roles, their gifts and commitment, even if a discussion on the biblical basis of the roles is desirable.  In my experience all take these roles very seriously and have felt called to it as a life of dedication and service, and lead to the best of their God given ability, and God really uses them to bless and lead.  Indeed critiques that can't honour that dedication seem to me problematic if not vexatious. Its just that the cultural construction of the role seems to sometime take on some unbiblical, two tier, dimensions, that risks distorting the map of who the people of God are.  Can overload some, and perhaps undermines a serious look at what the rest of the people do and could do.  I often think that leadership, for example, should be given away - perhaps churches and theological colleges could train leaders for a role in the wider culture, not trying to 'raise up leaders'  for the remaining secondary positions around 'the church'.  Maybe some do - but i suspect we still tend to the division.

(I went to a wonderful meeting the other day -  they called pastors and church leaders to stand. I happily prayed for a friend who fits the description.   But the issue remains that there are many Christians who are called to lead in significant ways mostly outside of these "ministry" roles.  (That word - diakonis - also means 'service' and i think is probably unhelpful when pigeon holed as 'church professional')  Others may have complex and heavy roles, which will not be named in such places, but which need support as well; the Christian high school teacher, social worker, health care professional,  coach, parent etc all would stay seated as not "in the ministry"; which is perhaps a reflection of the laos/clergy thing having got into our heads in a way that might not be helpful.

I think it happens too in places that don't use those clergy/laity terms but still have a people/minister model; the meeting in question didn't talk of clergy, and its culture was actually good at training people in gifts and wider application; nevertheless I wondered if identifying the category of "leaders" as "church based" risks a dis-empowerment of all others.  Seems to me there can be a time for focussing on church leaders, but perhaps could also be broadened  at times to acknowledge other forms of Christian service, spheres of influence, diverse types of leadership. (Doing so might help grapple with the theological underpinnings of their role as well - dissolve the secular spiritual divide we tend to associate with clergy and lay). 

So it seems to me.

work and worship

A friend sent me a comment, via email, to a previous post about integrating body life (church) and work.  He rightly points out that some of my observations need to taken further, in order for the (possibly impressionistic, possibly individualistic) connections to be made more strongly. I agree. The comments were helpful. The commenter has thought deeply along these lines for a long time. I'll quote him below, and respond in turn.

But first, a picture comes to mind.

Lets imagine a Christian world view  (well, a world view i think many christians have, at some level) -  a two level view of the world.

 And as soon as we draw it, we know thats too simple - we should make the line dashed and all that.  We know God is creator, everything is His, etc. In fact, its not a Christian world view at all - its entirely incorrect.  

But nevertheless, in operative terms, i think we often tend to that dualism. We tolerate it and often revert to it.

Here is how the commenter went: Quoted my post  first (italics below). Then commented (in blue).


"In several churches, i've noticed that in addition to the pastoral staff, it is the volunteer group (eg the occasional RE teachers) who are cited- and i think its right that they are supported like this, as they try to get to the point of sharing their faith. But should the complexity and heavy demand of the other roles be invisible - seeing as they are also bringing the redemptive leaven of the kingdom in other ways? Or do they just have a job - a 'secular job' at that? "

This observation is a true one. My belief is though that until others can actually show the vital connections between faith/work as a necessary whole connection with the Gospel, then the current divisions on sacred/secular will remain.

In spite of what you say about the "slipstream of faith" being able to carry one into these connections at your workplace, I think that on the whole they are hard to make and even harder to verbalize within the body times.

I don't think being "transformed by the renewing of your mind" is an automatic thing just by being connected to the engine of faith.

When confronting the existing deep seated cultural 'norms' of our days, I think it biblical to name and confront the 'idols of our times' which infect and drive each cultural sphere and this surely must be done with great prayer, ongoing reflection and consultation within groups of believers who work in similar contexts(ie teachers together, technicians together) together by those listening to what the Spirit says and then finding together strategies with which to respond.

My contention is that this ought to be the focus of body life. This is our spiritual worship as Paul contends.

Our body life would surely explode with excitement and holy awe and fear and rejoicing as we share how God is moving through us to release the creation from its groaning despair. 

I was going to say more, but i can't now recall what it was - but the comments in blue speak to me  - we attended a workshop on theology of work, and i think a vision of naming some of these in the body time could help - not that  i know how it could be done. Simply starting with naming each ones role and work from time to time would help i suppose - ie doing interviews of what people do.

The theology of work website that accompanied the seminar would also be a useful study tool. If i had time i'd like to run a series of studies based on that site. Listen to the president of the project explain it. Not the most photogenic chap, but thats hardly the point!
http://www.theologyofwork.com/pages.asp?pageid=101815

or as Bill Johnson said of work, in a sermon from around that time. :

Work is supposed to be a tool that is used – a musical instrument in a sense, that is used– that we use in giving worship to God. When work is robbed from someone – worship, the tool of worship, is robbed from their life, a unique expression of worship. The whole Jewish culture looked at work, labour, as a way of giving expression of worship to God. And I feel like we’re supposed to rise as church family toward the devourer who would steal the privilege of labour from everyone who is supposed to be able to work. I feel like its supposed matter.

avatar theology

Notice how the gospels begin.  Famously John stands apart from the other three.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Context : Both Pagan  and Jewish narratives of ultimate beginnings or underpinnings.
 
