If we realize this, it takes away a weight. We aren’t writing our own story.
In a story, characters have their own motivations and they follow them. But the whole architecture of the story, where it goes, how it ends, that’s in the hands of the story-teller.
In the story of the Prodigal Son, the younger son has motivation: to get out and have fun. The father has motivation: to love his son. Neither of them knows how the story will work out. They just follow that which drives them.
What drives you? Follow that. (If it’s a good thing.) What constrains you? Let that also steer your course. Then let the Storyteller do his stuff.
Read a Bible story at some length, always picking something that involves a miraculous transformation. There are plenty of these available, enough for a whole year’s preaching or more.
Here’s your main point: someone in the story met Jesus, or God if it’s the Old Testament, and their life was transformed. Tell this story with as much drama as you can muster.
Salt your story with promises plucked from elsewhere in scripture, again, plenty to choose from.
Tell some stories about yourself or your children that vaguely illustrate the same point.
Repeat (that’s a sermon series). Or write down (that’s a book).
Change the theme slightly, and repeat again. So instead of ‘secrets of healing’, you could branch into ‘living a life of victory’ or ‘total financial freedom’ or ‘being a person of power and authority’.
On you go. Same talk. It’s a career.
There are consequences to this Christian populism.
You are pointing people to Jesus, perhaps the best thing you can do for anyone.
Unfortunately the Jesus you are pointing them to is a one-shot wonder worker, a stripped-down version of the real thing.
You’re missing the slow. We not finished, in both senses. We are still being patched up, and we are still pressing on in our incomplete state. Blessed are those at the end of their rope, broken, mourning, hungering, thirsting. Every day we search our minds and hearts to conform them to God’s will. Through faith and patience we inherit the promises. Suffering produces character produces hope. Not a charge to victory, methinks, a patient plod.
So I have to request you be patient for a little longer. Here’s a third take on the changes intended for the National Health Service and how these changes take it into the arms of the Christian church, and how they can help re-establish the church in its centuries-old role as centre-piece of the good in a local community.
A newspaper report in April 25 said this:
The NHS is attempting to ease the pressure on GPs and A&E by sending a new type of health worker door to door in deprived areas to help detect illnesses before people need urgent care.
Community health and wellbeing workers (CHWW) are already deployed in 12 areas of England, with 13 others to follow, in an attempt to improve poor and vulnerable people’s access to care.
Each worker is responsible for 120-150 households, usually on a council estate, which they visit once a month to help residents with money, isolation and housing problems, as well as their health.
Wes Streeting, the heath secretary, is examining the scheme as he pulls together ideas to help “fix” the NHS that may be included in the forthcoming 10-year health plan.1 The article points out these CHWWs ‘are not clinically trained staff, like doctors, nurses and health visitors. They are mostly recruited from the communities they work in and trained up for the role.’
It quotes the program managed of the National Association of Primary Care as follows:
‘CHWWs are supporting residents to access earlier and more appropriate forms of care, often in community settings.
‘They’re also helping to address wider determinants of health – like housing, finances and loneliness – which are frequently the root cause of escalating health issues that end up in A&E.
‘Their job is to build relationships with the people in their households and with health professionals and NHS services locally.’
Nothing in the article mentions the church. But what a nice job for someone as a CHWW, with formal or informal links to faith communities.
Photo: Author’s own. ‘When you ripe fields behold’; just near our home.
‘The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed’ (attributed to science fiction author William Gibson). Nowhere is that more true than when you think of the subject of obscurity. Today, somewhere, some group of students or ex-students is hatching something that one day will be mainstream, part of the landscape. (Think Microsoft or Apple, which were startups one day. I believe Apple is worth more than all the FTSE 100 companies added together.)
