The End is Nigh

I really don't know whether the end of the world is nigh. Jesus might come again tomorrow morning at 9.00, or we might still have hundreds of thousands of years left. I know I have to be ready at any time, and that's good enough for me.

One end that I do know is nigh, though, is the end of Tale Spin. I've felt it coming on for a long time. I've been losing my enthusiasm for blogging, and have caught myself asking why I still do it. It's become a habit, is all. I've met some wonderful people and had some good conversation, but lately the price in terms of time commitment is just too high. It's time to move on.

So - it's time for me to pull the plug. Save anything you want to save, because at the end of the month I'm going to shut Tale Spin down. Thanks to all who've read and commented. For those who want to stay in touch, check out my music pages in the left hand column. Or even better, send me an email; the address is in the left hand column too.

Book Report: John Howard Yoder: Preface to Theology

John Howard Yoder: Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2002).

This book has been sitting on my bookshelf unread since I returned from sabbatical leave last summer. My regular readers will know that I have become rather well-acquainted with Yoder, and I must confess to having been afraid to start this book. Yoder can be brilliant, incisive, and clear, but he can also be complex and incomprehensible, and I was afraid this book would be of the complex and incomprehensible variety. I was wrong. This is one of the clearest and most easily-read Yoder books I have ever come across.

First, a word about the nature of the book. It was published posthumously (Yoder died in 1997), being prepared by Stanley Hauerwas and Alex Sider from a mimeographed set of lectures which Yoder gave at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary over a period roughly from the mid-1960s to 1981. As a result, some of the observations in the book are dated (the editors point out a few of these in the preface), but the bulk of it is still remarkably relevant. The mimeographed lectures have been available for purchase since the mid-1980s, but the book in its present form has only been available since 2002.

The lectures which form the basis of this book were the substance of an introductory course to theology which Yoder gave on a yearly basis. There is something characteristically Anabaptist and Mennonite about the fact that Yoder chose to introduce the discipline of theology to his students by working in the field of Christology. Many systematic theology texts begin with the philosophical question of knowledge – how can we know, and how can we know that we know? – and then move on from there to a doctrine of scripture. Yoder believed that Jesus is the key to knowing God, and so he began with the person and work of Jesus.

The work falls into three parts: (1) New Testament Themes, (2) Post-Apostolic Theology, and (3) Systematic Treatment of Christological Themes. The first section, New Testament Themes, is a brilliant historical approach to the development of Christology in the New Testament. In this section Yoder begins with the question ‘What do the apostles proclaim about Jesus?’ – i.e. in the Book of Acts. He then goes on to explore what he calls the ‘primitive’ or ‘uncritical’ NT writings, examining Jesus’ own self-understanding, that of the gospel writers, and the writings of Peter, James, and Jude. From these writings he discusses some of the titles of Jesus (eg. ‘Son of Man’, ‘Servant’, ‘Prophet’, ‘Messiah’, ‘Lord’) and what they meant in their original context. He then goes on to look at the tradition Paul received (i.e. the early material embedded in some of Paul’s letters) before examining what he calls ‘The Theologians’ – John, the author of Hebrews, and Paul. There is definitely a development in Christology between the earlier and later writers, but this is understandable as they were moving out into new territory and dealing with questions the earlier writers had not faced.

A new thought to me, in this section, is Yoder’s observation that the writings of the NT ‘theologians’ (Paul, John, and Hebrews) would not have been as influential in the early church as the enormous amount of space they take up in the NT would lead us to believe. Most early congregations would not have possessed copies of these writings. They would have had the apostolic testimony to Jesus, the various hymns and prayers and creedal statements embedded in the NT (and perhaps others), baptism and the Lord’s Supper, a way of understanding the OT story, and the concrete ethical instruction which is so strong a part of the primitive authors such as Peter and James. The way of thinking embodied in these sources would have been far more influential in the apostolic church than the writings of the ‘theologians’. Yoder does not mean to disparage the theologians in saying this; he simply states it to correct what he sees as an imbalance.

The second section is entitled ‘Post-Apostolic Theology’ and deals with the apostolic Fathers, the Christology of the Apostles’ Creed and the formation of the Canon of the New Testament, the Trinitarian discussions that led to the Council of Nicea, and the Christological controversies leading up to and including the Council of Chalcedon. This is probably the most brilliant section of the book. In this period the church continues to deal with questions arising out of her history. Two of the early questions are to do with the nature of the new life (i.e. ethics) and the problem of immortality – not exactly central issues in Paul’s thought, but obviously important in the world the apostolic Fathers were moving in. In discussing the controversy about whether sins after baptism can be forgiven, Yoder points out the assumption behind this debate: that Christians would not normally need to be forgiven, that this would in fact be an extraordinary thing. In other words, ethical transformation by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit was a normal expectation of the early Christians.