Jewish : In the beginning .... recaps Genesis 1.  The Word of the Lord and all that suggests of God's words to Israel. Including the Torah and living Wisdom of Proverbs 8.

 Greek :  the Logos :  the underlying principle of rationality ... 

So right up, we have a crafting that is doing more to cross boundaries and merge narratives than the other (synoptic) gospels. 

So  ..

John has been in Ephesus - a major Greek city in the Roman Empire, for decades. Ephesus is a port - a place of exchange, and the cultural centre of the Empire. And so his Gospel is particularly interpretive  - he, beloved disciple, is particularly entrusted with this long range mission of translating the words and life of Jesus, out into more culturally pluralistic but religiously diverse / ignorant context - a place where one can't take the Jewish narrative and background for granted.

So, for example, John barely mentions the Kngdom, which is so key to other gospels, but there is an an emphasis on life, life of the ages, eternal life - life has a central role, perhaps an easier entry to get, rather than Kingdom.

Do we catch that promise of longevity in John 21 - the late wine of interpretive reflection -  where Jesus hints to two of closest disciples, how they will die? So John knows he was not promised to not die -just that he has lived on  - was not on the same path as Peter - and that was implied in those first heady conversations - that morning on the beach  - shivering with cold and amazement as they are invited to a eat around the new fire with the one they had thought was lost, who still gently, powerfully, leads them on -  into strange, half understood yet strangely reassuring territory - just as He always had; talking of death and faith and life round the fire - the shimmering heat warped air less a distortion of this wonder than their own faltering grasp and amazement. Their grief giving way to new belief and joy, a new morning beyond all they had seen.

And so his Gospel - beyond the records of narrative and aphoristic sayings, beyond a more straightforward appeal to the Jewish expectation of Messiah and Kingdom, and into the culture they are in, John reflects deeply on the themes and images of the culture - employs more extended dialogues with individuals, teasing out their knowledge, clear symbols over deep undercurrents.  

(Straightforward that is, to those who had known that heritage - we have to work harder now to recapture what that meant to them - and we need to or we miss much of the  meaning -  but John certainly knows all this, and is out wider in territory, like Paul on Mars Hill, not always leading with the Jewish scripture and history in that context).

So John invokes their interest in Logos -  but soon revealed not as a static principle of philosophy, discerned by elite philosophers, but a Person who must be revealed and related to.  Similarly Bacchus/Dionysus , their God of wine, will be in view in first sign, the wedding feast miracle of new wine. Both dimensions  (Logos and this Bacchus like sign) strike Jewish notes as well - Logos as Word in Genesis, word of Torah and Wisdom of Proverbs, and wine as the Jewish expectation of an abundance of new wine signalling the Messianic age; the 6 stone jars of water for purification, hinting at the law not quite reaching that seventh day of rest, the law that never quite made it, fell short, now transformed into glorious wine - at a marriage feast no less, with all the symbolic overtones that has in scripture.  Logic and Passion meet in this Jesus; and John has poetry that joins then, and also links the Jewish heritage with the wider context. Not, to be sure, that Bacchus and Jesus are joined, or that Logos links into gnosis of inner forms  - but John will invoke their terms, before showing how Jesus exceeds all, as the Passionate Creator of all who has come among them. He just knows how to communicate to them in terms that will connect, will get attention. 

So the Jewish heritage is not downplayed. But it is reworked in ways that the wider culture will get.

(Like Paul in that regard -who lived outside Jerusalem in another major cultural centre of learning, Tarsus.  One suspects God has plans for his best communicators to be rubbing shoulders with the other philosophies and systems of the day - to practice their devout and passionate pursuit of Torah and now Jesus in full awareness of how those around live,  of their way of life).

And so also Light and Dark are other themes that the pagan culture gets - and also have major role in John. Jesus is the true light.

So what themes, i hear a lecturer, who seeded some of this thinking, ask his class, what themes are key in our culture? 

Sustainability, suggests one of his post grad students. 

True enough. I know that its a major theme people would cite. 

 OK says the lecturer. Can we go with that? Are we too insecure in our grasp of the gospel?  Do we always have to start with scripture?  For all have sinned ... ? (or if we do that, maybe the creation groaning of Romans 8 (ie vs 14 ff), waiting for us to move into the redemptive dynamic of the Spirit, would be a useful start.

Relationships, it seems to me, listening remotely, later, are another theme.

And maybe, right there, with those themes, we have the universal and the particular.

I don't think we're the first to notice this -  other philosophies are already evangelizing on these grounds, tapping into these approaches.

