Moore Wizardry

Themes: Moore College

At College Chapel this Friday we are having a Communion Service following the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This form of the Service contains within it a ‘Warning’ that the Minister is instructed to read out to the people, which tells everyone when the next Communion service will be held so that they can come to Church properly spiritually prepared (it has been dropped out of every Prayer Book service I’ve ever attended). At the end of College lunch today this warning was read as a way of letting us know about the arrangements for Friday Chapel, and so that we might come adequately prepared.
The Warning for the Celebration of the Holy Communion contains this memorable line instructing the people to seek out a Minister for counsel if they have a disturbed conscience:

… let him come to me, or to some discreet and learned Minister of God’s Word, and open his grief; that by the ministry of God’s holy Word he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness.

It is a very rich statement about one aspect of pastoral ministry – but I found the bit about ‘ghostly counsel’ a little weird. I then went straight from lunch into a New Testament lecture all about Magic and Demons in Luke-Acts.
Moore College seems to get more like Hogwart’s every day…

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Mission Diary

Themes: Moore College

Here are links to a series of reflections I’ve posted during Moore College Mission 2009:

Sunday: To change a life
Monday: Jesus is the Problem to our Solution
Tuesday: I bet all I have on Jesus
Wednesday: The Dancers
Thursday: Everything he touches comes alive
Friday: Rest and the Vale of Tears
Saturday: Mission Men/Women
Sunday: The Future of Mission

And here are some very average pictures taken during the Springwood Foundation Day festival

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The Future of Mission

Themes: Moore College

For some strange reason, all three of the College preachers at the Church services I attended yesterday had independently decided to preach on Luke 18:9-14 (The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector).
I guess it’s no great surprise, the passage is a great choice for an evangelistic talk – it resonates with the Australian tall-poppy syndrome and it’s a beautiful piece of story-telling. I love the rich telling of the Pharisee, ‘taking his stand’ before God, while the tax-collector ‘stands far off’ and strikes his chest in grief.
Jesus concluded his parable like this: “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
It’s a warning, and also a promise. And it’s intended for both believers and non-believers in Jesus. It definitely has plenty to say to me at the end of Mission week.
This week we’ve participated in the ministry of glory, so that:

We all, with unveiled faces, are reflecting the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2Corinthians 3:18 HCSB)

But Jesus reminds us that we are still humble folk, and at the end of the week, particularly frail and weak and tired.
But it’s also a promise: that the seemingly foolish things we’ve done, the humiliation in the eyes of the world, the frustration of being unheard or misunderstood – it will all be reconciled:

so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:7 HCSB)

We are confident of this future because:

He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens, in Christ Jesus, (Ephesians 2:6 HCSB)

Which means that all our hopes for Mission week are based on Easter – a fact that was right in our faces all week. The main sign at the front of the Springwood Anglican Ministry Centre has this verse as its caption:

… if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without foundation, and so is your faith…
But Christ has been raised from the dead.
(1Corinthians 15:14, 20 HCSB)

Read the rest of my Mission Diary

pic by Hussain Isa

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Mission Men/Women

Themes: Moore College

The “Men’s Breakfast” is a classic of men’s ministry at most Churches, and you really can’t have a mission week without at least one steaming load of bacon, eggs, and bleary eyes. Of course, looking out at a room full of blokes early on a Saturday morning is nearly enough to turn you off whatever breakfast is on offer.
Men come in all sorts and conditions, particularly at 8am on a Saturday. It’s hard to believe all the shapes and sizes, the ages, the sheer diversity of masculinity until you remove all the women from a room and really look around. Honestly, you need a good reason to perpetrate an aesthetic crime of such magnitude… Maybe it’s a form of brutalist performance art? Women are much easier on the eye.
Ed Frost gave a great talk on ‘Real Man’ – looking at the Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Jesus. I think behind the talk – what made it relevant – is the sense that masculinity is something a bit mysterious to most men. There is a real question about what makes a ‘real man’.

Questions about Gender always pop up around Mission time, and not just about masculinity. I don’t know how many conversations I’ve had with friends over the past month around questions of gender and ministry.
The issues arise in 3 areas:

First, women are inadequately cared for in most Moore College Mission teams. There are usually 4-5 women on a team of 18-20, but most Churches like having both men and women involved in Church services or outreach activities. This means that women will usually be 3-4 times more busy on mission than men. In addition, it is often a female team member who is given responsibility for a large section of the children’s ministry – the busiest component of most missions. And then further, the kinds of roles that women will generally be given on mission won’t be as high-profile as those of the men. They won’t get the gig preaching on Sunday or at the large evangelistic event (unless it’s an all women event). Now, of course everyone will affirm that all ministry opportunities are equal, but that’s not always how it appears in practice or in team feed-back sessions. Often, at the end of a week of mission women have been overworked and under-appreciated, and frequently if they feel this, they only express it quietly, and to other women.

