Making sense of 'mission', Hodge Hill style

On a recent training day for a colleague I'm currently supervising, we were presented with the following model for the 'journey of discipleship'...

And it set me thinking. Actually, first it set me seething, and then I started thinking. Now, I could spend paragraphs detailing every detail of what's wrong with it, but that would be pretty unedifying stuff. Much more interesting, I think, is to begin to articulate constructive alternatives. But to do so, a little bit of critique is probably a prior necessity...

Firstly, there's the implied - actually, fairly explicit - hierarchy. The goal of discipleship, apparently, is to become part of an 'army' of 'leaders'. Now, my reading of the gospels can sometimes be a bit eccentric, but I'm really not sure where the descriptions of Jesus' calls to his disciples might suggest such a thing. Peter on the beach, post-crucifixion-resurrection, might be invited to 'feed my sheep' - but he's still called to 'follow me', and there ain't much evidence of him joining an 'army'.

Secondly, there's what it assumes about church. That somehow it's a body of concentric circles, the 'leaders' being in the middle. In real life, of course, church is a collection of overlapping groups and contexts, and where we might find ourselves 'leading' in one context, we would do well to realise in a different context that we come as 'visitor'.

Which leads me on to a more critical flaw. The suggestion that when you're 'outside' it's all about 'receiving', and when you're 'inside' you make a shift to 'giving'. What assumptions is this making?

For a start, pretty obviously it's working with a 'deficit' model of faith: people 'outside' the faith community (the 'dry bones', no less!) are 'lacking' something, which they then 'receive', and are then equipped to 'give' to others. Biblical scholars might point us to the 'handing over' of which Paul talks (with reference to the beginnings of the practice of sharing bread and wine in remembrance of Jesus) - but it should also be noted in that context that the same word for 'handing over' is used of Judas' betrayal of Jesus. We would do well to remember that what we imagine we are 'passing on' in faithfulness, we may well also be 'betraying' in the process. The implication also that those of us 'inside' somehow stop 'receiving' seems to suggest that, in actual fact, 'discipleship', the art of following Jesus, really stops once you're 'in'.

What it says about human beings, then, I find more than a little scary. Prayer, conversation, social action, even parties, are merely the 'preparatory' stuff for Christian faith. Once you've 'got it', it's all about the hard work of 'training', 'giving', 'specialising' and 'leading'. 'The glory of God,' to misquote Irenaeus, is not 'humanity fully alive,' but 'individuals trained up to lead.'

So much for the critique (and don't even get me started on 'slipping God in' covertly somewhere between the first benign 'social event' and the full-on 'enquirers' course'...). What about the reconstruction for our context here in Hodge Hill?

Well, I'm not sure whether to begin at the 'beginning' or the 'end'. And that's perhaps the first constructive point. I don't think discipleship is a neat, linear journey. As a journey into a mystery - the Mystery - there's a hell of a lot of 'one step forwards, two steps back', of circling around, and of going off on tangents that turn out to be heading straight into the open arms of God.

Which means, secondly, that those we might class as apparently 'outside' the furthest fringes of 'church' (and even the boundaries between 'inside' and 'outside' are so much more fuzzy than we're sometimes led to believe) might well often be closer to God than we are ourselves. So let's ditch the deficit model. It stinks. Especially in neighbourhoods like ours here in Hodge Hill, where people are all-too-used to being told, and treated as if, they are 'lacking', 'needy', 'deprived' and 'dependent'. Let's start working on the 'asset' - or 'giftedness' - model of human beings - that each woman, man or child we encounter has within them passions, gifts and skills, knowledge and wisdom, faith, that are integral to them bearing God's image and impress, and which they breathe with the breath of the Spirit.

So thirdly, our idea of mission here is to discover the places of common ground that turn out to be holy ground. Looking, as we do here, for evidence of compassion, generosity, trust, friendship and hope, as signs of God's kingdom springing up around us, we find ourselves as much guests as hosts, as much invited as inviters. The holy ground is by no means within our control, our familiarity, or even our understanding - we discover it as seekers, visitors, disciples - and in it, on it, we discover our neighbours and their giftedness.

Of course, we may have a role, sometimes, in co-creating spaces where the gifts and skills and faith of others are drawn out and enabled to flourish - what I've labelled 'over-accepting' in other blog posts here - but funnily enough, those co-created spaces are also the places where our own gifts and skills and faith are drawn out and enabled to flourish. And those spaces, where trust has been built sufficiently, might be spaces where we can share our 'whys?' and the stories of our roots and our longings - but we have found here that we have got to know our own stories better, more fully, through working, being, waiting, talking, listening alongside others very different to us.