My son's school rang me the other day. A program is being run - called Jump Up. Something to do with developing self awareness through gardening, is what i hear.  Would we like him to do it?  I do a little homework. 

the web site says:

• Enliven wonder and appreciation of the profound interconnectedness of all living things Respect, value and cultivate diversity
• Create an understanding of self within cultural traditions, global perspectives and history
• Recognise and nurture each individuals inherent capacity
• Value and enhance the three way relationships between families, schools and community
• Utilise local expertise and knowledge

OK. Sounds good as far as it goes. But i'm curious, what motivates this perspective. What is the underpinning. Good hearted academics?  I suspect a deeper philosophy must hold this together.

Following a few more links I find that these 'Transformative workshops' are somehow linked to the Achuar people - Amazon tribe. And gradually the "environmentally sustainable, socially just, and spiritually fulfilling world"  goals seem a little less like apple pie.  The web trail lets you see that the indigenous wisdom that is cited, is tapping prophecies and dreams that come from the Amazon tribe  - who were warned of the evil oil companies wreaking devastation - and apparently we are in a time when the Eagle and Condor must come together - and that some of the founding figures of this nice sounding group, are speaking at Shamanic workshops in the US.  The images of kids with nice paper animal face cutouts suddenly take a different dimension when you know that - what are we invoking? 

I feel a little of what an atheist might feel when Christians are taking the gospel into the state schools - i didn't sign up for this.

Now, i'm not too alarmed by this mix of goals and values - (my son had already opted out himself before we were really informed). And really, apart from that, I suspect the series of primary school workshops is probably too far downstream from the source to retain much of the original potency; i'm willing to grant that the school's program really might just aim to help people think differently about sustainability and relationships - is run by local people who tap into the idea that sustainability and indigenous cultures have things to teach our fragmented and disconnected culture; that we are too divorced from the natural world, that our consumerism has become selfish and our kids out of touch with their emotions etc. I've done some myself, without explicitly citing or promoting an overarching religious framework  - no particular agenda to push at the time (though i think there is potential for churches to inhabit this as part of the Creator's redemption message, and years in science have cued me to the issue). 

Not that i can fully endorse the flavour of this solution, but no need to go into battle against this diluted form of paganism, i think. 

But the thing is - just as the film Avatar tapped these themes - the abuse of the wild planet, the love story at the centre - perhaps we should also be onto these themes - relationship, sustainability.  

The tree of souls in that film, the idea of their deity being a network of all living forces, are clearly not what Christians believe.  But we should feel the poetry before we reject it, if we are going to be able to connect, to communicate. As Chesterton says of pagan myths, we must feel them - find a corner of us delighting in the idea of the world standing on turtles - before we reject it - or we're not qualified to really comment.

"One life ends, another begins", Jake says, as his scientist brother who died violently, is cremated, at the start of the movie - and by the end, Jake has died in one world, but come to life again in another.  It's not Christian, but we can feel the poetry.

"John", quotes the lecturer, who taught me back years ago  "is a whispering forest of all traditional poetries. A lake where children can paddle safely and elephants swim."  That is, both simple and deep.

Yet perhaps frustrates those who want everything nailed down - don't want to work with the poetry, who think that clear systematic theology is what you always find in Paul and is the prized model. Not that the gospel lacks propositional content. But it can be communicated in this other mode - and just as Genesis is a richer account of creation, in terms of what we ultimately need to know about the ultimate issue-  than the science that follows out of that intelligible creation, so this way of communicating the Gospel might get closer to many, than beginning with fixed propositional statements.  Just like Jesus interacting with Nicodemus and the woman at the well - who both try to fit Jesus into what they know, and find the conversation leading them out beyond that knowledge.

(Nor, for those who want the Cross in every sentence, or at least once a paragraph, lest we be going all soft and woolly, is the central redemptive theme lacking in John - though i hardly need make that case.  We might find also Paul has certain dimensions - regarding the full scope of redemption echoing across creation - that have not been well heard).

To take another aspect of that film - the role of experience. The gradual development of Jake's vision and sensitivity to the new world, from being a well trained marine, a grunt with simple culture of discipline and force, to no longer belonging to that world, in ways that he could not communicate to his former military buddies.  Repositioned as a child who sees nothing - he learns. Until he finds himself on the other side of the divide. 

Experience changes us. Taste and see.

"Where do you live master? " 

There is no definitive answer given, just an invitation to be with him. 

“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”               (John 1:39) 

"So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him"

We don't know what was said - some precursor of that rich teaching on Emmaus road - but is enough to change: 

"The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah”

Experience changes. The world wants relationships. Is tapping pagan workshops on sustainability and the interconnectedness of living things. Its movies do the same thing. Can we go there .. .connect with the themes? 

I knew a vineyard church in the US that  picked up on environmental concerns - not full of radical green agenda, not abdicating its reformation stance, not even anti science or business, but because we do have something do say on creation, and can situate it in relationship with the true Creator.  Like John telling his origin stories in ways that speak to scripture and culture.  Can't we? 