Second, mission tends to reopen the awkwardly settled question regarding the appropriateness of women teaching men. The members of the team send out little feelers to work out where everyone else stands, and even when we get this worked out, then we have the same process with the Church to which we are sent. It can be very awkward indeed if the Church and the Mission Team have different expectations about what women can do while on mission. It can be disastrous if communication breaks down. Again, it’s an issue on which men can be insensitive. How would you feel if you turn up on mission ready to lead a Bible Study or give a talk at Youth Group and then get pulled from the programme by the local minister when he discovers you are of the female persuasion? I don’t think many blokes would deal with that well.

Third, mission raises difficult questions about how our Churches are going about reaching out to men. Most Churches have more female members than male, it’s actually been this way since the Reformation, so don’t blame changes in society or Church leadership, at least not recent ones. But regardless of how long it’s been that way, we all know that it should be different. God wants all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1Tim 2:4).
There are interesting complications involved in both kinds of gender specific ministry.
For women, there are the incredible changes in the conception of femininity since the Second World War. Most of the events that are targeted at middle-aged women will be farcical to younger women – the classic example being the infamous gingerbread-house making event. The differences in experience, expectations, and self-understanding between someone of my wife’s generation, her mother, and her grandmother, should not be underestimated. Add to that the diversity introduced through the different experiences (or lack) of motherhood. It’s not easy to work out a generic brand of women’s ministry because ‘woman’ is not a generic brand.

Strangely, the situation is different for men. ‘Man’ is a generic brand. There has been a very stable concept of masculinity throughout the same period in which femininity has been fragmented. Of course, the two processes are mutually dependent. If you need proof look at representations of masculinity and femininity in advertising over the past 5 decades.
But while the brand has been stable, men themselves are very diverse in character, and have found significant challenges to their self-understanding through the changes in women’s roles. So, while many women struggle to know what ‘Woman’ stands for, most men have a good idea of what a ‘Man’ is, and most of us can play the part when we need, but beneath the stable mask of masculinity can reside a continual sense of not-quite-matching-up.
So, what makes a real man?

This post is already far too long, so I’ll only offer one thought: Christians often go astray in their thinking about gender because they assume we can know the true nature of gender, and particularly masculinity, through some appeal to ‘how things are’ – through proper observation of the world. It is evident in theologies of Gender which start in Genesis and largely skip straight to Paul’s letters. What happened to Jesus?
We shouldn’t assume that we can know ourselves from the created order any more than we can know God. And for precisely the reason that the two kinds of knowledge are completely interconnected. Knowing God, gives true knowledge of ourselves. The conditions under which theology is possible are also the conditions for genuine anthropology. And just like our sinful minds are darkened when it comes to knowledge of God and our hearts become factories of idols, so, we cannot have a true conception of our personhood, our gender, until it is revealed to us in Christ.
Natural theologies of Gender aren’t the foundation on which we can become genuinely missionary men and women.

Read the rest of my Mission Diary

Photo by freeparking

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Rest and The Vale of Tears

Themes: Moore College

For my day off, I went walking at Wentworth Falls. We’ve had days of solid rain here in the Blue Mountains, so I thought it might be worthwhile to go and look at a waterfall. I took the path from Conservation Hut down through a place called Valley of the Waters and then along the National Pass walking track. The National Pass track follows a ledge along the middle of a gigantic cliff face for about 4 kilometres. Everywhere there was water, It was like taking a 3 hour long shower. Everywhere the water was cascading over the edge of the Blue Mountains escarpment, so all the major waterfalls were thundering, but there were also places where water was just seeping, or dripping from 200 metres above, or running down tree trunks. Everywhere there were rainbows, sometimes when the wind gusted it looked like the water was flowing sideways across the cliff face. The track passes over, behind, in front of waterfalls, and then the final glory is an ascent up hundreds of metres of stairs that have been carved into the rock face beside the Wentworth Falls themselves. I can’t really describe it. It was an Elemental experience.

Resting trains us for eternity. To rest regularly, to sleep, to chill, to shoot the breeze, is an exercise in practical theology: we rest in the comfort of the sovereignty of God; we relax into the recognition of our own properly human dependence; we repose in the real knowledge that God is himself for us.
Isn’t that wonderful?
Isn’t God good?

The Sabbath is the ‘Lord’s Day’ not because we offer it to him in sacrifice, but because in yet another way he offers himself to us through it. And ‘the Sabbath was made for Man’ (Mark 2:27) because in the Sabbath the Lord of the Sabbath gifts us real knowledge and a genuine experience of ourselves.
So there is no more genuinely Christian missionary practice than having a day off, it is an acted-out prayer of praise to the One who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine (Eph 3:20).

