Striving

It was 10 years ago, and I was heading for yet another burnout.   So much to do, so much to achieve, so many ideas to implement… striving in so many ways.  And most of the day to day busyness was so so good!  ‘Ben, when is your Sabbath’?  asked Sian, my Christian Yoda! In fact, perhaps she said, ‘Sabbath Ben, when is’?  Proudly, I have taken my day off every week, seeing the importance of being with the kids, I proudly declared ‘Saturday is my day off’.  Sian replied, ‘I didn’t ask when you took your day off, I asked when you have your sabbath rest’? (She may have said ‘day off not asked, but sabbath my young Padawan)!  Instinctively, I needed to be able to show my Jedi master that I was in control and doing well at this thing called ministry, so the excuses started to flow…  ‘We are employed to work six days a week – I can only take one day off with the family, I can’t have sabbath as well’…  ‘I just have too much to do to justify a second day of no productivity’…  you know the sort of excuses… you may have said them yourselves?  After the conversation with my little green friend, I embarked on a new weekly diary plan that allowed for Mondays to be a day of rest.   Well, I say a day, in the evenings I had a meeting (like every other day of the week), and in the mornings we had our team meeting, reflecting on the week just gone and preparing for the week ahead.   But… I did diarise Sabbath on a Monday!  In 10 years of pastoral ministry, I managed to take Monday as sabbath only a handful of times.  Sabbath, written in bold on every Monday would soon be crossed out and replaced with new details of meetings, emergencies, courses and all the other more important things I was striving to achieve (for God?).   The incredible truth is that the times I managed sabbath, somehow, I was more effective, achieved more, felt healthier, knew intimacy with God and simply more aware of the usually elusive sense of shalom.  Members of the congregation would notice, remarking on how much ‘better’ my sermons were, how much more insightful my pastoral care.   But… even though I knew it would be the best day of the week, even though I knew I would be a better father, husband, minister, friend, son having had taken the time, even though I knew I would be more effective… taking the time to rest barely ever happened… it was just too hard and it got in the way of all I was striving to achieve. 

 

This year has offered opportunity for Christ’s church to rest.   I know there is still loads to do and I am aware that the communities we dwell in are struggling.   But surely lockdowns and limited face to face contact offered us all the chance to take sabbath seriously?   Many of us declared back in March, ‘this time can be a gift to get rhythms right and life into a better order and balance’.   How has that gone?   My observation is that everybody seems more exhausted, living lives with less balance and a deep struggle to cope with the changing times.   Shalom seems an awfully long way from our grasp.  Why is sabbath rest so flipping difficult?  

 

I found this verse about striving, ‘So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.  Let us therefore strive to enter rest…’[1]  Strive to enter rest… well that’s a new kind of striving for me, I can almost hear Sian saying, ‘strive to rest you must’!  We must strive because it is a commandment but also because it is so difficult to achieve… rest is near on impossible as my failures attest.   I have made fresh attempts recently to take Mondays as sabbath, surely that is achievable now I am a pioneer rather than a traditional minister?  Yet, as I embark on a little silence, either my brain goes mental with everything I need to achieve, or I fall asleep with exhaustion.  Either busy… or asleep… busy… or asleep.  Ring any bells?  Why is it so hard?   Why can’t we rest?  

 

Brueggemann wrote something called the ‘19 Thesis’ (which is rather wonderful by the way - type it into Google and have a look).   He suggests that we are all scripted by a ‘therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life’.  This script is enacted through ‘advertising, propaganda and ideology, especially in the several liturgies of television – promises to make us safe and happy’.  What does this mean?  Well, for starters it means we are scripted to look successful, to achieve, to see people buy our product.  It means to be constantly needing something new, and by requiring these things we will be happy (until the next aspirational product comes onto the market).  Each one of us is scripted.

 

These scripts have failed. 

 

We are more depressed, more anxious, more desperate and as a church seemingly less relevant in our context.  Surely, we must do more? Be busier?  Tell more people about Jesus?  Pray harder?  Copy the successful church down the road? 