Avatar casts indigenous wisdom against corporate greed and militaristic linearity (though the film takes a sympathetic view of true science- even while the mishandled fruits of science and technology are complicit). We don't have to agree. But we should be able to speak to that concern. What does knowing the Creator have to do with science and technology - how do we name the Babel aberration of technology gone wrong, spiritual idolatry, and yet preserve the original mandate to know and discover given in the garden?    


Taking John's modus operandi  - storied in ways that speak to scripture and culture. I'm not there yet. But perhaps the point is engaging in ways that can be heard. Jesus travelled the distance form heaven to earth. So rather than ask them to come to us, jump our cultural hurdles, perhaps we can meet with relevant themes and terms.  And, to be true to Jesus and John, with signs and wonders ("even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father" - yet John even represents these as part of a culturally aware message - the signs always mean something). All easier said than done. But I think this is the wisdom of the gospel of John, representing Jesus faithfully but differently from the other 3 gospels, tuned to that cultural milieu even while redefining it.  The Word, after all, is not defined in our terms - turns out to be leading us into another story and deeper revelation. How do we follow?

pomo

a time  for retrieving drafts - here is another. Partly sparked by a current discussion. 

Originally began as a facebook discussion -  strange source but sometimes social media gets into something that's maybe worth capturing  beyond the moment.

in this case, was a discussion of that over used term; post modernism.  I think a useful and perhaps definitional way to think of this is - (though such things resist simple definition)  is against the false dawn of modernism; even a judgement against its over promise. 

One hears people say the big picture narrative has broken down - and perhaps it has. But which big picture narrative was it, anyway?  Christians who see the past as somehow more aligned to the faith, might have something correct.  But they also need to ask if post modernism  is uncomfortable - well  that begs the question - what was modernism?    And what sort of Christian narrative could be comfortably tied to the progress narrative of modernism, anyway?

And perhaps, if modernism gave a false meta-narrative - an illusory big picture, then the fragmentation of post modernism - with its insistence on relative value  - was a necessary judgment on the illusory organising story of modernism. The arrogance of the tower of babel is met with a scattering and fragmentation of language.  The hand of the Lord raised against the false narrative - and the scattering is not always bad.

I know something about this - i grew up in a house of science and engineering - was schooled in such, with a little dose of religion  - and found the assumed optimism behind this far too shallow - soon swept away in the weltering confusions of enlightened education, which for all its power had no ultimate reasons, no stabilising center of faith.

So my take on explaining these terms went like this:

Do you ever hear someone say - in high moral tones, in a comment on the The Age website about the Iraq war for example - 

"I just can't believe in the 21st Century we still bomb other people" 

Now whatever the outrage at the undeniable tragedy of the whole thing, a question always emerges for me-  what is the date doing in there?   Was it less wrong in the 20th Century?  Tolerable in the 19th?  

It often seems many still hold, at heart, that some version of progress was meant to make us more enlightened, we are meant to be improving on some moral pathway, in tandem with a progress narrative. The  modernist dream does not die easily. 

And of course the temptation to this is strong because progress does seems to work, at least in part;  we have been caught up an era where science and technology did bring change for the better, in some ways. The relative levels of economic wealth for increasing portions of the population,  one has to concede,  have brought large scale improvement to many. Not, by any means, evenly spread or without cultural loss, but the large scale data on say life expectancy, has increased in vast regions of the world in the last hundred years. 

So there is something to that progress narrative - and seems to me that the high points of that story  still inform the modernist dream; progress will deliver us to a new world order. 

This was a large scale narrative  of many- and yet a false one when taken as the overarching story  - since whatever material benefits have been delivered, the moral case is quite another story. Human nature turns out not to have  changed - and technology is a lever that partly ameliorates, but also partly magnifies our folly. 

And so on closer inspection, science and technology, for all their good, turn out to create almost as many problems as they solve.

So a 'post modern' view highlights that - sees the over promise of the science and technology, and that it didn't deliver - or not cleanly; is abused as well as used. Knows we face nuclear war or ecological disaster or economic collapse or digitised sexual abuse - all from the same technological sources that gave penicillin and high yield wheat. And like the melting image of da Vinci's iconic man which a discerning artist drew in large scale in the melting ice caps, a fragmenting perception of self is tied to that sense of failure of the humanist project. 







The frontal assault on that naive progress narrative should surely have been the massive and deadly wars of the 20th century - waged among the 'Christian' nations.  Yet naivety springs eternal.  The progress narrative is still a sweet song many  want to believe - who are still shocked when the hearts of humanity prove as retrograde as ever - no matter the advances in quantum computing or medicine. 