There is another side to this reflection however. As I was walking. the name “Valley of the Waters” reminded me of a verse in Psalm 84:

Happy are the people whose strength is in You, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a source of springwater; even the autumn rain will cover it with blessings. They go from strength to strength; each appears before God in Zion. (Psalms 84:5-7 HCSB)

It’s a good psalm for bushwalking in general (a heart set on pilgrimage), but right now I’m more interested in the reference to ‘the Valley of Baca’.
The King James Version translated this as “the vale of tears” following the ancient Greek Translation (‘vale’ is olde englishe for ‘valley’). Most modern English translations haven’t been confident of the original Hebrew meaning and have therefore left the name untranslated (Baca). I think however, the Greek Translator was onto something: As the pilgrims pass through the Valley of Tears, their weeping becomes a source of renewal and refreshment.
The Vale of Tears becomes an Oasis.

If you spend time talking to the older Saints they’ll tell you this truth time and again: It’s often been in the difficult times, when they’ve felt the pain of life under the sun, when they’ve wept before the Lord, in those times they’ve found greater comfort and deeper spiritual joy. The testimony of these pilgrims is that God has led them into the Vale of Tears and given them refreshment.

I guess the point of this ramble is that sometimes we keep the Sabbath with joy and celebration, we do the things we love. with the people we love. But sometimes we keep the Sabbath with tears and pain. The Sabbath was made for man, and sometimes there are different Sabbaths for different men. It’s part of the weird experience of life between the times, that we can encounter the Sabbath as an experience of either freedom or discipline, and sometimes both. It’s only on reaching our destination that this can be reconciled.
For now, having been rested, the Lord of the Sabbath calls us back to the track.

Read the rest of my Mission Diary

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Everything he touches comes alive

Themes: Moore College, Selections

Most of us don’t have any regular contact with the Aged. Maybe you make a semi-regular visit to a relative, maybe you come across elderly people in your line of work, and for most of us that’s probably about it. I’m reasonably sure that there aren’t too many people of my age and cultural background who seek out the company of Older People. We know this means they are likely to be lonely and feel neglected, and I think it makes us feel a little guilty, but the truth is, being with Old People is hard.

I’ve been on a mission team, either with Uni students or Moore College, every year now for the past 13 years. And every mission trip has involved ministry to Seniors. I’ve sung, preached, talked, and held hands with people in nursing homes all up and down the coast of New South Wales. It doesn’t get any easier, but nearly always it has been a beautiful experience: beautiful and unsettling.
It was so again yesterday when we visited Buckland Village with our team. The crowd had already been gathered when we arrived, about 20 people, nearly all with walking-frames parked by the wall. They were listening to a lady playing the piano. so I sat and listened with them as her music flowed. She was wonderful, she must have been astonishingly good when she was younger. But when the music stopped, I watched her struggle to get up from the piano stool, and then, with obvious pain, lower herself onto a chair for the rest of the session.

Older people embody our personal eschatology. Not the final point, obviously, but a stage through which many of us will pass. Yet often frailty and the accelerating power of death over a person’s body can be entirely absent from eschatological conceptions, whether secular or Christian. (By ‘eschatology’ I mean ‘the end toward which all things move’). Secular eschatology falls damningly silent after setting forth the glories of a well-supported retirement. Christian eschatology tends to skip a track between ‘Hale and Hearty Middle Age’ and ‘Bodily Resurrection’. I even wonder whether squeamishness about age contributes to the emphasis on more ‘Rapturous’ type eschatology in some Christian circles. After all, getting swept up into the air is far more glamorous than grinding out your final years in a nursing home.

Contrast that with Jesus, talking about his personal eschatology:

“I assure you: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces a large crop. (John 12:24 HCSB)

Now look at how Paul takes up this metaphor and works with it:

So it is with the resurrection of the dead:
Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body.
(1Corinthians 15:42-44 HCSB)

For the vast majority of us, the way to The Future lies through death. It will involve the loss of function, the loss of dignity, the loss of power. At the end, all you will have left is either the knowledge that you are dust, or that you are a seed (1Cor 15:47-48).
Dust or Seed, when you plant them it makes a difference. But you can’t avoid being planted.
Thus the Aged unsettle us.

But for the Christian, the more death seems to take, the more God works through this to restore the true image of his Son. In the Christian Aged, God’s power is made perfect in weakness because there is nothing more essentially human than to be utterly dependant upon God. Theirs is an inalienable dignity.
I remember watching my Grandma Joy die like this. (you can read about it here)
The more Death takes – the greater the frailty, the blindness, the pain – the more he does another’s work.

O Death, where is your victory?
O Death, where is your sting?

And thus the Aged are beautiful.
Sure, they can be crotchety and difficult, but the best kinds of beauty are difficult to appreciate at first. We must pray that God would give us Good Taste.

Later I talked with the lady at the piano and told her how much I enjoyed her playing. She told me that the morphine had stolen large chunks of her memory, and cataracts made it difficult for her to see the sheet music, so when she plays the music comes from her ears and her heart. That’s the kind of music that echoes the life which is welling up inside her, a little testimony to the One who, everything he touches comes alive.

Read the rest of my Mission Diary

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