Oh, and in case it's not obvious, prayer and conversation, parties and social action (let's rephrase that as 'action in solidarity', or 'making change happen together') happen in those first encounters, but also just happen to be hallmarks of what we sometimes call 'the kingdom of God'. They're what being a disciple, being human, being fully alive, are all about.

Want an example? I'll post a blog in just a moment on the amazing, evolving, Firs & Bromford Community Passion Play. As examples go, it's about as good as it gets.

Birmingham: from 'apocalypse now' to compassionate city?

I've blogged here before about the devastating budget cuts that have been forced on Birmingham City Council, and the beginnings of a response. There is a growing body of comment and opinion (including this piece from Left Foot Forward) that also highlights the injustice of the situation cities like Birmingham find themselves in. But I want to dig just a little deeper into that 'how do we respond?' question - in a way that dangerously mixes politics and theology so as to quite possibly alienate and/or bemuse many readers who would rather swing one way or the other...

Apocalyptic predictions and Advent: the 'big picture' and the 'little stories'

So 'the end of local government as we know it' is beginning. The 'jaws of doom' are beginning to bite. But there is much more to come. The imaginations of Birmingham citizens are beginning to be filled with 'Les Miserables'-like images of closed-down libraries and leisure centres, rubbish piling up on the streets, isolated older people abandoned by the 'social care' system, and a 'youth service' that is merely a distant memory - not to mention thousands pushed below the poverty line and cut loose from financial support by brutal changes in the system that was, once upon a time, called 'social security'.

All of this stuff, as I've also pointed out here before, is what we might call 'apocalyptic'. It's the kind of dark and threatening future, the 'doom and gloom' in a quite literal sense, that we Christians sometimes encounter in our Scriptures, particularly in the Advent season leading up to Christmas. But as Sir Albert Bore, Birmingham City Council's lucky leader, and others know all too well, there's no need to be a religious nut to take this stuff seriously. It feels like an all-too-real possibility in the not-too-distant future, for many of us.

When Jesus in the gospels does 'apocalyptic', however - and this goes for the early Christian writers who were at the very beginning of trying to make sense of his 'good news' too - there is a clear, consistent theme: be realistic about this stuff, don't be in denial... but don't get seduced by it, sucked into its glare with morbid fascination. Instead, shift the scale and focus of your attention. Look from the threatening 'big picture' to the smallest human scale possible: to the relationships and care and attention and compassion and friendship between individual human people. Look to those for a different way of seeing 'reality' - for a 'counter-story' that challenges the dominant narrative, for the cracks in the 'big picture', for a different future opening up in the almost-invisible.

Anything but 'Big Society': some 'C' words for the Council...

This, I find myself repeating often, is anything but 'Big Society'. This is no top-down narrative of impossible ideals conveniently imposed as a cover for systematic, unjust, dehumanising cuts. The doom and gloom of the big picture needs to be seen with heart-breaking clarity, and lamented with passion. Birmingham's future is looking pretty bleak at this point in time, and there are non-inevitable decisions and systems of the powerful that are responsible for that. Our leaders in Birmingham City Council - and any of us that find ourselves with some kind of leadership at a local level - need to be utterly honest and realistic about this.

But the counter-story can - must - nevertheless be told, and lived. And alongside the micro, hyper-local, Birmingham City Council have it within their power to tell and live such a counter-story too...

At this point in Birmingham's story, we have gone well beyond needing a 'competent' city council, as if somehow, so long as 'they' do it well, we can sit back and let it happen. We certainly don't need a 'consultative' city council, if that means 'them' deciding what to do and then asking 'us' if that's OK. Or even asking 'us' what to do and thereby drawing 'us' into responsibility for decisions that will never, given the big picture, be 'OK'.

I've found myself in conversations within and around BCC, exploring what it might mean for Birmingham to become a 'co-operative' council, 'working with' other organisations and local residents to make things happen more effectively than if the council tried doing stuff on their own. But I fear that is too timid a position to be exploring at this point in time.

Co-production: a challenge and a cry

I've also been in a number of conversations around the city where the term 'co-production' has been used. It has normally, in those conversations, meant some kind of significant involvement of 'service users' in designing, and - more ambitiously - 'delivering' the services that they use. In a more radical sense, the good people in the Chamberlain Forum have used the term with more depth and clarity to remind us that co-production is always already going on in local communities: we - individually and together - take at least some responsibility for our health, for example, through the decisions we make, the activities we participate in, the support we give each other. It is not for 'service providers' to come into neighbourhoods and 'introduce co-production'. At best, 'service providers' can try to strengthen what is there already - and not obstruct it or co-opt it for the ends of their own organisations and systems.