 

The Jews practiced Sabbath to show the world their distinctive identity in Yahweh.  We are called to take sabbath to share our distinctiveness as Christians. We are a people that should not be identified by consumerism or productivity but by God.   To keep the societal scripts going the world needs us to be depleted souls - because depleted souls make good shoppers!   Sabbath is a counter narrative, a refusal to live as a depleted person but to live in full capacity (or ‘fully Ben’).   It is the place where we move away from what society says we should be like to the beautiful invitation of God to rest and discover what the creator is creating in us as we are filled with fulness of life.   It is in resting that our anxiety can be cast off as it gives into the radiant love and peace of God.   We can be so busy with the things of God that we forget what he is like and what he is calling us to be.  

 

I have stopped using the word ‘mission’.  Basically, it creates an unhelpful posture in me that buys into the scripts of society that unfortunately shape much of my DNA. It makes me want to achieve, to look successful and always filled with the desire to want more.   I am now using ‘pilgrim witness’ language, which suggest that the goals are not as important as the formation.  That who we are is more important than what we do.  Many of us are so busy doing mission…  but hear the invitation from God whom invites us to rest, and as we rest we begin to learn the counter narrative of God and begin to reveal it to the communities around us.   Instead of doing mission, we are being missional.    As I look around and hear stories, the greatest gift we could offer our community is not a new course, social enterprise, shiny service, a new arms-length missional activity but to display what a pilgrim community looks like as it rests and finds its true identity in the almighty creator God.   Then… we shine like stars!  So… I am striving… striving for Sabbath rest.   May as we strive together – may we find all that God has planned for us and may our depleted souls become restored and healed.   And may the way we live our pilgrimed lives together shine to those around us and lead them to their own discovery that God is so incredibly good and is enlarging shalom, a task all invited to take part.  Have a great day striving! 

 

 

 

---

[1] Hebrews 4:9-11. 

 

A wild way   

We are moving into a new way of being church - missional listener Ben Lucas offers questions and waymarkers from his journey to help us reflect on our own contexts 

I have a favourite walk. I have walked it so many times. It begins at the cricket club I used to captain in Abbotsbury, takes you up to St Catherine’s chapel, a now deserted church on top of the hill, then down to the incredible Chesil beach with its views across the Jurassic coast. It is simply stunning.  

I walked that walk at the beginning of lent with an Anglican pioneer, together praying about how we might see a pioneering movement break out across Dorset. It was a beautiful conversation in an extraordinary part of God’s world. Because of lockdown, I was unable to walk this path for a few months.   

Returning in June, it was halfway through that I remembered the conversations of pioneering. I sensed God tell me to look around, and to look carefully. I realised that this beautiful walk was now even more beautiful, filled with nature, overgrown hedge rows, swarming with butterflies and bees. It was now both beautiful and wild. It had not been touched, been allowed to grow freely, and the result was incredible wild beauty where old plants had found their way back to the surface, and wildlife had returned and become more numerous.    

My walk is not the only such illustration. Fish have been seen in the canals in Venice for the first time in ages, a tourist beach in Mexico has seen animals return (a turtle laying 112 eggs in front of a luxury dormant hotel), the birds in Wuhan can be heard for the first time – and even outside our front doors we see more butterflies and bees than we have in years. This is not new news for the Knepp estate in Sussex, which in the year 2000 embarked on a remarkable project to rewild. Theirs is a story of how a land was renewed and regenerated in extraordinary ways, by doing little except listening, learning, and enabling nature. 

If taking our hands-off creation leads to a rewilding of our land – what might it look like if we took our hands off the church? What if we let go of control? What if, as leaders, we stopped strategizing and just helped people to experience the presence of God, and then enjoy what arises from such encounters?   