Yoder then discusses the formation of the Apostles’ Creed and compares it to the early preaching of the apostles in the book of Acts. Obvious differences include the fact that there is no Old Testament story in the Creed (the ‘fulness of time’ theme has vanished) and also that forgiveness of sins is not proclaimed in the context of repentance. Context is important here; the Christendom culture assumes that everyone is now Christian, the distinction between ‘church’ and ‘world’ is fading, so the necessity to leave something behind in order to become a Christian is not as strong. There follows a very illuminating discussion of the question of the Virgin Birth. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the process of the formation of the NT canon. He accepts the historical fact that this is a fuzzy thing (there is no revealed list of the revealed books), but also takes issue with the Catholic assumption that the Church’s decision as to the books to be included in the canon means that the Church has authority over scripture. Rather, as he says, ‘The church recognizes the limitation on her authority by saying, “Those are the writings that stand above us. Those are the writings to which we cannot add. This is the body of literature under which we stand and from which we take orders”’ (p.175).

The final two chapters in this section of the book discuss the development of the doctrines of the Trinity and the nature of Christ in the processes around the councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. Yoder discusses the various theologians and their positions, and he is also alive to the sociological context of the formation of the creeds – for instance, the rather curious fact that a pagan emperor, who claimed to be a Christian but had not submitted to baptism, presided over the Council of Nicea with the aim of a unified church which would unify his ‘Christian’ empire, and the intense rivalry between Antioch and Alexandra in the debates about the nature of Christ. In reading his section on the Trinity I was confronted again with an older thought – I incline far more toward ‘Tri-Theism’ than true Trinitarianism, and so does most popular-level theology. Yoder also points out the fact that in addressing these issues the Church had no choice but to use the language and concepts of Greek thought, but that in using these concepts and language there was a definite move away from the worldview of the New Testament. We might not have chosen to use this language and these concepts today, but ‘the problem of the doctrine of the Trinity, the normativity of Jesus as he relates to the uniqueness of God, is a problem Christians will always face if they are Christian. The doctrine of the Trinity is a test of whether your commitments to Jesus and to God are biblical enough that you have the problem the doctrine of the Trinity solves’ (p.204).

In the final section, ‘Systematic Treatment of Christological Themes’, Yoder examines the traditional titles of Christ – ‘King’, ‘Priest’, and ‘Prophet’. Under each section, he examines a related theological theme: ‘King’ leads to a treatment of eschatology, ‘Priest’ to a discussion of models of the Atonement, and ‘Prophet’ to the doctrine of revelation. For the first two themes this works very well; for the third, in my view, not so well.

Under ‘Christ as King: Last Things’, Yoder begins by discussing the meaning of kingship in the Old Testament, the Messianic expectation, and how Jesus challenged it, still claiming to fulfil it, but fundamentally changing its nature. It is as the suffering servant that he rules; he does not impose his rule on us like a Constantianian emperor. Christian ethics, which in Yoder’s view are a seamless garment with theology, would then conclude that this is normative for Christians. Yoder then goes on to examine the doctrine of the reign of Christ and the so-called ‘Last Things’; he sets out the general sequence of events as given in the New Testament, and then the way it has been interpreted throughout Christian history in such systems as dispensationalism, premillenialism, amillenialism, postmillennialism, various immanentist positions and so on. all of this is very helpful, particularly in demonstrating that texts whose meanings seem to be very clear when you read them from within a given system (premillenialism, for instance) have been read by other Christians in completely different ways.

Under ‘Christ as Priest: Atonement’ Yoder touches briefly on the function of a priest before launching into a major discussion of the various models of the atonement. This was probably the most useful part of the book for me. He sets out the major question to be asked (‘What exactly is perdition, and how does the death of Christ save us from it?’), lays out the various biblical options, and then examines the major schools of interpretation – ‘Christus Victor’, ‘ransom’, ‘incarnation’, ‘moral influence’ (Abelard), and ‘satisfaction’ (Anselm). He points out the strengths of these various theories but also analyses their weaknesses; he is particularly concerned to challenge the dominance of the satisfaction theory in modern evangelicalism. At the end, he offers a proposal of his own which aims at taking human freedom seriously, at seeing salvation as involving ethical transformation and not just a legal pardon, and in uniting the cross and the resurrection as integral to our redemption. I will not go any further at this point in describing this, as I hope to write a longer post outlining both Yoder’s assessment of other views and the proposal he makes.

The final major chapter, ‘Christ as Prophet: Revelation’ is in my view the least successful. This is because, although Yoder makes his major point in the first few pages – the phrase ‘The Word of God’ is never applied to the Bible in the Bible, but to (a) the prophetic oracles, (b) the person of Jesus, and (c) the apostolic message – he does not go on to work out the implications of this. Rather, he spends the rest of the chapter discussing biblical inspiration and authority – a brilliant and illuminating discussion, setting out clearly the presuppositions, strengths and weaknesses of the various schools of thought. He makes the (now commonplace) observation that both fundamentalism and liberalism are ‘in a sense siblings. They are both in the rationalistic family’ (p.357). He demonstrates the shortcomings of the Reformation doctrine of the clarity (‘perspicacity’) of scripture: if it’s so clear, how come there are so many different interpretations and so many different sects arguing about them? Toward the end, he discusses what ‘faithfulness’ the scripture actually means, pointing out that we see movement between Old Testament and New Testament and in the pages of the NT itself. ‘We test our conformity to Scripture therefore not by asking whether we keep saying the same thing without change, but rather by asking a more difficult question: Is the way we keep moving in conformity with the way God’s people were led to move in formative times?’ (p.373).