Edgar Cahn, who developed the idea of 'Time Banking' in the USA, and must take a lot of the credit for developing the idea of 'co-production' too, found himself in the late '90s shifting his tone from 'promoting' the values of co-production (seeing people as assets; redefining work to include anything human beings do to make human beings, families and neighbourhoods flourish; replacing one-way 'services' with two-way reciprocity; and investing in the 'social capital' of communities) to a passionate lament that the way things are is not the way things should be:

Assets became: No more throw-away people.

Redefining work became: No more taking the contribution of women, children, families, immigrants for granted. No more free rides for the market economy extracted by subordination, discrimination, and exploitation.

Reciprocity became: Stop creating dependencies; stop devaluing those whom you help while you profit from their troubles.

Social capital became: No more disinvesting in families, neighbourhoods and communities. No more economic and social strip-mining.[1]

So 'co-production' gets us as far as the cry of 'no more...'. It would be interesting to hear Council officers and elected Councillors beginning to inhabit such language from day to day.

But language urgently needs to turn into action, and good language is the kind of language that readily makes that shift to 'doing things'. I'm not sure the language of 'co-production' can cut it in these demanding times. But I wonder if 'compassion' just might.

Birmingham: the 'compassionate city'?

What might happen, if Birmingham as a city was disarmingly honest about how tough life is going to be in the next few years, how many taken-for-granted 'services' will no longer be provided - but at the same time, began to tell and live out a powerful counter-story (to the ConDem government's 'there is no alternative') of a compassionate city?

How about if Birmingham as a city took over control of its Job Centres and refused to allow the merciless 'benefit penalties' to be imposed for those who haven't met the demands of the Work Programme due to sickness or disability, caring for family or neighbours, or doing valuable voluntary work in their neighbourhoods and communities?

How about if Birmingham kicked out the farcical Atos assessments, and introduced a new, more compassionate process which deals face-to-face with people as human beings rather than boxes to be ticked?

How about if Birmingham commits to becoming a genuine 'city of sanctuary' for those seeking asylum, welcoming them as gifts to the city, whatever the UK Border Agency might be told to think?

How about if Brummies from our multitude of backgrounds, in our multitude of languages, cultures and faiths, could speak proudly of a city where neighbours young and old care compassionately for each other, even - or especially - when the systems that we used to rely on for 'care' are crumbling around us?

We could be, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have suggested just today, a 'policy laboratory' - experimenting at the cutting edge of our rapidly-changing society. But more than that, we could be a place which tells and lives a different story to the heartless, divisive, scapegoating stories that are churned out daily from this government and its comfortable friends in the media.

I've talked quite a bit about the city council in this - we do, after all, still look to them and their 'leader' for some kind of leadership.

But of course it isn't about them. It's about us. It starts and ends with us. Birmingham, the compassionate city? What can you or I do tomorrow to start making it so...?

---

[1]Cahn 2000:29

On the evils of food banks...

I am involved in setting up a local Food Bank. It's a great project...

• Churches are working together that hitherto have not even spoken to each other.
• Ministers who might sometimes be preoccupied with more introspective tasks are giving time and energy to something that meets a genuine need in their wider local communities.
• Volunteers are putting up their hands enthusiastically to get involved.
• Congregation members are already keen to buy a bit more food in their weekly shop, to bring to church to donate to the food bank.
• 'Secular' partners locally think we're doing 'a good thing' - and consequently seem more inclined to think 'we' might be 'a good thing' too.
• We face, ahead of us, a golden opportunity to work alongside, and to be alongside, neighbours whom we know but have had little contact with, and strangers who might, in the process, become friends.
• And best of all, we feel good. We're 'plugging a gap', 'coming to the rescue'. We, the old archaic, strange old Christian church are doing something useful.

All of these, in one way or another, are good things. But they also have the seeds of unspeakable evil. The fact that, on the surface, and even a little underneath, this looks and feels like 'a good thing'; the fact that good things will inevitably come out of it - these can, if we're not careful, seduce us into thinking we are invested in an enterprise of the highest good.

But we are not. We are responding to the callous dismantling by a powerful and detached government, of the 'social contract' that preserves an element of compassion within the mechanics of the state, and that ensures that the most vulnerable in our society do not slip through the net. We are concealing what is going on. We are sticking plasters over great fissures opening up in our society. We are slipping the ultimately disempowering practice of 'charity' into chasms that, ultimately, only justice, truth and reconciliation can bridge.