 And so this mood of disillusion with what was seemingly promised, this sense of dis-ease, underwrites,  like a festering swamp, any number of other strains of  post modernism. Once the culture has got in that mood everything seems suspect.   Every narrative is suspect, is deconstructed and disbelieved. Academia cultivates versions that seem to have nothing to do with the false god of progress, but simply target any variety of modernist certainty, including many expressions of Christian faith which do not fare well in this environment (where truth has become a matter of propositional certainties, majoring on the "what" of assertions - a system of stand alone theological axioms - rather than majoring on the "Who" that they are predicated on, it is vulnerable to this deconstruction. What is truth? is the wrong question, ultimately. Who is truth? is the reality that makes and re-orders the universe. Secondary assertions may hold, but not as ultimate truths in their own right, as deconstructionism knows, even if that's all it knows.)

This goes too far; but its perhaps partly a reaction against the false picture in the first place. Babel is judged and all are scattered. 

And then as that picture breaks down people are left in a more ambiguous state.

Some of its kind of interesting - mix and match of cultural influences is more interesting than a bland monoculture. I like parts of that. But extends beyond that. How many now want to roll their own version of religion or morality etc - bits and pieces of whatever.

All fine till something like London riots shows its all on shaky ground now.

Seems to me we're likely to be influenced by this - i know i grew up with some of this - moving from one to the other.

I know when i came to God, verses like Jeremiah 6:14 

They dress the wound of my people
   as though it were not serious.

were actually a relief- finally a way to stop pretending and hoping all will be ok.  Its not.  Things are deeply wrong - not least within me - and a realisation that i had to own that first - and across creation.  A story that could go that deep, spoke to the true condition of both, so we are both worse than expected, but also drawn into a common story before God ("my people")  offered true hope. How much deeper can it go, than identifying with the death of God. And not in the way of nausea of lack of all bearings  - but beyond all the false dawns that had been offered, the very entry to life; the doorway to life itself - and one of the huge blessings, is the commonality of brothers and sisters walking in such things - this is not just my private spirituality, or peculiar personal view of the world, but a common and shared story runs under all this.  

lasers and rainbows (3) - metaphors for faith in the workplace

this is also an early post that i reverted to a draft status for a couple of years as being a bit lopsided. trimmed it a bit - hopefully sings better now

in part 1 of this little debrief i introduced the idea of lasers and rainbows to describe tight or more distributed faith cultures, and then in part 2 looked at how some of that played out in family and devotional issues

This post unpacks how some of this has been in workplace - which has been a very real issue for me. Indeed the mismatch and tension here - as experienced across several styles of church (and types of work) - probably generated much of the rainbow/laser reflection in the first place ... i guess you could call it an inadequate conception or theology of work, which led to the need to thrash out some working idea of how the more 'laser like' focus needed to be diffracted into this domain - moving away from a centre to the particular incarnate details of what one might be uncovering in the context of a life, even perhaps, a calling

So as well as rainbows and lasers, there are half a dozen other metaphors that i've found myself using to think of church and faith (in the workplace in particular) etc...

i'll start with two related ones

(i) church can be like an engine of faith and prayer - and i have at times said to myself I will drove that engine beyond the church culture, and empower whatever vehicle i'm called to drive down whatever unique road seems to be the path of life i've been placed in

(ii) i will tap into the slipstream of dynamic faith here, 'spiritually, but not culturally'"

This all sounds quite individualistic, but its in reaction to a tendency for church to imply, perhaps not intentionally, that the main sphere of activity is in its programs and official ministries

so the common theme here in possibly moving beyond 'God in a box'

That is, i value my ongoing church based experience of God as valid and real, but have needed to integrate into other dimensions of life; notably the workplace. Even though I see the deposit of faith and teaching as precious - priceless - and significant, as well as the faith and relationships that are inculcated, i have still needed to sketch out some thinking that released me from a restrictive assumption that easily develops. That is, "the more significant places and times and agendas must therefore be located in connection with church or in its orbit of its programs". Without diminishing them, they are not the whole story, or perhaps even the main story, for most of us.

Perhaps we need a way to change that orbiting metaphor - to see that all is truly in the orbit of the God who made all.  Jesus at the centre of the ornate complexities of creation-  not the gathered church and its activities - although He is there in a different and more present sense. Seeing the earth go around the sun, rather than being a fixed point at the center, made much sense of the heavenly data - and lead to a simpler and cleaner approach to what was already observed.  Shifting that cultural center - away from Christendom with church at the center - might be like the Copernican revolution - the earth is still there, but we have re-thought what is actually happening at sunset and sunrise - or in this case,  between those times. Similarly here we rethink the daily round of work - shifting some of the centrality out of the church. And find that while losing that fixed point of is less intuitive on one level, it explains a lot of other events much more effectively.

Thus in my case, I will be a better teacher, for example, in Catholic or state schools, if i happen to be there. I will be more faithful in the execution of complex tasks, bring more vision and clarity here, have better endurance here; be better at the inevitable relational challenges, explore particular dimensions and complexities of educative thinking; be more effective in planning and strategy; tune into God's words and impression in more diverse and complex settings than the default church culture seemed to imagine.

These examples of the principle of empowering a vehicle that seems largely off the church radar; while nevertheless drawing on an engine of faith discovered there, could no doubt be multiplied endlessly in other lives and and settings, through other personalities and careers etc.

