Stories and Story Telling

THE READER Spring 2015 £2.50 Vol 112 No1

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Stories are very much part of our lives, and telling them is something we do all the time, even if it is only recounting part of our day at work, or what happened in church, the shop or the car park! Our theme of stories and story telling has four longer articles which help us think about this from several different aspects. Then we have the results of our competition! These are very diverse, as you will see if you take a look on pages 12 to 15. Congratulations to our winners: Fran, John, Jane and Mark, and thanks to all of you who submitted an entry. It made interesting reading for me! These competition stories are followed by some personal stories which I hope will set you thinking. It is always good to hear what others have discovered in their life story and there is much that we can learn from one another. People arriving on our shores are very much part of the story of our nation. It seems that

challenging immigration issues is going to be part of the run up to the General Election this year. Guy Brandon from the Jubilee Centre has written an article asking how the church should engage with all this. Meanwhile Christopher Burkett speaks to us about ‘Preaching in a Forgetful Age’ and Bishop Robert reminds us of our call to be disciples.

WELCOME

Editorial

Regretfully I do not have space for all the material you are now sending me and I am developing quite a queue, but please don’t let that stop you! If you want to have an email conversation with me before you put pen to paper – well preferably fingers to keyboard and ‘send’ button as I much prefer electronic communications – I would be glad to discuss ideas with you. Meanwhile a somewhat belated happy new year to you all! It strikes me that it will be an interesting one but that is another story yet to unfold!

Looking ahead, the summer issue is going to focus on Chaplaincies, and the one for autumn will be themed on St John’s Gospel. The final issue for 2015 will look forward to our 2016 celebrations when the modern Reader movement will be 150 years old! So I am looking forward to receiving possible contributions for any of these.

Heather Fenton Editor

The Reader online readers.cofe.anglican.org

Contents

THEME  STORIE S AND STORY TELLING

4 Telling the stories that Jesus told Susan Durber 6 Story Telling… Martin Goldsmith 8 A Story about Story Writing Philip S. Davies 10 Journalling the story of our lives Corin Child 12 Scent Fran Brealey 13 Matthew’s Party John Watson 14 Moses – a Monologue Jane Brocklehurst

ARTICLE S

18 Just as I am Jean Watson 24 Acts435 Louis della-Porta 26 How should the Church engage with immigration? Guy Brandon 28 Preaching in a Forgetful Age Christopher Burkett

17 In the beginning was the Word Raylia Chadwick

21 Quotable Quotes 22 ‘The Viewer’ Film column 33 Need to know more?

CRC NEWS

34 Called to be disciples 36 Introducing… 37 Last word

15 The Parable of The Apprentice Mark Neave 16 And now a true story… Susan Powell

RE S OURCE S

REVIEWS

30 Reviews

38 Gazette 39 In Memoriam

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Telling the stories that Jesus told Susan Durber is Theology Advisor to Christian Aid

P e h t g n i h c Prea Many of us have become rather bad readers of the parables of Jesus. It’s not entirely our fault and it’s understandable in a way, but it would be great if we could do something about it. The trouble is that many of us have heard them so many times before that we know what’s coming, so there’s no surprise and no twist. Sometimes, if we’re honest, if someone announces the reading and tells us it’s a parable, part of our listening gear switches off since we know we’ve heard it before. And if we’re preachers, and a parable turns up in the lectionary, then it’s hard to know what to say that might not have been said before. This is really sad, because parables, above all kinds of text, are the kind that ought to get us thinking and wondering. They don’t, despite what tired listeners might assume, give us their meaning up front. They actually invite us to ponder and to discover something new. They open doors and invite us to step through into a new world. They ask us to be active, and not passive, readers, and they belong to a tradition of reading that loves argument and discussion and finding a new way in. We really ought to be joining in, as readers and as preachers. Most of us have already heard so many people tell us what the parables mean that we think we have nothing to contribute. We’ve all heard sermons, and we’ve read books, that tell us ‘what the parable really means’. It’s amazing how definite some commentators seem to be, especially when it seems that the Gospel writers themselves weren’t always at all sure what a parable meant (look at Mark chapter 4 for example, or at the two different versions of the parable of the Lost Sheep that appear in Luke and in Matthew). But it’s not so definite and there really is room for us to have a go at becoming readers ourselves. Even the editors of our Bibles like to tell us what parables mean by giving them titles. Because we read the title before we read the parable itself it is human nature to read it through the title’s lens. But is the story in Luke 15:11-32 really best called ‘The Prodigal Son’?