I will keep working with my sisters and brothers on the developing food bank here, because I do not want to participate in the sin of passively watching my neighbours going hungry. But I refuse to participate in the even greater sin of celebrating the 'opportunity' of colluding with an evil, socially destructive government, either by silence, or in words of mis-placed hope.

'The end of local government as we know it' - response to Birmingham City Council's budget consultation

Birmingham City Council are facing what the Council leader recently described as 'the end of local government as we know it'. Here's my response to BCC's consultation on their 2012-13 budget. You can see the proposals, and respond too, at: http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/budgetviews

To whom it may concern:

I’m grateful for the opportunity to respond through the Budget Consultation process, and I hope many other Birmingham citizens have also done so.

My response is largely around the general principles (what you call ‘the wider service delivery issues’ in the document) rather than the particularities of individual budget lines.

I’m sure cliches have already been over-used in this conversation, but I’m afraid the cliche that springs to mind is about ‘rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic’. It is becoming increasingly clear that the figures, projected into the future, mean not only that so-called ‘salami slicing’ of services is an ineffective response, but even that an approach that ‘preserves’ some services while cutting others will not be going far enough. Albert Bore’s description of ‘the end of local government as we know it’ is correct, and what is needed is a radically different approach to local government. Rather than ‘restructuring the building’, I would suggest, what is needed, unavoidably, is to begin the work of imagining what might be built, what seeds planted and nurtured, in the rubble that is left behind.

1) Who will be able to think the unthinkable?

I would humbly suggest that those best-equipped to do this imagining might include some council members and officers with an ability to think far enough ‘outside the box’, but that the pressures of working within the current system may well mean that many will find that just too difficult. Those of us who work in what is often called the ‘Third’ (and sometimes, more recently, the ‘Tired’) Sector have, I would suggest, a wealth of experience not simply in surviving on a shoestring, but on the kind of creative reinvention that is needed for Birmingham.

My first suggestion, then, would be an urgent need, not for another consultation exercise, or polite listening, but for getting the right people in rooms, together, with a blank sheet of paper, across all the areas and departments in which the Council currently provides, or aspires to provide, some kind of service – to re-imagine what kind of support will be needed for Birmingham to survive, and ideally thrive. As a concrete example, I would want to highlight the work of the Chamberlain Forum as being ideally placed to enable such thinking to happen and develop.

2) A radical approach that starts with neighbourhoods

The traditional model of ‘service provision’ is almost dead. That will, inevitably, mean huge losses, both in terms of council employees but also in terms of what local neighbourhoods will no longer benefit from. I would suggest, however, that in the crisis there is also an opportunity, and it is an opportunity to rediscover ourselves as a city, begin with our local neighbourhoods. There are many things that are ‘provided’ as ‘services’ that neighbourhoods are actually, with adequate resourcing, much better at doing themselves. There is clear evidence, for example, that the most significant factors that make people feel safe and secure is not police presence, but the levels of trust between neighbours, and the frequency with which people in a neighbourhood gather together outdoors. There is also clear evidence that the wellbeing of the most vulnerable people – children & young people, older people, and adults in between – is maximised not within institutions, but within communities of mutual care.

What I’m suggesting here is not ‘big society’ – a policy that looks for all the world like a smokescreen for massive cuts in public services, with nothing positive to replace them apart from some patronising moral exhortations emanating from comfortable Oxfordshire villages. It is also not simply about ‘devolving to District Committees’, as if that somehow solves anything – merely displacing the same old problems to a lower level on the chain (something that central government have been doing very ‘successfully’ themselves, as Birmingham can testify).

What I am suggesting needs resourcing. But it needs a kind of resourcing that is utterly different from ‘service provision’. It also, helpfully, can be done very effectively with rather less money. It is not about ‘neighbourhood management’, although that was a very good initiative in this direction. There will, after all, be rather less services for communities to manage or commission. This is about community development. Paid people, in each local neighbourhood (and ‘local’ means ‘local’ here – if it’s not within walking distance, it’s not ‘local’) of the city, who are trained and skilled in connecting people, building relationships, growing trust, nurturing friendships, drawing out people’s skills and confidence and knowledge and passions. It is, as the Social Cohesion Inquiry has at least begun to realise about identifying, unlocking, and connecting the ‘assets’ within people and communities so often labelled in ‘deficit’ terms – but using them to grow things from the grassroots, not to support a creaking, disintegrating, top-down structure.