The reason I found this chapter disappointing – despite the brilliant discussion of the nature of inspiration and authority – is that having defined the Word of God as supremely revealed in Jesus, Yoder then goes nowhere with this concept. He does not discuss the Anabaptist convictions about a Christocentric interpretation of scripture, nor the controversies in the Church today around this issue (around the theory of the just war, for instance, and what difference it makes if you accept a Christocentric way of interpreting the relevant OT texts).

Nevertheless, this book as a whole has been a brilliant read for me, and I know I will go back to it. The discussion about the Atonement, especially, will have major ongoing ramifications for the way I understand and teach this concept.

One flaw – and it goes back to the editing process, not to Yoder – is that this book undoubtedly takes the prize for having the most typographical errors of any book I have ever read. Undoubtedly this is due to the fact that it was posthumously published and was based on a rough typescript and not a finished manuscript, but nonetheless, a more careful editing process could have produced a much better book. I hope this is corrected in any future edition.

Study Leave and so on

I'm going to be taking a week of study leave starting Monday. I'm hoping to make an impression on the pile of books left over from my sabbatical leave last year! Also, on the weekend we're making a trip to Saskatoon for the wedding of a friend.

There are a few other things I need to concentrate on at the moment as well, so I'm going to bow out of the blogosphere for a couple of weeks. Be good to each other while I'm away!

The Arctic Grail

Pierre Berton: The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole 1818-1909.

I lived for seven years in the western Arctic, and the names of European explorers were scattered all over the country. Holman, where we lived from 1988-91, was named after a member of the Inglefield Expedition, one of the many sent out to search for Sir John Franklin and his men in the early 1850's. Fort Collinson, an old abandoned trading post, was a few miles northwest of us, and the portion of the Arctic Ocean between Banks Island and the Mackenzie Delta was named for Roald Amundsen. I've known the names of these people for years, and portions of their story, but Pierre Berton has now helped me to put it all together into one connected tale.

The book covers three main themes: the quest for the Northwest Passage, the search for the lost Franklin expedition, and the race for the North Pole. It begins with the journeys of Ross and Parry and the other explorers of the early nineteenth century, goes on to cover in great detail the Franklin expedition and the long story of those who searched for it, tells of steady and sensible explorers like Rae, Nansen, and Amundsen, and driven and desperate men like McClure, Greely, and Peary, and concludes with the story of Peary's supposed conquest of the North Pole in 1909.

A couple of things that stood out for me in this story:

• The intransigence of the British Royal Navy and its continued insistence that 'our ways are best'. These ways included: (1) using ships too big for the waters they were travelling in, with big crews needing large amounts of food to sustain them, (2) using sledges hauled by men instead of dogs (despite the fact that this was backbreaking work that arguably contributed to the deaths of dozens of men over the time period covered by this book), (3) wearing European clothes instead of furs, and (4) eating salt meat rather than living off the land (which led to many deaths from scurvy). By contrast, explorers such as John Rae and Roald Amundsen, who were willing to 'go native' and learn from the Inuit, did much better.
• The astounding way in which the loss of the Franklin expedition led to the exploration of much of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. Over a ten year period after about 1847, dozens of ships and hundreds of men participated in the search for the Franklin expedition. Fortunately for Arctic exploration (but unfortunately for Franklin's men), most of them looked in the wrong places, and in the process inadvertently mapped a huge swath of previously unknown territory.
• The determination, ruthlessness, and eventual dishonesty of Robert Peary, credited for years with reaching the North Pole in 1909, but in all likelihood a fraud who didn't get within a hundred miles of his target.
• The way in which, time and time again, the Inuit proved indispensable to the survival and success of these expeditions - but very rarely got any credit for it.

This is a hugely enjoyable and thoroughly readable book. Berton has written many other books about Canadian history, and I plan to dip into more of them as soon as possible.

More on the Holy Spirit...

My friend Peter Kirk has a good post over at Gentle Wisdom entitled ‘Should All Christians Speak in Tongues?’ He has some good things to say about the experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit, the place that ‘speaking in tongues’ has had in that for some people, and so on. He seems to have touched a nerve, as the comments are quite lively. This is evidence for me of the hunger people have for a genuine experience of God rather than for more and more theories.

One thing Peter mentions is that his church, Meadgate Church, which apparently is a lively charismatic Anglican church near Chelmsford (not far from my old home of Southminster), makes a practice of praying for people to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I found this a very challenging comment, because, for one reason or another, I do not make this a practice in my own ministry. I realised as I was reading scripture and praying this morning that over the years I have probably allowed my faith to fall into routine too much. I’ve more or less stopped expecting the Holy Spirit to surprise me.