And perhaps something about this actually fullfills the Ephesians 1 mandate of the church to be 'all in all'

A related and similar image, "i will tap into the slipstream of dynamic faith here, 'spiritually, but not culturally'" - is simply giving oneself the necessary permission to follow the dimensions of God's calling away from the assumption that all is in church and its programs- to take the release of an empowered life, and  run across cultural spaces.

That is, by tuning into the genuine faith of meetings etc, and dynamism of worship, the impartation of meaning in teaching, there is renewal and healing and vision; yet the outworking is well beyond the walls of the church and its religious markers, and expressed in entirely other cultural spaces. To take my education example again, the church might see the local school as a place to run an 'outreach program'; which is no doubt a good thing, but extension of church program, as good as it may be, might not really coincide with what other Christians might be doing at the school. So they might perhaps attend the little breakfast club as token of good will - and one certainly hopes it will reach some kids - but it is possible that the volunteers will not really understand the issues the full time teacher faces there; one is not necessarily a good lens for what the other is doing; for what  the maths teacher is trying to do in rethinking the original constructivist heritage of  educational IT, for example - similarly in every other subject area and cultural dimension of the school - and these explorations also reflect creation mandates - to explore and name the content under redemptive leaven, and work the garden. (In passing, a Christian pedagogy that just wants to teach known facts and content, and not invite some exploration, seems to me to misrepresent the original biblical - as in Genesis - mandates which are restored in Christ- even as we still wrestle with thorns).

Again the point of this is not my own story, but that we all are called to spheres like this, and its not always visible or celebrated in a gathered community. Does this matter? Well, can we celebrate the diversity of what the people of God are called to? As an example, which Christians will be upheld as having a ministry, supported in prayer meetings for evangelistic success etc?

In several churches, i've noticed that in addition to the pastoral staff, it is the volunteer group (eg the occasional RE teachers) who are cited- and i think its right that they are supported like this, as they try to get to the point of sharing their faith. But should the complexity and heavy demand of the other roles be invisible - seeing as they are also bringing the redemptive leaven of the kingdom in other ways? Or do they just have a job - a 'secular job' at that?

If we have this problem with teaching - which must be one of the most obvious (and in Christian circles, still quite valued) roles in the community - what of other roles...

We're dimly aware that health professionals and doctors and parents and business people 'do good' : not really seeing the fullness of a call worked out there

For more obscure examples, i have felt creative solutions come in technical areas ... in both software and science - have felt pieces drop into place in timely ways - one can sense at times the guidance over key pieces - even though many hours or days of precursor work or subsequent refinement is needed,- the slipstream of faith helps, although  operating beyond the thinking of a church service where it might have been incubated.

Thus the instinctive rubric "i will tap into the slipstream of dynamic faith here, 'spiritually, but not culturally'" (formulated in a particularly intense church : but applicable in many)

Having said this, a clerical response might say, of course; faith is meant to be leaven in your life; bringing vision and integrity to whatever it is you do ....

agreed ... but perhaps more could be done to open up the stories of this in church communities; the models of what it means to follow God tend to be silent on such things ... to default either to silence, or more linear ideas of evangelism. Perhaps something more of the diversity and glory of what God has called us all to would be celebrated and empowered.  Silence does tend to privilege entire realms and model the 'ministry' as the fulltime church worker. Dubious theology i think, inheriting a dualism that struggles to include the fullness of what God has made, the very good spoken over creation, the redemptive agenda that reaches to it all.

It might seem churlish or selfish to expand all this - but the risk is we can limit significant roles and ideas of calling and God's activity to a small subset of people or a small subset of activity

I'm not anti church, anti institution - quite the contrary really - i like the laser events -  just have needed to question the assumption that easily sets in - 'what happens here (church based activity) is of most significance' ; when perhaps its just the clearest encoding of a message that needs to live in wider spheres.

Lastly, these are homespun reflections and intuitions, not necessarily well formed statements of philosophy, let alone theology. But if they are an inadequate or impressionistic method for mapping the territory, i should perhaps plead that 20 years of regular church attendance has rarely strayed into discussing how the connections should be conceived.  We sat in leadership in a church once, one of four lay couples, meeting regularly, and even then we never managed to table the stories and challenges and callings of our full time work, much less model that integration to others; such is the gravitational pull of that centre.   A small group is somewhat more agile perhaps. One wants the laser of focussed worship and teaching when together, of course...   yet the rainbow also beckons over wider realms.

lasers and rainbows - home domain

(i reverted this to a draft for a couple of years, as being a bit unbalanced - happier with it now  - balanced it out a bit more - so my son's example has moved on a bit)

(having previously looked at the basic metaphor of tightly focussed lasers against wider rainbows, this post looks at how some of that plays out in a family life; how tightly is faith conceived around church etc)

my son chooses, for his nightly bed time story; whatever he wants ...superheroes, school readers, maybe a recorded book, and sometimes something from his children's bible

there is faith going on in that child

He was happy to miss church this morning and go sailing  ... yet spontaneously asks as we drive out....do we love God? we do don't we dad?