I have been heartbroken in many church conversations regarding the coronavirus. I have heard that all know the real-life struggles people are going through – depression, loneliness, sickness, anxiety – but the main of the discussion is how do we continue to keep the show on the road. How do we continue to preach, sing songs, break bread, gather together etc…?

Whereas, I would humbly suggest that better questions might be: 

• What is the cry of the community at this time?
• What would it be like if God’s kingdom came now?
• What does the biblical imagination have to say to the situation?
• And finally, what might church look like as we answer the previous questions?

The answers will be different and diverse in every locality. The answer is likely to be beautifully wild! 

I have been on the most exciting but difficult ride as I have transitioned from Baptist minister of a pretty big, institutional Baptist church to a missional listener, whose role is simply to hang around rural Dorset asking those questions. I am not suggesting everyone needs to be missional listeners, or that my approach is right – but I do think it is helpful to offer others waymarkers of the journey I and other pioneers have been on. We have already begun a journey away from what was to something new. These waymarkers are not for everyone, may happen in a different order but could be helpful to reflect upon as we all step into the unknown of the new normal of what it means to be church.    

1).  Realisation – as beautiful church is, and as amazing as some parts of it can be – there is more for us and for the community.  That people are desperate for radical community.   

2).  New set of questions – instead of looking at how do we attract? How do we do what we do now better? – we engage with new questions, like those mentioned earlier.  

3).  Wrestling with the powers – what God call us to do is a bit like Noah’s ark!  It looks really odd to everybody else.   People will try to control and reign us in – but somehow by the grace of the Holy Spirit and strength of character you continue.  

4).  Change of posture – instead of approaching God with full hands asking for blessing on our endeavours, we come with empty hands, seeking to join in with Him.  Instead of approaching our neighbour as a missional target we want to grab and bring to where we are, we see them as missional conversation partner, whom as we journey together we realise they are discipling us, and we may be given permission to disciple them.    

5).  Increased attentiveness – transformation in our missional lenses leads us away from big events and pre packaged discipleship courses to noticing how to join in with God in the everyday.   

6).  Spiritual framework – we become reliant not on others feeding our souls but discover our own rhythms of grace that build us up and helps us to join in the reconciliation of all things.   

7).  Home and then Home again…  we realise that, somehow, we are more aware of who God is, and who we are in Him and what He is doing in our communities. This feels like home, and in living there we help others discover their homes and a radical movement breaks out…  


We are moving into a new way of being church, and I am excited – though this excitement is tempered by my biggest fear that we go back to how it’s always been done. If we can take are hands off the church, realise that God is calling us to a new thing which is join in with Him, rather than control – may my walk that day in Dorset become true for the church – rediscovery of wild beauty, the move of the Holy spirit and the good news that offers to the poor.

May new diverse communities rise up – and together as one Baptist movement, we celebrate, learn and grow; and may, because of the way our movement lives out Her call – may many experience the peace of God that is beyond our very imagining.   


Chesil Beach image | Belinda Fewings | Unsplash

Ben Lucas was the minister of a large Baptist church before moving to rural Dorset in 2017. He and is family are living incarnationally, engaged in missional listening.

This reflection appears in the Autumn 2020 edition of Baptists Together magazine  

The Grandfather clock

The Grandfather Clock

The overwhelming thing I have learnt as a missional listener is to do with posture.  Putting it simply, I believe now, that we should come to God with empty hands, allowing God to fill them, and direct us by His spirit to the joining in with His mission of the reconciliation of all things.   That posture is to be the same to the neighbour, empty hands, not going to just give and bless, treating them as a missional target that we can help join us in our walk and attract to the things we do, but as a missional conversation partner who blesses us, and disciples us, and suddenly in time we realise we have permission to journey with them to some place new.  Empty hands.   

Sometimes, I rather arrogantly think I am radical and right!  Then God corrects me - and I realise I am nowhere near either radicalness or being right!   This happened recently, as I am rediscovering some of the great prayers of the bible with the small community I belong, and I realised that my relationship with God is almost completely directed by me... The prayer was Abraham's prayer in Genesis 18:16-33.  Have a read, go deep - God is good! 