Again, it is often the 3rd Sector that knows better than most how to do this. But even ‘we’ are often so tied in to the ‘service provision’ mentality that we fail to do what needs doing most.

Yes, Birmingham needs infrastructure, and it would be easy and obvious for the City Council to focus on that. But Birmingham needs strong, resilient and caring communities more. If we’re asking the hardest questions about what BCC spends its money on, I would argue this has to come first, before anything else – because everything else will flow from this. BCC is in the best possible position to commission the recruitment, training, and support of such a network of community developers – and it will pay dividends. The evidence from a programme such as ‘Near Neighbours’ in significant sections of the city would back this up.

There is, of course, an ‘equality’ question in all of this. Clearly some neighbourhoods will need more ‘intense’ work, others will require a ‘lighter touch’. There are measures around that will help with that judgement, but they may not be the traditional ‘deprivation’ indices. Levels of social capital, social infrastructure, and formal/informal co-production (again, see Chamberlain Forum’s work in this area) will be the key indicators.

3) Relationship with central government

As an outsider to the workings of ‘government’, I can only imagine what goes on behind the scenes in the relationship between local and central government. I would suggest, however, that we are again moving into radically new terrain in that relationship. While central government slashes and burns local government’s powers and budget (especially in authorities like Birmingham, particularly dependent on central funding), ‘responsibility’ (for picking up the pieces) is devolved to local level like never before.

It must surely be time for cities like Birmingham to find creative ways to vocally and powerfully resist the central government agenda and its impact on our communities, especially where it hits the poorest and most vulnerable. It may be an uncomfortable alliance, but I would suggest Birmingham City Council might find a whole new strength in forging links with groups as diverse as Citizens UK and UK Uncut, to make the people power of Birmingham known in the corridors of Westminster.

In conclusion, I appreciate these may well be answers to questions that you haven’t quite been asking, and that as answers go they may be either beyond what feels currently imaginable, or too vague to be of use. Whatever happens, please have the courage to not allow the vested interests and impoverished imaginations of those who wish to preserve their own small patch of ‘status quo’ to, if not win the day, at least paralyse any possibility of meaningful action. The ship is sinking, and we need to be hard at work making the best possible lifeboats.

With warmest wishes,

Revd Al Barrett

Church of England Priest, Hodge Hill Church
(St Philip & St James C of E in partnership with Hodge Hill URC)
"Growing Loving Community... in the love of God ♥ with all our neighbours ♥ across Hodge Hill"

'Stand and raise your heads' - a sermon for Advent Sunday 2012

(Readings: Jer 33:14-16; 1Thess 3:9-13; Lk 21:25-36)

We had around 50 Muslims visit church on Thursday. Most of them aged 5-6. They'd been told to have their eyes open, to look for clues as to what goes on here.

They'd seen a cross - the big one outside, and several inside. They'd seen the big candle in the middle (our Paschal candle, powerful symbol of Easter life). They'd seen the font, the place of baptism, and the altar table, the place around which we share bread and wine together. They'd seen the lectern, from which we read from the Bible... and they saw a Christmas tree... They knew Christians celebrate Christmas, and I asked them where else they might have seen Christmas trees? In the shops, and on the telly, they replied.

I was left wondering what kind of Christmas they thought Christians like us might celebrate. Would the images in the shops and on the telly give them a good idea? Is a 'Christian Christmas' all about over-eating & arguing? And how about Advent, Christianity's four weeks of preparation? From the shops and the telly, my Muslim friends would be forgiven for thinking it was all about parties and drinking and shopping...


And then I looked at our gospel for today...

One version, Eugene Petersen's The Message, renders Luke 21:34 as follows: "But be on your guard. Don't let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping. Otherwise, that Day is going to take you by complete surprise...."

As always, as we enter Advent, with the jolly Christmas songs that have already been jingling out of our radios for too long ringing in our ears, the words we are given from Scripture sound a sharp note of warning, of dissent, an alert to those with ears to hear... to stop, unplug the Christmas tree lights, turn off the TV and radio and look, and listen... Just as our Muslim sisters and brothers in Ramadan very clearly mark themselves out as doing something different to the rest of the world, so in Advent, we Christians are summoned to do December differently... But how...?

If we dig a little deeper into gospel passage, we find Jesus painting a picture of a world in ‘distress, confusion and fear. It doesn’t take much effort for such a picture to ring bells with the world we see on our TV screens and hear on our radios: with Israel & Palestine sending rockets at each other; with floods that tell of environmental disaster; with drastic government cuts in this country that mean, among other things, here in Birmingham we’re witnessing ‘the end of local government as we know it’ (as the Council Leader recently described it).