But there’s actually more to it than that. A few years ago when I was at Regent College on a pastors’ workshop I had an ‘epiphany moment’ that I haven’t especially done anything about. We were in an evening group, praying for one another, and God started to give people words of knowledge about other people in the group. The ‘words’ were very concrete and specific, and one after another, other people in the group (unknown to the speakers) said, ‘That’s me – that word is for me’. This led to prayer and the laying on of hands. It was obvious that God was touching the lives of people in a deep and wonderful way that night.

But I was bothered by this, and went back to my room wrestling with why that might be the case. As I thought and prayed about it, I didn’t like the answer I was getting. It wasn’t just the obvious potential for abuse (one had heard so many stories of people who pretend to have a ‘word from the Lord’ which turns out to be nothing of the kind). No, I realised that down below all the superficial reasons for my discomfort was a much more basic reason: fear. I’m afraid to step out in faith and trust God. I’m much more comfortable with activities in which I can depend on my own skill. I’m a pretty good preacher (I flatter myself), but, sad to say, I almost don’t need to depend on God for that activity. So I’ve emphasized the teaching and preaching aspects of my ministry, and played down as much as I can those activities in which I would have to depend on God – praying for healing for instance. Why? Because I’m afraid he won’t come through for me, and I’m afraid of what that might do, both for my faith and for the faith of those with whom I’m praying.

Funnily enough, at that week at Regent there was a little Iona Community song that was being sung over and over again; it goes like this:

Don't be afraid, my love is stronger,
My love is stronger than your fear.
Don't be afraid, my love is stronger,
And I have promised to be always near.

You’d almost think God was trying to tell me something!

I came home from that conference with the thought that I needed to work on this issue of faith and fear, but I find I haven’t done that. Reflecting on my own story as I did in my earlier post, and reading what Peter has to say (and also the comments of others), have served to bring all this to the forefront again for me. I know I need to pray about it, and to take the risk of stepping out in faith and trusting that God will indeed come through for me.

May 5th 1978

Thirty years ago yesterday, May 5th 1978, I and seven other candidates stood at the front of a church in Toronto and were licensed as evangelists in the Anglican Church of Canada and commissioned as officers in the Church Army. It's hard to believe thirty years have passed since that day, but I'm still very pleased to be associated with the Church Army and its work in evangelism and caring for the needy.

There have been lots of changes at CA since 1978. The headquarters and training college have moved down to St. John, New Brunswick, the old grey military-style uniforms have been replaced, and the connection with the Anglican Church of Canada has been replaced with a new commitment to interdenominational evangelistic work.

Check out their website here, and the websites of Church Army societies in other countries here.

Sermon for Easter 7: 1 Peter 4:12 - 5:11

My sermon for Easter 7 is now posted on our church website. Here's the beginning:

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the old gospel song ‘Poor Wayfaring Stranger’. The first verse goes like this:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger,
While traveling through this world of woe.
Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger
In that bright world to which I go.

What’s the vision of the Christian life that this gospel song portrays? Well, according to this song, the Christian life in this world is a life of suffering. We live in a world of woe, and our experience as we travel through it is full of sickness, toil, and danger. The only escape from this dismal scenario is to die and go to heaven, which is, of course, a much better place.

For an alternative, here’s a chorus we used to sing when I was young:

At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away!
It was there by faith I received my sight
And now I am happy all the day.

Here’s a completely different vision of the Christian life. The burden of my heart is rolled away because I’ve put my faith in Jesus, and now I am happy all day long. It sounds wonderful, but we might have a sneaking suspicion that it’s a little less than honest. In fact, I know that some people who used to sing this song were definitely not happy all the day, and some of them were actually carrying enormous burdens of one kind or another.

So what is the normal Christian life? Unbroken hardship and misery until we go to heaven? Or one long clap-happy gospel song party, with nothing but joy from morning ‘til night? Well, of course, the truth is something in between those two extremes. In our final reading from the first letter of Peter, Peter sets out for us some of the elements on the normal Christian life, and we won’t be surprised to find that some of them are about hardship and some of them are about joy and strength and growth. Turn with me to 1 Peter 4:12 – 5:11, and let me point out to you four elements of the normal Christian life.

Read the rest here.

Voices for Habitat 2008

We had a wonderful time Sunday night at the 'Voices for Habitat 2008' concert at St. Timothy's Anglican Church here in Edmonton. Here are just a few pics from the evening. for those on Facebook. I'll soon load a lot more to my Facebook site.

This is Brian Richardson from St. Timothy's welcoming us to their church. Brian and his crew of volunteers did a wonderful job of looking after us and making us feel at home.



Brenda Netter from Habitat for Humanity gave us little 'info-mercials' about Habitat between each of the sets. I thought I knew a lot about Habitat, but I learned a thing or two from what she had to say.