It was reading this prayer that I realised for the first time that the whole prayer was orchestrated by God.   God instigated the prayer by deciding to share his thoughts and plans with Abraham (v.17), He welcomed Abrahams thoughts and prayers and then the prayer conversation continued until God decided the job was done.  Verse 33: 'When the Lord has finished speaking with Abraham...'.  Its incredible to think that God was interested in Abrahams opinion.  Its mind boggling to see God and Abraham, standing and chatting as two friends.  But it completely blown my mind that the prayer was finished by God, not Abraham. 

God has never finished one of my prayers.  It has always been me who has cut off the conversation.  Usually, because I am bored, distracted, have other things to be getting on with or on retreat, fallen asleep!   I am the one in control of my prayers.  When I think back to my role as Baptist minister in a church setting, I controlled the prayers there too, skilfully getting the timings right, so they were not to long for boredom, or to short for those who want long'uns!   Church services would be brilliantly finished at the appropriate time, regardless of what's going on, so that everyone can get back for Sunday lunch.   Even 24 hour prayer meetings we held, were cut off by me because our target had been met.   I have never had a prayer finished by God, always controlled by me.   Power.  Control.  Full Hands.  

We have a picture for our little community and the others around the area we are called to listen too.   Its a picture of a group of people, flying kites on the beach with child like joy.  Its colourful, joyful and beautiful.  The BBQ's are lit, cooking various foods for everyone.   There are also others watching, gathered round but not yet holding kites.  It reminds me of my friend Pete Atkins church, that has the aim to be candle, table and open door.  A candle, signifying the presence of God.  The table, a sign of community and the open door, a sign to Gods mission.  The presence is God flying the kites, the BBQ's, community and the crowd watching is the open door to God's mission.  

How do we create such communities.  Well, we don't!  Only God builds the church.   In a time of community prayer the picture in response to that question was of a grandfather clock.  Big, strong and dominant.  What I did not know at the time, is that if other pendulum clocks are placed in close proximity to another pendulum clock, the swing rate of a pendulum adjusts, passing motion and energy back and forth, concluding eventually with all the pendulums swinging identically to one another.  

If we want to be a part of vibrant beautiful Christian community then we need to get our posture right, surrender control and allow God to be truly God.  To enter prayer because God wants to engage us in His plans, and at times to stay there until God says we are done... and may the grandfather clock be true of our relationship with God, that as we do this, we find are heart beating with His, our hands and feet doing as Jesus did, our eyes seeing what our Triune God sees.   

May your pendulum fall into synchronisation with our incredible God. 

Still all the wrong questions?

Still all the wrong questions

My dear friends at Threshold church in Lincolnshire, have noticed the importance of cairns – signposts of where we have been on the journey, way markers for people to follow.  I felt the stirring to revisit one my important moments as I transitioned to missional listening, the moment when I realised, I was asking all the wrong questions.  See the blog here:  http://vulnerablemutterings.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-wrong-questions.html.   

I, like many Christian leaders, have had countless opportunities to evaluate what the present crisis means for church.   I often come out of these meetings feeling a deep sense of grief, as I wonder if we are all still asking the wrong questions.  In most of the meetings, the real issues are noticed… the pain, the brokenness, the redundancy, the death, and that death is death that has not died well, the anxiety, the not knowing…  you know it, you  have felt it.   It is well and good that we are noticing these things.  But...



The sadness arises when we then talk about all that we are doing.  And my word, the church is as it always is, incredibly busy.   But it seems to me, observing from the outside of traditional church, that so much effort is going into keeping the old style of church going but on- line.  So much effort going into weekly presentations, some ministers now preaching every day not just one or twice a week.  So much effort going into looking after each other.  So much conversation on the rights and wrongs of sharing communion on-line.  So much effort looking at how we will get our buildings open again, and how we will worship together.  Now, I am not saying this is not all important, but it feels like everybody is knackered, just looking after those already in our church.   What about all those outside the church walls that are feeling all the pain and despondency but are without hope?    