It is enough to bring us to our knees...

But Jesus says something different. He says: ‘stand - and raise your heads’.

Jesus invites us, particularly through the weeks of Advent, into a different way of looking...

It is all too easy to get enthralled by the smoke of pollution, destruction and war playing out on our news reports, seduced by politicians’ promises that things are about to get better, or indeed by the TV ads for ‘the perfect Christmas’ (if only we bought this, or shopped there...). But Jesus says ‘look somewhere else’ – ‘look at the fig tree’, stare long and hard at the dead branches until you begin to glimpse tiny signs of new life... sit still, quietly, listening long and hard for the ‘still small voice’ whispering to us words of truth & hope...

Because in the midst of the big dramas of our TV screens, both real and fictional, there are little stories of real people – stories of desperate need, stories of courageous care, stories of fragile hope. These are the stories, the people, Jesus summons us, in this Advent waiting time, to pay long, hard, careful attention to. And they are not only in little places half way across the world – they are right on our doorstep...

In September, we began 'Open Door', down the road at The Hub. Offering a place to 'drop in' to, offering a cuppa and some toast, a warm welcome, friendship, and the possibility of practical support - with finding work, putting together a CV, managing money, finding volunteering opportunities, and the like. Nothing dramatic, really simply, literally, opening a door and waiting... And slowly but surely a trickle of people started coming. Coming with real needs, but also with real gifts, real passions, real possibilities - and horizons have opened up, and new and genuine friendships have begun to grow, shared journeys have begun.

In the summer, we did an activity week on the wasteland, at the end of Bromford Drive. Alongside music, games, and art & craft,  a handful of people, younger and older, cleared a path through the most bramble-tangled, nettle-infested, rubbish-strewn part of the wasteland. Some passers-by thought we were mad: it would make no difference, it was futile effort. But many children and adults use that path every day, to get to school, to a playground, to the shops. Echoing the ancient prophets, in our own small way we were ‘preparing a way’ through the wilderness - a highway for young and old, a path for God to walk with human beings.

Two small examples of what we think we are doing here, in Hodge Hill. We're in the business of looking for, and living out, little signs of God’s big future. Those little signs might look, and feel, irrelevant, insignificant. It might feel like we're fighting a losing battle... But those little signs are, in fact, like the first tiny specks of blossom on the fig tree. The beginnings of spring, even in the icy grip of winter. The first fruits of the coming kingdom of God.

If we are to ‘stand and raise our heads’ – to see, and to be, Christ’s body in the world – then we need each other. And we need to pray for each other, as Paul does in his letter to the Thessalonians...

We will need to pray with joy & thanksgiving & abundant love. To pray that we might truly see each other face to face. To pray for our faith to be restored where it is lacking, and for our hearts to be strengthened. And, most importantly, to pray for love to increase and abound among us – for each other... for all God’s children, and for all creation... this Advent, and in the year to come.

I want to finish by offering you an Advent gift - a poem by our outgoing Archbishop, Rowan Williams:

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

'I am Bethlehem...' - some pre-Christmas meditations

I wrote these in 2008 and used them in a Christmas Eve service in Smethwick. We used them again in Hodge Hill last year as the 'gathering gloom' of austerity approached. Not one for repetition, we're doing something different here this year - but these still feel worth sharing. Feel free to use and share as you like...

I am Bethlehem…​
A little town, a nowhere-in-particular.
A place of hope, over the years,
but also, often, of fear.
My streets are dark;
my people are longing
for freedom from the fear of violence,
for a healing of divided communities,
for peace –
peace here, peace for all the earth.
And tonight, unnoticed,
the tiniest of lights has been lit,
tonight, unheard,
the whisper of God travels on the wind.
Look
in the most unlikely of places
for the birth of hope.
Listen
in the silence
for the most extraordinary of messages.
Tonight,
in my dark streets,
God says:
‘Do not be afraid’



I am Mary…​
A teenaged girl, no one in particular.
Not quite a single mum,
but not married, not settled down,
not with the baby’s dad.
Of course I’m excited
about bringing
a tiny new life
into the world.
But you’d be scared too
if you were me:
my first baby could be here any time;
we’re in a strange town far from home;
there are no beds free,
and no hospital, come to that.
As for the disapproving looks
off the neighbours back home,
well… I’ve had months of that already.
But look…
In my body – mine! –
God’s love is taking shape.
In my ears – yes, mine! –
God whispered the promise:
‘Do not be afraid’



I am Joseph…​
Step-dad,
before the word was even thought of.
Good with my hands –
not so clever with words.
I’m with Mary because I love her,
baby or no baby.
How many of you
have brought up a child,
knowing from the beginning it wasn’t yours,
but doing your best –
your very best, I mean –
to teach him all you know
about love,
and faithfulness,
and courage,
and being a man,
a real man,
a good man?
I fear
I might not have
a big-enough heart
to do that.
But then there’s God,
chipping away,
gently but firmly,
with those words again:
‘Don’t be afraid.’