Alex and I kicked off the evening. He had a cold, but you couldn't tell it from his guitar playing.


Mike Chase treated us to four of his original songs. Good stuff.


Jamie Philp, Sheril Hart and Lindsay Woolgar are the Sheril Hart trio. They treated us to some good old fashioned jazz standards. Sheril has a wonderful voice, and Jamie and Lindsay are both amazing players.


The Piatta Forma choir from Leduc (couldn't quite get them all in the picture, unfortunately) were a real treat - they gave us everything from an Elizabethan madrigal to a Stan Rogers song to a wonderful spiritual to close off with.


Alex Boudreau, Marty Siltanen, Lindsay Woolgar and Lil Siltanen are the Bloomin' Thistles. They gave us three of Marty Siltanen's songs about the painter Tom Thomson, and then ended off with Lil singing 'The Water is Wide'.


The House Kats are normally Don Marcotte, Marc Ladoucer and Terry Nadasdi. However Marc couldn't make it so they invited Jessica Heine to take his place. They showcased three of Jessica's songs, did the old blues number 'Hot Time', and ended up with a scorching Tracy Chapman tune.


Unfortunately we didn't get a photograph of the hero of the night, our wonderful sound man Phil Jones, who worked his magic to make everyone sound just right, and doubled as a stage hand to help change the sets between acts.

At the end of the evening, as well as having had a wonderful time, we'd raised $2036 for Habitat for Humanity.

A Testament: Part Two

People sometimes ask me ‘How did you decide to become a minister?’ I sometimes wonder how it happened myself! It certainly wasn’t something I thought about a lot when I was growing up. In my early teens I loved sea stories and thought I might grow up to ‘join the Navy and see the world’, as the saying went in those days. Later on, when I became a musician, I dreamed about a musical career. Being a preacher certainly wasn’t on my radar screen.

In order to tell this story, I have to go back and explain how God became real to me. That will likely take up a whole post, so I might not get back to ‘How did you decide to become a minister?’ until later!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I was a boy my Dad was a commercial artist, but when I was still very young he went away to theological college for two years and was ordained in the Church of England. At that point our life changed; we left the little working class street in Leicester where we had lived since I was born, and moved into a suburb where my Dad became a ‘curate’ – an assistant minister in a parish. My Dad was the sort of minister who moves around a lot – three years here, four years there – so from then on I lived an unsettled sort of life. He served his curacy in Kirby Muxloe, just outside of Leicester, and then we went for a year to the Canadian Arctic. My Dad thought God was calling him to be a missionary there, but it soon became evident that it wasn’t to be, because he had no linguistic ability, and that was rather crucial in those days. So after only a year we returned to England, to spend eighteen months or so in Lytham St. Anne’s before Dad was appointed as vicar of Southminster in Southeast Essex in December of 1969.

Up until that time I’d had the standard churchgoing family experience of Christianity. I was baptized as a baby, and my parents took me to church every Sunday from before the time when I could walk; I suppose I must have gone to Sunday School, although I have no memories of it at all. At home, my parents said prayers with me at night, and we had Bible story books that we read from regularly. I have always known the Christian story and have never in my life been an atheist. As I got older I found that I enjoyed singing and so joined the church choir (we were a musical family anyway so this was not unexpected).

But my relationship with God was purely institutional. I very rarely said personal prayers, and I don’t remember ever having a sense of ‘knowing God’ as a child the way some people do. I never rebelled against church; I just wasn’t that interested in it. I got confirmed in Southminster at the age of twelve, but this was purely because my parents thought it was a good time for it. I have very little memory of the confirmation classes and certainly didn’t see the service as my adult commitment to Christ.

Nonetheless, confirmation did have an impact on me, in a roundabout sort of way. There were about twenty of us in that confirmation class, and after the confirmation we decided to stay together as a youth group. We met on Sunday evenings after the evening service, and for about a year this continued. Gradually people fell away, as was common in those days; confirmation was often a sort of ‘passing out parade’. And so as the year went by the group got smaller and smaller.

One of the people who remained was Jane, a girl about five years older than me. Jane knew Christ in a personal way, and I could see it in her. I couldn’t articulate exactly what the difference was, but I knew that the way she was experiencing her Christian life was very different from my own experience. That intrigued me.

During that period of my life (I was twelve when I was confirmed), my Dad lent me religious books from time to time. I wasn’t that interested in them, but I read enough to be able to make what I thought was an intelligent comment and then gave them back to him. I don’t think he was fooled.

Not long after my thirteenth birthday he lent me Dennis J. Bennett’s book Nine O’clock in the Morning. This was the first religious book I read all the way through. In fact, I couldn’t put it down. I started it at eight o’clock at night and read it ‘til the small hours of the morning. That book changed my life.