i know him well enough to sense that this is not any anxiety at missing church  ... don't think we've managed to instill that religiosity in him :)

no, its the same impulse i see in him sometimes when he is touched by the experience of worship; when the music and sense of Gods presence draws him in; a response that is genuine ...and i can see that something of that personal intimacy is occuring as drive out under a sunny sky; the relaxed nature of what we are doing has evidently helped opened things for him, and a touch of God is upon him

back to his night time reading : he has asked for a story of Moses recently; likes the little section titled God's rules....and i quite like how it is done; very simplified for a first grader of course

until we get to the 'follow up questions' which are placed at the end of every little chapter:  

"God spoke to Moses and gave him some special rules" (pictures of Moses on mountain)

"How does he speak to us now?" ... pictures of :

of what.....? what should go in there?

the book has chosen to show bibles and church

(not children driving out to sailing boats under sunny skies, relieved to avoid church for the day...experiencing Gods touch and affirmation as we drive)

no, the creation frame is absent ...no mountains...

and other things are absent ...

evidently Moses experienced God in powerful and unusual ways ...but "how does God speak to us now?"

cue, echoed through all evangelical sunday schools : "through the bible and by going to church"

so the experiential dimension of God is relegated to times past; and the New Testament experience is codified as (a) textual, and (b) church centered

of course there is truth in both - studying the Word and assembling together is significant

but something is lost too

where is the prophet on the mountain experiencing God face to face? - the one God calls a friend - in this version

while we don't need to suggest amazing or primitive personal experiences of God are the rule, neither should we rule it out

I feel part of the church's pact with modernism - we will subscribe to belief in a God who is sufficiently transcendent that we can attribute all sorts of attributes to Him, who is distantly conceived of as Author and Judge, and also ascribe some limited personal private experience; he might stir us with a little encouragement.

In between these two extremes ...distant eminence and muted personal presence, we won't expect too much; not a God who actually turns up in biblical dimension.

we call ourselves biblical by knowing the text; but read through the idea of his distant greatness and his general local mildness; no flames of fire.

ironically, though the reformation restored many of the experiental truths of faith, it lost some as well; although the Catholics still preserved an open-ness to supernatural dimension (mixed with various other strange things i know - but my point is they never ruled out the supermatural the way many Protestants effectively have)

(its helpful to not rule life into spiritual and non spiritual bits in arguing against this omission though - the lived experience of life is a spiritual thing - and God's gentle presence and guidance is more often pressed quietly into our hearts in this way; but if He wishes to rain gold dust, i'd like to be there)

next : part (3) lasers and rainbows in the workplace

follow the cloud - of work and church

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Brief outline of some of the ways God has led me in the workplace  -  loosely in chronological order. 

Many more mini stories in here i can't tell of course –-(I jump ahead to working in the catholic school as I write that  – stories of working with secondary kids and the many blessings and learnings of all that for me as well   - could probably draw some good vignettes of that  -  but I won’t go there in detail – except to say I was grateful for the years there - i grew as much as they i think.)

Anyway – back to more linear order– I bounced round uni for a while, without much focus and in an increasing state of disrepair or despair along lonely paths – yet searching out and entering into blessing of faith along the way –   being called in from those fragmenting places to God's wisdom and way is another way of saying that – or saying the same thing from another angle - and I gradually started bouncing round less. More to be said there, but that will do in outline.  (this hints at some more)

And then started work at a hi-tech manufacturer – fell on my feet with a holiday job that got extended ; R&D in spectrophotometry ; working with some brilliant people, and seeing the reality of a multidisciplinary team tackling really tricky issues. Work morphed a few times –all jobs do, I find – and was blessed to be assigned to the most talented engineer in to the place – crazy and disorganized but brilliant.  The intractable deal breaking problem on the new project -  that had already taken 100+ person years -  had ended up with him, and I was his offsider while we chased it down – great job and l loved that too. 

Then moved to an analytical lab, on the basis of that background expertise with these devices. Was less interesting and more routine just driving the things – but i think taught me how to stand under various pressures; dealing with endless short term and complex deadlines etc; and building faith.  A word flashed into me at the time – I have made you a tester of metals (Jer 6:27) and that is what these things did -  dissolved materials in acid and sprayed into a plasma as hot as the surface of the sun, and read the spectral lines – revealing the trace impurities that the eye couldn’t see - how much arsenic in the water or lead in the soil.  There were many rich ways of God speaking to me at work at the time; on a particular wavelength as it were, as though  i were an atom and he the massive Sun - yet could pick out just the right spectral frequency to reach me. 

Also programmed up systems in the midnight hours to solve the lack of a streamlined paperwork system - taught myself on the way and felt a leading around that as well.