I’m a shepherd…​
Paid barely enough to make ends meet,
put food on the table,
keep the babbies in clothes.
Working conditions not great either:
outdoors, whatever the weather;
long days;
long nights.
And hardly secure employment:
hired and fired from month to month;
dispensable.
Leaving your flock
is not a good career move,
whether an angel’s told you to
or not.
I’m scared
this winter’s going to bite hard.
But maybe if God knows
all about cold
and poverty
and insecurity.
Maybe I’ve got nothing to lose.
‘Don’t be afraid.’
That’s what the angel said.



I am a wise man,​
apparently.
​Although they don’t say that
​about everyone
​who looks for messages in the stars.

I am a traveller.
My journey has brought me a long, long way.
I have not found much yet:
only power-hungry rulers,
and too many doors shut in my face.

​I am a foreigner.
I might look and sound quite different to you.
But just because I struggle to speak your language
doesn’t mean I don’t have a brain,
or a heart.

You and I are searching for the same thing,
I think.
A new government,
perhaps;
a different world,
definitely;
a brighter future,
we hope.

But maybe we are looking in the wrong places.
Not in the corridors of power,
among the money men
and the decision-makers.
But in a back-street stable,
among the young mums
and the shift-workers.
The starlight
​I have been following
seems to shine
down those dark streets,
beckoning,
calling:
‘Do not be afraid.’



I am busy!​
​I’m an innkeeper.
Which means
I run a pub,
and this,
for people in my trade,
is the busiest,
most stressful,
time of year.
No room,
no time,
no joy.
Too many people around,
too many jobs to do,
too many places to be
at the same time.
I’m good without
the aggro.
Anxious,
just to keep head above water.
Better when it’s all over.
But if,
for ten minutes even,
I could leave the customers,
the complaints,
the constant demands,
and get round the back
to the cattle shed,
to see that new-born baby
I can hear crying,
and hold him in my arms…
If,
even for five minutes,
I could just stop
and do nothing,
except be there,
and look
and listen…
Then,
perhaps,
in the space,
and the silence,
I might just hear God saying:
‘Don’t be afraid.’



I am me…​
I am you…
I am your next-door neighbour…
I am the person you go out of your way
to avoid…
I am your best friend…
We are waiting,
all of us,
sitting in darkness,
waiting for the light of dawn to break.
We tell ourselves
‘Christmas is for the children’,
but there is a little child
in each of us
that is waiting for more
than the contents
of the brightly-wrapped boxes
and the feast
of chocolate.
The little child
is waiting
for the moment
of wonder…
joy…
love…
For the moment
the world
holds its breath
and then breaks into
a smile.
For the moment
when a lifetime
of hurts
and disappointments
is forgotten
in a hug.
For the moment
when the poor
and the hungry
are lifted up
and the rich
are sent
empty
away.
For the moment
when the hopes
and fears
of all the years
meet
in the dark streets
and whisper
to each other:
‘Don’t be afraid.’
The little child
is waiting.
Waiting
to be born.

'Regime change' at the 'centre', or experimenting at the 'edges'?

With most of those inside the Church of England, and a remarkably large number outside, this week I have spent a lot of waking hours somewhere in 'the valley of the shadow of death', repeatedly finding myself surprised by intense feelings of shock, disbelief, anger, sadness, disappointment, disgust, embarrassment, frustration... the reel of emotions could go on and on.

Coincidentally, the decision of General Synod almost to agree to proceed with bishops of both genders, but not quite - thanks to 6 members of the House of Laity - comes in the week that I've sent off a hefty chunk of ramblings to my PhD supervisors, around the themes of 'asset-based' community development and 'co-production', and the Christian practices of gratitude and lament. I finish the piece, with inevitably unsatisfying loose ends, by suggesting that the 21st Century version of Saul Alinsky's community organising tradition, seen in the Occupy and UK Uncut movements, contains more than a little promise and possibility for bringing the laments of the local to the centres of power. I dare to suggest that these movements might be valuable partners to the local church.