The Christian Church has its fair share of that which is obscure becoming mainstream. Think of twelve in an upper room… or the handful of ‘enthusiasts’ called ‘Methodists’ in the early 18th century, or worldwide Pentecostalism (now 600m strong) tracing its roots back to some rustic, chaotic meetings in Los Angeles’ Azusa St or to Charles Parham’s Bible school in Kansas. Or think of Robert Morrison, early Protestant missionary to China, in 1807 having to take a ship from San Francisco because nothing from Europe was suitable, being asked by a shipping clerk, ‘So, Mr Morrison, do you expect to make an impression on the great Chinese Empire?’ ‘No sir,’ he replies, ‘I expect God will.’
The Bible mainlines on the obscure. Especially when twinned with faith. Think of the virgin Mary, a teen who believed, or Abraham, whose descendants became more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sand on the beach only because he believed what God said to him. Thousands or millions of other nomads passed into history: this one alone became revered as the father of many nations.
There is incredible romance here. I wonder if faith is largely the possession of the obscure. I wonder if there is some woman somewhere, packing her shopping in the cupboard, and then getting alone with God and trusting him for … what? a mass turning to Christ among Gen Z, for example, new churches in every town? Or some mass political change that opens a nation or a people to spiritual change? No-one will know her, but heaven will know her. The anonymous prayer-er, the unknown soldier.
Extend that even a little. What if there’s a clamour of prayer and faith rising from obscure people — as there is — day and night towards God. What if in that spray of prayer are droplets of mountain-moving faith? What if all that is shaping history as much as any of the documented historical events which (on this analysis) are merely the outworking, processed by God, of all that asking and believing, of all that straining towards heaven? There’s a hymn famous in some circles:
Wherever you ripe fields behold, Waving to God their sheaves of gold, Be sure some com of wheat has died, Some saintly soul been crucified; Someone has suffered, wept and prayed, And fought hell’s legions undismayed. (A S Booth-Clibburn, There is no gain but by a loss.)
Recently the church calendar shone its spotlight on the Presentation of Christ at the temple, and our attention was drawn to those two old codgers, Simeon and Anna, who had been separately hanging around the temple, for, like forever, waiting for the Consolation of Israel.
Then one day along come Mary and Joseph with the early-childhood Jewish routine of presenting the child at the temple. Surely Mary was a little anxious about her eight-day-old being circumcised, like nowadays when your kids have their first jabs. What if he cried? What if he didn’t stop bleeding? What if they got it wrong with the knife?
Anyhow, presumably before any knives are wielded, up jumps Simeon, followed closely by Anna, and starts prophesying. All my life I’ve been waiting for this, says Simeon. Indeed that was my life. And now I’ve seen this baby. He’s the one. I’m done here.
Which raised the question, what am I waiting for? What am I hoping for? What is yet unfulfilled? This is a question you can ask periodically through your life, with, perhaps, different answers along the way. In my case: I’ve worked as a writer all my life. I fell in love with a girl and thirty and more years later she still brightens and fills my days. We raised two wonderful children. We paid for our house and saved up, some, for our retirement. I didn’t die along the way. What more could I want?
It turns out that the more that I want is craftsmanship. I think that, and not dying yet, are my remaining ambitions. OK, those and loving people and hanging out with my wife and family and continuing to be a disciple of Jesus.
Craftsmanship: doing things beautifully and well. For better or worse, I live behind a keyboard. I inhabit a world of books and words and ideas and images. I don’t smell, like some men do, of engine oil or rural pursuits. Flakes of sawdust don’t fall from my hair. Craftsmanship for me is writing beautifully and well. And it’s still a bright shining, guiding (and maybe distant) light.
(I am grateful for the writer Chuck Lowe for this brilliance, which I hope I have not sullied too much.)
You need to make something happen? Here’s what you need:
A parts list
Step-by-step instructions
Hazards to avoid
Useful techniques for greater efficiency
Apart from the side effect of turning people into automata, this approach was powerful for simple things like recipes, fast-food restaurants, internal combustion engines, mills, factories and much else. The Industrial Revolution (I suggest) was a revolution because of the discovery and application of this power.