Dennis Bennett was an Episcopal priest from the USA, and in 1960 had experienced what Pentecostals called (and still call) ‘the baptism in the Holy Spirit’. In other words, he had experienced for himself the sort of thing the early Christians experienced on the Day of Pentecost, when we read that ‘All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability’ (Acts 2:4). As Dennis pointed out in the book, this was a definite, datable experience for these early Christians; when someone asked them, ‘Have you received the Holy Spirit?’ they could answer that question without any doubt, one way or the other! In his book Dennis described his experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and how it had transformed his life, giving him a sense of closeness to God and also introducing him to the supernatural. He had experienced ‘speaking in tongues’ – praying in a language he didn’t understand – and had also been introduced to the ministry of healing, and had seen sick people healed as he and others prayed and laid hands on them.

This was revolutionary to me. This was a million miles away from the staid Church of England with its totally predictable worship and spirituality. This was a real God who did real things in the real lives of real people. When I finished reading Nine O’clock in the Morning, I knew I wanted to know this God. But I didn’t know what to do next, and I was a shy sort of boy and was too scared to ask.

I’m not sure how much time elapsed between my reading of Nine O’clock in the Morning and what happened next. I do know that things came to a head for me on the Sunday evening of March 5th 1972, when I was thirteen years old. At our youth group meeting that night Jane and I were the only ‘youth’ there; my Dad was leading the meeting. At a certain point (I have no idea what the topic was and how this question fit into it) he turned to me and said, ‘You’ve never given your life to Jesus, have you?’ I had to agree that I had not. Then Jane said, ‘I have – although I seem to keep taking it back from him!’ In a flash two of my questions were answered. I knew what made Jane’s Christian life different from mine – she had ‘given her life to Jesus’. And I knew what the next step was for me.

So I did it. After the meeting was over I went up to my bedroom in the vicarage in Southminster, closed the door, sat down on my bed and prayed a prayer. I don’t remember the exact words, and they probably aren’t very important anyway. I simply gave my life to Jesus, as Dad had suggested. I didn’t have a dramatic spiritual experience – I certainly didn’t experience anything like the sort of ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’ that Dennis Bennett described, and I certainly didn’t speak in tongues or anything like that. Nonetheless, there was a quiet sense of connection with God that hadn’t been there before. I went to sleep that night with a sense that something new had happened to me. And I was right.

I told my Dad what I had done, and he was very pleased, of course. A few days afterwards, he gave me a little booklet called ‘Seven Minutes with God’. It was a book about how to have a daily time of prayer and Bible reading, for people who had never done it before (it’s now available on the Internet here). It was actually very regimented. It suggested starting with half a minute of silence to prepare your soul to meet with God. This would be followed by four minutes of Bible reading, and then two and a half minutes of prayer. The traditional ‘ACTS’ formula for prayer was followed: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. The booklet ended by admitting that although seven minutes was a good starting place, it was unlikely that it would be long enough; anyone who started would soon find themselves taking more time.

So I started, and a habit was born. I was always a morning person, so I got up early and had my seven minutes with God. I soon found, as the book suggested, that seven minutes was not enough. And not long after that my Dad gave me a copy of Ken Taylor’s The Living Bible – a thoroughly unreliable paraphrase, but so easy to read that it definitely made a Bible reader out of me. I’m sure I read it from cover to cover two or three times in the next few years.

So I grew in my newfound relationship with God, but it wasn’t an individual thing. Something was happening in our church, and I was soon a part of it.

I later discovered that my Dad had experienced a personal Pentecost of his own a few months before that night when I gave my life to Jesus (he later astounded me by telling me that he had been praying for this for twelve years!). He had experienced it at a prayer meeting in a home of some Pentecostal Christians (some of whom were members of a Pentecostal church, others the local United Reformed church). He had continued to attend that prayer meeting, and I was curious and asked if I could go along with him.

This was my first experience of informal group prayer. And boy, did these people pray! The meeting lasted for about two hours, and most of it was prayer. In the middle they might stop for a bit of Bible reading and discussion, but it was never (to my memory) a planned and formal ‘Bible Study’. The rest of the time, people prayed – at great length. Some knelt in front of their chairs, some just sat and prayed - out loud, prayers they were making up as they went along – ‘extemporaneous’ prayers, as they are technically called!

Here for the first time I heard ‘speaking in tongues’ in public. From time to time, someone in the group would start speaking in another language (I’d read about it in Bennett’s book, so I wasn’t surprised!). Usually this was followed by someone else speaking in English; God was giving them the ‘interpretation’ of what was being said (see 1 Corinthians 12:10). At times someone would speak out with a message from God to the group, which was understood to be the ‘prophecy’ mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:10. Some of these ‘words of prophecy' had quite a personal application to some of the members of the group. There was a strong sense of immediacy, of God being at work. I was only a young teenager, and the rest were all adults (some of them a lot older than me), but I found it thrilling.