Church was going  deep for me at the time – God doing some really intense things around that time. Some of the events still stand out – things permanently changed there.   But its also true I was also damaged goods after my path – most of us are, i suppose, takes a lot to disciple us I guess.  I was learning how to hear God, in intimacy. It felt like the infinite power and goodness of God was meeting the infinite fractal mess of my soul  - and it took a while to get some basic things straightened out. Constantly surprised with His goodness, against the legalistic edge I would project onto Him and myself. 

Made some errors amid this too, of my own making - but the forgiveness  of the new day, which was vouchsafed, means its not useful to discuss here either. 

I used to pray at lunch time – often walking up from the lab to a  Catholic church at the end of the street.  Walking up there one day, had a strong sense God was going to speak to me.; there was a satellite dish nearby which often spoke to me of that capacity, and the air felt pregnant with something pending. 

As I knelt to pray found my mind running over a whole lot of the essays I’d written at school  - sort of unearthed in my recollection – and I realized God had been guiding* me -had been present in some of those creative reflections and principles as I’d written  – even though I wasn’t a Christian at the time . And I walked out of that lunch hour with a strong sense of being called to teach, to bless, indeed to teach English  - not just the chem and physics  etc which would be the  obvious things. I’d always found it hard to narrow down to one subject like you were meant to – liked history and philosophy of science as much as science itself, maybe more so, so it seemed viable. 

* I mistyped that as 'guilding me'- and He was doing that too – giving a guild –that sort of mistype and multiple meaning was one thing I learnt to attend to back then - sometimes a prophetic puzzle would be tied around the double meaning.

Anyway, that one lunch time event was enough, really, to get me changing career.  So a Dip Ed and English sub major while still tinkering with lab software,

Not easy to start with, given I wasn’t sure I was fluent enough to teach; but God had other ideas.  

So a bit up and down for year or two as i got into it, but then took off  and things accelerated in various ways.

Gradual building up over the next half a dozen years to places and leadership roles i wouldn't have seen at the start, probably.  

I had a sheaf of promises and journal notes I used to read at the time

In one of those notes I’d seen a picture of my life like a tree – at the boundary of field – an edge marker onto several domains – and  my pathway  – linking science, IT, English, teaching, church, leadership, was beginning to feel like that.  

Coming closer to present – having moved towns - another good story there - and into state education system – was working across a handful of schools on various  programs – another raft of cool stories of guidance and  provision here – and more learning under difficult pressure as well – but I won’t attempt to go there either right now   – and then back to relatively normal teaching a few years after that.   Getting involved in church leadership in this season is another complex and challenging story too.

Anyway I had a student ask about a maths program.    I was open to whatever the year 8s thought would help them, so I looked into it and arranged a demo from the company. 

My wife had a sense the morning that the demo was arranged  – without knowing any of this – that it might be time to get out of teaching – and today might bring the opportunity. That got my attention, even though i hadn't been seeking that sort of change. just then. 

I noticed indeed the demo  did seem to use the same approaches I’d used in making things in the midnight hours – I had kept making things and learning IT on the side -  and her word made me decide to push a bit more - so I showed some of what i had done as well. End result, to cut that short, I’m working with them now, even though i hadn't been looking or feeling particularly like i should change. 

One point I want to mention in this outline – i realised later that the Catholic church I used to pray at during those lunch hours in the  lab, where I had felt the initial guidance into teaching  –  echoed or prefigured the Catholic school I ended up working in.  Indeed our penty church unexpectedly ended up hiring the hall  in that very church complex – before moving their services into the gym of yet another Catholic school.

 Here’s the thing about that – and about corporate and individual guidance.  I’m sure that my protestant/penty church  had good reasons for both of those moves into Catholic facilities, which had nothing whatever to do  with my career or calling in Catholic schools. Yet in the providence of God, he can also use those connections to spell out and provide meanings for individuals – He is God after all. So there were echoes and meanings for me in us being in those locations.  

(Incidentally I had all of the protestant issues one might have  - working out how to deal with the religious agenda – and learning  wider ways to bless as well - more stories here -  but God was calling me that way).

 For a parallel to this principle of guidance being given to all and also personalised to individuals at the same time, consider Israel following Him in the desert – seeing the cloud by day and fire by night. My daughter imagined an elephant head in the clouds yesterday, another child would have seen something else - maybe one child really sees eagles in the divine cloud of His presence, which guides the tribe en masse, while another sees a Lion; yet all are guided to the days location.  Or maybe he turned the face of the Eagle to one; Ox to another, as in Ezekiel's vision – while still being One.

That’s what I wanted to say, really – he can imbue multiple meanings into one moment; one incident can stand at the intersection or culmination of many things. God is like that – everything Jesus did fulfilled multiple prophecies in multiple ways – and we can't record all that he did. So with the ways of God – there's a richness that cannot be fully traced out when God guides and leads and moves - every day of this life since those beginnings  i could have added a record, probably, of what was happening at the time in terms of guidance and goodness.  

So a tentative bottom line; the cloud of His presence guides all corporately, and personally - church locations and a whole sheaf of work stories  - much more than i can document - all intersect in Him.