It is such a powerful approach that we humans have totally lost control of it and are applying it to everything, particularly complex systems, where it doesn’t work at all. Here is a partial list where it doesn’t work:
Babies
Adults
Children
Societies
Economies
Medicine
Education
Business
You get the idea: anything human. I notice (following Chuck Lowe again) how what powered the Industrial Revolution has hijacked the Christian Church, or at least the bits I inhabit. (Perhaps Orthodoxy largely escaped? I don’t know enough. )
Right now, around the world, how many courses are being delivered, how many notes taken, about about how to get the gospel working in lives and churches: evangelistic programmes, discipleship programmes, instructions on how to pray, heal, defeat evil, live well? What colossal percentage of time and energy is wasted delivering and receiving these courses. Because what works for the simple does not work for the complex. Anybody who has spent the shortest time with a toddler knows this.
Abandon it all. What are we supposed to do instead? I think in the Christian sphere it is about the attitudes that flow from a worshipping heart; about love love of God and neighbour; about serving as your passions and circumstances lead and constrain; and about trusting God, the big drummer in the sky, to call the dance.
It’s striking what is, and isn’t, emphasized when St Paul decides what to write in his short letters to churches. There isn’t much about fame, achievement or celebrity; nothing about goals and milestones. Not much that I can see about strategy, or mobilisation, or changing the world.
Quite a lot about relationships, though, about families, about employers and employees (well, slaves and slave-owners). It reminds me of the story of the founder of a world-wide Christian charity. Apparently there are two biographies about him. There’s the corporate biography, country after country entered, cash-flow problems addressed, new initiatives started, new staff hired, horizons falling away as the ministry soars, as it were, into the sky.
Then there’s the second biography, written by the daughter about a father who was never home.
It’s easy to criticise someone second-hand, and to simplify a complex thing to make a point. Big parts of Christian discipleship are getting our attitudes and our close relationships right. That’s a place to put effort and is a true arena of service. It’s also super-revolutionary, overturning priorities. The big is small; the small is big.
I’ve been enjoying over the summer exploring the brain of former Archbishop. and continuing New Testament scholar, Rowan Williams, not least because I can now read his books for free, ish, on my phone, thanks to the wonderful perlego.com subscription service.
Something he said got me going, though. He described how becoming a Christian made his perspective wider, broadened his view. I really like that idea But how so?
I thought of some examples:
Science is the pursuit of God’s utter ingeniousness. Science is great at ‘how’ and rubbish at ‘why’. But if the ‘why’ is settled, and especially if it’s settled in the idea of a loving God not able to keep his goodness to himself, and creating a universe, then science becomes a rather joyous romp in a playground. Wider, deeper and higher we can go, into the crannies of God’s genius.
Art is for all humanity. Christ is Lord of culture. That is really something. This does not doom us to endlessly paint Biblical scenes, nor only to write theology. So much of the Christian faith is attitudes: set yourself to love God and neighbour, pick up your paintbrush, and see what happens. Wider, deeper, funner, lovelier. And because everyone is in the image of God, everyone is capable of artistry.
The common good. We don’t need to resort to utilitarian arguments to care for the earth or humanity. We have, through the unrolling story of God-with-people, a context of individual, communal, global, and universal thriving. When we set ourselves with that perspective, we can have confidence that we are working with grain of the Universe, whatever our hands find to do. Wider, more imaginative, more creative.
Christ is the Lord of Time. The proper Time-lord. What does this mean? We don’t have to rush. Let’s do stuff well. Let’s not do other stuff. And let’s be OK with failing.
All will be summed up in Christ. So he’s taking the whole ‘completeness’ thing on his own shoulders. That frees us to be partial, incomplete, which frees us to attempt big things, because the final outcome rests just with us following our sense of his leading.
I am free to be my playful self, because I’m standing on somewhere solid and safe. And beause I’m loved. How lovely.
This is a post is about ‘Christian problems’ so it may not be relevant to you, but it is relevant to the theme of ‘slow mission’ or ‘patient revolution’, because the Christian faith is the very essence of a slow-burning, profound revolution in thought and life. (Even allowing for Christianity’s zany twists and turns throught its long history.)