The trouble is, of course, this week has made the church look ridiculous, irrelevant, lacking in any credible voice, especially on issues of community and justice. The very fact that, the day after the Synod vote on women bishops, the same Synod voted for the Living Wage throughout the institution - this should have been headline news, a challenge to central government, but instead was utterly eclipsed, consigned to irrelevance by the day before's 'long, boring suicide note', as one astute journalist described it.

But we in the parishes, at the front line of community-building in our neighbourhoods, had to get up on Wednesday morning and get on with our jobs. To be sure, we had plenty of explaining to do to our incredulous neighbours, to our children, to our partner organisations in local quests for justice, wholeness and integrity. God knows our jobs have been made more difficult by Synod's failure to live up to its latest kairos moment. But a crucial part of our 'getting on with things' locally has been the sense that, whichever way Synod had voted, how we live out church 'in the local' is not greatly changed. This is a point, I think, about bishops in general, about decisions in London, about the institution - in relation to the local Christian community that happens to call itself Anglican (in our case, even that is only partly the case).

We are a long way from the centres of power. Bishops do not (sshh, don't tell anyone) actually make a vast difference to our daily life and ministry and mission. Neither does much else that the institution does or decides or instructs - other than the 'taint by association' (unfortunate phrase in the context, but hey) that such crashing stupidity, amplified by media interest, inevitably fosters.

I am reminded of two things. One is a recent comment by a well-respected Council officer that 'the further you are from the centre, the more you can get away with'. Other institutions have their human edges, as well as their inhuman systems, too. The other is the wisdom of Australian 'Christi-anarchist' and radical community development thinker and activist, Dave Andrews. Dave reminds us that, in systems and institutions, 'regime change' (i.e. changing those at 'the top') never changes the system itself. Jesus was not interested in regime change. Instead, says Dave, 'Jesus’ stratagem was simply to persistently deny hierarchy, advocate mutuality, and reframe all his relationships, over time, in terms of equality'. Instead of seeking to 'move up' in the institution, Jesus and his followers deliberately sought to move to the institution's 'edges', locating themselves 'on the sidelines' rather than 'in the main game'. This presented Jesus (as it does his disciples) with a number of advantages:

'One, it gave him perspective. From the sidelines he was able to see the whole field, and see what needed to be done to improve the game. Two, it gave him opportunity. On the sidelines he was far enough away from the game to be beyond its immediate control, yet close enough to affect the way it played out. Three, it gave him time. On the sidelines he was able to develop his short-term alternatives to the system while he worked on his long-term transform-ation of the system. Four, it gave him space. On the sidelines he was able to demonstrate the alternatives he developed in the eyes of everyone, so they could assess for themselves whether they wanted to adopt them - or not. Five, it gave him a position from which he could advocate change, without being in a position to impose the change he advocated on anyone. So people knew they were truly free to adopt the change—or not to—as they so desired. And - because that made the change process much less threatening to the people in the synagogue - it gave Jesus greater freedom to experiment more!'

As the apostle Paul took on and developed Jesus' strategy of experimenting at the edges, 'Paul’s prayer,' says Dave, 'was that his experiments would not stay ‘on the margins’. But, that his ecclesia, would become ‘the centre of attention’. And not only be admired, but also be adopted as the modus operandi of society.'

Dave continues:

'Now many people think there is no point working for change on the margins. But I think there is probably often no other place we can work - except on the margins. Until there is a kairos moment of some kind or other, which can open up a closed system, and can give us a chance to take the changes we have accomplished on the margins, and place them—for serious consideration - right at the heart of the congregation. It doesn’t matter whether the kairos moment comes sooner or later. What matters is: we recognise it when the moment comes, and use it to manoeuvre our movement for change, from out on the edge, into the middle of the turmoil. We should always use a crisis in an institution to advocate the kind of change that can facilitate the development of a healthy community. Whether the crisis be conflict in the group, criticism of the organisation, or a succession in the leadership - we can use it - to encourage people to consider serious change.'

Now I don't want to claim anything special for Hodge Hill (although I do happen to think Hodge Hill is a very special place, for all sorts of reasons!). But I do want to suggest that this week, more than ever, Anglican churches around the country that are slogging away, often at great cost, at the edges of society and the edges of the church institution, undertaking risky, daring experiments in mutuality and community - these are the gift to the church that could, if the kairos moment is grasped, change everything. And guess what? Women are equal partners with men in leading such work. Why wouldn't they be?