At some point during this time, I also prayed (on my own) to be filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. I have very little memory of this event, and it certainly was not as dramatic as Dennis Bennett’s story. I learned the important lesson that God does not work the same way in everyone’s life! Nonetheless, I certainly experienced the sense of closeness to God that Bennett had spoken about, especially when I went to the Tuesday night prayer meetings. I have continued to use the gift of praying in tongues throughout my Christian life, and have often found it very helpful in maintaining a sense of immediacy in prayer.

Gradually the blessing started to spread to our church, St. Leonard’s. My Dad was always a gifted evangelist, and his one-on-one ministry with people was very fruitful. He was a tireless visitor and also used baptism preparation to the full as a chance to share the gospel and invite people to give their lives to Christ. He also talked about the Holy Spirit and invited people to experience for themselves the blessing of Pentecost. And people started to take him up on that invitation.

Eventually we started ‘house groups’ in our own church. There were four at first, I remember, although they didn’t all survive. They were a bit more cerebral than the Tuesday night prayer meeting, but still the study and the prayer was very good. We were encouraged to go to the one closest to us, so I dutifully attended the one held at the vicarage (which, however, was not led by my Dad but by a layperson). However, I think it must have fizzled out after a while (my memory is a bit hazy here), and I ended up going to the one held on Thursday nights at 39 Ely Close, the home of Ken and Kath Dunstan.

I loved those Thursday nights! I remember when I was about sixteen going to school on Thursday mornings feeling excited, because ‘tonight was the night!’ What was so exciting? It was simple – God was there, and God was at work. We read the Bible and applied it to our lives. We prayed together (quite like Tuesday nights, actually). And God spoke, through words of prophecy, or tongues and interpretation. Sometimes those words spoke directly to me. We prayed for each other, too, and saw answers to our prayers.

And we sang. In those days we didn’t have any song books or overhead projectors; someone would come back from a conference with a new song, and they would teach it to us by rote until we’d got it memorized. Fortunately, the choruses we sang in those days were short and easily memorable! Later on as I began to learn to play guitar I learned to play some of these songs, along with John Thain, who also went to the group and had been playing guitar for a lot longer than me (he’d also been a committed Christian for longer than me and he helped me grow in the Lord a lot).

Then along came the Fisherfolk! This group of American charismatic Episcopalians (‘charismatic’ became a code word for people who had Pentecostal-type experiences but didn’t belong to Pentecostal churches) had moved to the UK in the early seventies, and their records of simple folk-worship songs were enormously influential. To this day, I love those songs! ‘Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia Sons of God Arise!’, ‘Alleluia, Alleluia, give thanks to the Risen Lord’, ‘The Bell Song’, ‘The Holy Ghost will set your feet a-dancing’, ‘Fear not, rejoice and be glad’ and so on. I wasn’t a big fan of traditional hymns in those days; Fisherfolk songs were my sort of worship music.

I wish I could adequately communicate a tenth of the excitement and joy I felt as a young Christian in those heady early days of the charismatic renewal. In many ways it was actually quite Anabaptist! There was a lot of emphasis on every Christian having a ministry, rather than just ‘the vicar’. Simplicity of life was stressed (A few years later Ron Sider, a Mennonite, wrote ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’, and it was well received in English charismatic circles, where people never embraced right-wing politics as enthusiastically as their American cousins). I read the Bible very simply – especially the teaching of Jesus – and just assumed I was supposed to do what I found there (no theologian had yet talked me out of being a disciple!). So, from being an enthusiastic reader of military history I became a pacifist, and I also found I couldn’t justify infant baptism from the New Testament, so decided I didn’t believe in it (although for some reason, it never occurred to me to get rebaptized!).

My Dad had a lot of books and I read some of them. I was much influenced by Anglican charismatic writers like Michael Harper, David Watson, and Colin Urquhart. But some of my reading was a bit heavier; I remember reading Dad’s copy of Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship and being much moved by it.

At St. Leonard’s Southminster we always suspected that the rest of our Anglican deanery were looking askance at us! We were a growing church, full of young families, using contemporary worship services and music and sitting a bit lightly to some of the Anglican traditions which were still very important to the rest of the deanery. We still had sung evensong and an 8.30 a.m. early communion service from the Prayer Book, but our main 10.30 service alternated between Family Service and Series 3 Communion (one of the early modern language rites in the Church of England). And we sang those Fisherfolk songs, and others like them, and people clapped along and banged tambourines and acted as if they were having a good time in church. Rather suspicious behavior, as Dennis Bennett had once remarked!

One good thing the Diocese of Chelmsford was running in those days was called ‘Seventy for the Seventies’. It was a diocesan youth movement, and if you joined it you committed yourself to a year of training for mission, including regular regional gatherings on a monthly basis and two or three gatherings of the whole group, including a week at the Othona Community outside Bradwell, and a spectacular all-night vigil at Chelmsford Cathedral at the end of the year, at which the Seventy were commissioned and received a special cross. I remember that at one point in that all-night vigil we danced around Chelmsford Cathedral at about 4 a.m. and sang ‘Lord of the Dance’ about seven times!