I can’t count how many times I have been encouraged from talks in churches to do the following:
Pray more
Read my Bible more
Introduce others to Jesus and church.
Occasionally there’s a radical addition like
4. Volunteer for things in church
While this is at one level right, at another level it is completely wrong. The really big deal about the Christian faith is the transformed relationships. That is what the letters in the New Testament are mostly concerned with. That’s what the Beatitudes are about, and when Jesus is asked to summarize the law and the prophets, he comes up with love the Lord your God with everything you have and love your neighbour with the same vehemence that you defend, justify and serve yourself.
In other words, if you had a highlights reel of the New Testament, it’s about transforming our relationships.
Marriage ceases to be a power struggle (well, ideally) and become, s a place where each partner denies their natural power-seeking instincts in order to lovingly to make the other partner thrive.
Child rearing becomes a matter of unconditional love rather than performance-related benefits
Employees’ work becomes devotion to Jesus.
Employers have to recognize we’re all the same before God and treat their employees as fellow humans rather than machinery.
This sense of love and equality then spreads out to the poor and sick
In the story of how the Church has got on with this task over the 50 generations since the apostles, you have to edit out quite a lot of stuff, but (I argue) you are still left with a basic framework which is that this happened. The parts of the world tainted by the Christian faith are seriously different from the (diminishing) parts that aren’t. Even a nation like India (less than 5% Christian officially) has been seriously changed by an encounter with Christian thinking. Despite thousands of years of history and an evanescence of philosophical systems, it was only after a brush with Christianity that Dalits were treated as human beings rather than animals, I believe, for example.
And we wouldn’t have modern-sounding and secular-sounding things like human rights without the virus of Christianity having becoming endemic among us. (That is still why some nations see ‘human rights’ as just another way the West is trying to get one over them; they recognize how alien it is.)
So all the more impoverishing, if that’s a word, when Christian devotion is reduced to a few performance-management variables like how much Bible you read each day. I suppose it’s true that Bible reading gets you exposed to the important stuff, but we mustn’t miss the inportant stuff itself. In a world of spin and hype, and a coming world perhaps of AI-fakery, transformed relationships sound through the Universe like a great bell.
My grandad was disabled because, as an 18-year-old, a month or two before the Armistice in the first war, he was gassed. He ended up losing a lung. All his life he had a mighty cough, and he never slept lying down. I knew him and look like him and apparently act like him.
Possibly he would have praised the power of compounding that meant his life was easier than his father’s. My great-grandad was bedridden with gangrene, cared for by his wife, in a small house with few luxuries beyond a piano. (There were not enough chairs, for example, so my grandad ate his meals standing up as a child.)
The compounding wealth and compounding technology had meant my grandad had a job and a comfortable home, all supplied by the council, and electricity and water and TV and a pension and holidays. The boy who’d run down the street when someone said, ‘Look, a car!’, grew to be the old man who watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon, and he was amazed and grateful for it all.
My memory of him is seated in his chair, by the coal fire, books by his feet, reading, reading (though not when we grandchildren were around when his sense of fun gave full rein). He was a keen socialist, and a Methodist preacher, and he belonged to that era when town councils and public funds supplied things for the common good–like libraries and education–and socialism and the welfare state sort-of worked.
Two generations on and what has compounding achieving? Economic compounding means welfare benefits are more generous and people’s means are on average greater. Technological compounding means I have computers and the internet, an electric bike and electric buggy, a pacemaker in my chest that supplies the heartbeats I need. Today we test drove a new car and I’ve recently joined a gym, whose machines adjust themselves to me, work out a fitness scheme, and lead me into it. None of this is merited. I have just floated on the rising tide of compounding: other people making little steps to make things good or better, to do things well, repeated and repeated and repeated.
Surely this points to the power of quiet revolution, of patient progress, of slow purposefulness. This tide is rising all over the world, subverted constantly by evil, but rising, rising.
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