Some people are noticing that there seems to be more people looking at our on-line services – statistics that I am rather sceptical of on the whole.  This leads to the question – how do we keep these new ‘relationships’, and help them join us in church?   The wrong questions I suggest?   I am also asking deep questions of what this crisis means for my family and the missional listening project.  With resources so much lower, will there be funding for us?  The wrong question I suggest?   I wonder if the right questions are:  How and where is God calling us to be present in our communities at this time?  And when we are able to live free of the virus, how do we continue to be present with the people in this community?   And may as we are present, new Christian communities rise up out of the ashes. 



I understand the importance of wanting to feed our church members so they can be filled and inspired to ‘be on the frontline’.   I understand the premise that we gather in services to become boiling hot, and then we are sent as people of transformation.  I understand the Alpha analogy in the session: what is the church? that when you stop going to church, it is like a red-hot coal being taken out of the fire – and what happens to that coal – it goes black and cold.   But my adventuring in missional listening has disproved this theory.  As much as I miss occasionally some aspects of traditional church – I have found myself even more red hot living my faith in a new (but perhaps ancient) way.   The fellowship that we meet with in our house, is the most beautiful I have ever been a part of.  Lessening my voice so that others are heard, by being multi voiced, has led to so much discipleship, beautiful artistry, poems, songs, and testimonies.  I am also able to bring my voice as one of many.  How my children are taking off in their faith journey as we do not rely on Sunday school, or children and youth workers, but instead involve them in our everyday lived discipleship.   How letting go of control, has led to more spiritual gifts being evident.   How living faith out in the community, has led to learning so much more about God.  How now I talk about God more than I have ever done before – as to often before I was talking about church!   How the boundary between church and community is almost non-existent.   Like, when we look at Thy Kingdom Come not as a church activity, but something for the whole community to join in with (thank you Owen Green and the Stowe).   My experience is that I am even more red hot now than I ever was before.  



So, what are the right questions?   No idea... but these are some thoughts!!! I think I want to encourage something to do with our posture.  That firstly, we come to God, with empty hands.   Like the disciples on the boat when they are asked, ‘what have you caught’?   We say with them, ‘nothing’, lead us…   We will find we are already in the right place but now being directed by the Spirit, rather than asking God to bless our endeavours.   We come to our neighbours with empty hands.  Not with loads to give and to bless, not as missional targets, but as friends, as those we are having missional conversations with… the result being a missional life that we can live out together.   We notice that as we journey – they are discipling us and we sometimes find the privilege of discipling them.   Other than these thoughts, I think the original questions in my first blog still stand:  What is the cry of the community?   What would it look like if the kingdom of God came here and now?  And what might community look like as we answer the two previous questions.  



One last muttering.  I have often been meditating on what evangelists look like today.   Not the old-style preachers, declaring the narrow gospel, but I wonder if examples of evangelists today are the spiritual directors.  Those who ask great questions, those who lead people into the presence of God and teach how to pray and encounter.   Most of my friends and colleagues are so good at this, for many it is their jobs – but so often this does not reach our communities.  What if I was to say, that all the gifting was already in the room, already in the people reading this… they just need to find time and space to practice that gifting in our communities rather than in the constraints of those who already belong.   So, another question:   What gifts has God given you?  And how might you practice that in the community?   



Forgive the long post… it is also not professionally written, but it was one of those moments I felt God stirring me, and that I just needed to write... write… write…  so forgiveness for poor quality… but in finishing – can I just say – with God as your partner – you are everything the community needs at this time, and they need so much at this painful time  – please find time to turn up, be present with open and empty hands – and when relationships begin – bring all God has made you – and see his kingdom come.   May this be received as encouragement, as we wrestle with what are the right and wrong questions at this time.  Be blessed!  Ben