Looking back, though, I’m glad that I had my early years as a conscious Christian in the context of a church that was not ‘traditionally’ Anglican. I’m absolutely sure I would have been bored out of my mind by sung Eucharist and Anglican chant week after week after week. This was the decade of informality, and informality was very important to me. In my mind in those days, ‘formal’ meant ‘unreal’ and ‘insincere’; prayers from the heart were better than prayers read from a book, and simple worship songs were better than complicated anthems. And of course, that stuff was old-fashioned – another thing I didn’t approve of.

Obviously I’ve grown out of some of the stuff I took on board in those early years, but I’m still enormously grateful for the essential substance of personal Christianity – Christianity as relationship with God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and Christianity as relationship with one’s brothers and sisters in Christ as well. I’m still essentially loyal to the spirit of what I received in those days. And I have to say that, a few years later when I was thinking of becoming a minister, it was because of what I had received from Christ in Southminster. I had absolutely no interest in spreading institutional Christianity or something called ‘Anglicanism’ (I don’t think I even knew that word in those days!). I had come to know Christ, and I wanted to help others to know him as well.

More anon.

(Icy) blast from the past

Skidoos and dog team on the frozen ocean south of Holman, NWT, probably winter 1989-90.

Planxty - Little Musgrave

One of the finest traditional Irish bands of the 1970s, in a reunion concert from 2004. Settle down in your seats - this is a long song!

Berlitz Ad

Sense and Sensibility (2008)

Last weekend Marci and I watched the latest BBC production of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, a three-hour miniseries starring Hattie Morahan as Elinor and Charity Wakefield as Marianne. Long time readers of this blog will know that I am a rather committed Jane Austen fan, so I have high standards for these productions. I have to say that I was very impressed with this one.

For one thing, the two sisters appeared much more convincing as young girls in their late teens or early twenties than did Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet in the 1995 movie version. At 36, it was very difficult for Emma Thompson to be convincing as Elinor, and even at 21 Kate Winslet seemed far too old for Marianne. Also, it would be hard to improve on Hattie Moranan’s brilliant performance as Elinor. Totally convincing, totally in character – to me, she just was Elinor. The contrast between the two sisters – Marianne who steers by her emotions and wears them on her sleeve, and Elinor who steers by common sense, although her feelings are also deep – was brilliantly portrayed.

The supporting cast was very good as well. I really enjoyed David Morrisey’s portrayal of Colonel Brandon – reserved, yes, but not dark and brooding as in the Alan Rickman version of 1995. Dominic Cooper as Willoughby was also very good. Claire Skinner as Fanny was a little overdone, I thought; even Jane Austen at her most black and white is rarely that black and white!

All in all, very good indeed. I’m looking forward to seeing Persuasion in the same series.

Sermon for Ascension Day: Acts 1:1-11

My sermon for Ascension Day is now published on our church website. Here's the beginning:

Many years ago when you were travelling to a foreign country and going through customs, it was common to hear a uniformed officer ask you “Have you anything to declare?” If you said, “Yes”, you knew you were in for some questioning! So, many people who actually had some illegal product to declare actually said, ‘No’, to save themselves the trouble. Some got away with it, and some didn’t.

Today I often wonder if the world is unconsciously putting this question to the Christian Church: ‘Have you anything to declare?’ In other words, in the face of all the pain in the world, do we have a strong Word from God to declare, a Word that will make a difference and bring hope to people’s lives? Because a church with ‘nothing to declare’ has no reason to exist, except to be a kind of spiritual country club to its members. A strong church needs a strong message to declare to the world. Our reading from Acts today shows us this message, and how to declare it.

Read the rest here.

Sermon for Easter 6: 1 Peter 3:14-16

My sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter is now posted on our church website. Here's the beginning:

In October 2006, as most of you will remember, a man called Charles Roberts entered a single schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines in Pennsylvania. By the time he was finished that morning, five young Amish girls lay dead. It was a scenario that has been repeated with frightening regularity in the past few years; a gunman enters a public place and starts shooting, innocent people are killed, everyone bewails the increasing violence of our society, etc. etc.

Except that this time, something different was going to happen. Within hours of the shooting, members of the Amish community were reaching out to the killer’s family, giving food and raising money for his wife and children. “We have to forgive,” an Amish woman told the Reuters news service. “We have to forgive him in order for God to forgive us”. Another Amish man said of the family, “I hope they stay around here and they'll have a lot of friends and a lot of support”. This attitude remained consistent in the days ahead. The media were fascinated with the attitude of the Amish and there was a lot of discussion about whether or not it was a good thing. The Amish themselves were clear about it; they believed their children were in heaven, they believed that the perpetrator also had family members who needed care, and they believed that faithfulness to Jesus meant the hard work of forgiveness and love in action.

Evangelism often gets a bad name in our society today, but when I watched the Amish sharing their faith and living it out with such integrity before the watching world, I saw evangelism in the true sense of the word. And it made me think of three verses from our epistle for today. Please turn with me to 1 Peter 3:14-16:

Read the rest here.