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What about the other son? What about the father? Is the story in Luke 10 really about a Samaritan being ‘good’, or is there something other than a lesson in morality here? The titles are not part of holy scripture, and we shouldn’t let them put us off being attentive readers who look for a meaning of our own. The Gospel writers, no less than contemporary editors, also like to tell us what a parable we are about to read might mean. Luke is especially fond of it. He loves to tell us what Jesus meant and then tell us the parable. But Jesus seems to have told parables rather than giving a straight and closed answer to every question he was asked, because he wanted people to think for themselves and work it out. He loved the kind of stories that can’t be reduced to a ‘moral’, that leave you thinking, and arguing and imagining. So, we need, as readers and as preachers, to become those who really listen to Jesus’ stories and let them speak for themselves. And we need to help other people do this too. One person who has helped me very much is the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan. In a little piece he wrote called ‘The Fifth Gospel’ he takes familiar verses from scripture and turns them upside down. The effect of this is actually to open our eyes to the ways in which Jesus shocked his hearers, a shock (whether of recognition or amazement) that we need to keep hearing. So, for example, he tells again the parable of the sower and seed. ‘Listen: a sower went out to sow. And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and they sprang up and gave good fruit. Some fell on stony places, where they had not much earth, and they too grew up and flourished well. And some fell among thistles, and they in turn sprang up and gave fruit in the very heart of the thistles. But others fell into good ground, and died, and produced neither leaf nor fruit. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.’ 1

We so easily turn parables into descriptions of what normally happens, into stories more like proverbs than stories that are really stories. Partly because we’ve grown up in the western, modern world we tend to think that stories should have a ‘moral’, that they should mean one thing (perhaps what the person who composed it really meant) and that interpreting a story for others is somehow about making it ‘clear’. But Jesus didn’t have our western cultural world-view. If we want a glimpse of his world we need to go to other cultures and places and to find those who love to argue about stories and meanings and to those who believe, as Jewish rabbis often say, that ‘there is always another interpretation’. We might need to abandon our preferences for clarity, for ‘morals’, for three point sermons and comforting, and definite, conclusions. And we will enter a world in which stories are surprising again and in which we are free to wonder, and to read for ourselves. Take the parable of the mustard seed. How many times have we heard it said that this parable means that ‘from little things great things can grow’? That thought may be true, but I wonder whether reading the parable of the mustard seed ought to be more like reading the story below. A church in the United States was having a mission campaign. They sent out a prayer card to every house and apartment in the neighbourhood. And the congregation were busy for weeks attaching a mustard seed to each card. Just imagine it. One day, one person, in a far corner of the parish, decided to plant the mustard seed. And it grew – and it grew – into a tomato plant! That’s what the kingdom of God is like. If you read the version of this parable that’s in Luke’s Gospel, you find that he doesn’t use the word small. In his version it’s not a story about a small seed growing into a big bush (which is what normally happens), it’s a story about a mustard seed growing into a tree (which is what never happens except in extraordinary stories!). Do you think the

Parables parable is a kind of proverb telling us what we already know, and that we could sleep through on a Sunday and it would make no difference? OR, is it a story about a world we’ve never yet seen, but which God is bringing; a world as extraordinary, odd and miraculous as a mustard seed growing into a tree? These are very different things. Our task as preachers might be to open up that extraordinary world for those who are listening, and not to leave them snoozing in the ordinary, everyday world. When we share the parable of the mustard seed, we should see something of the world it is offering, the new world God is bringing. When I tell people the story of the mustard seed on the prayer card they laugh! That’s (possibly, who knows..) what the first hearers did when Jesus told them about the mustard seed that became a tree. And they got, in that moment that says ‘you’re kidding!’, how extraordinary is the Kingdom of God. That’s what we need to do for our hearers, when we preach. Here’s another example: the parable in Luke 18:1-8, the one that’s often called ‘the parable of the widow and the judge’. Luke tells us in verse 1 that ‘Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart’, and so we have become used to reading it as just that. But what if this isn’t an example story about prayer after all? Could it be read another way? Could you read it like this…? The Kingdom of God is like this… Once upon a time there was a judge who was corrupt. He didn’t have respect for anyone – whether God or human being. There was a widow who kept coming and asking him for justice. She had no money to pay him a bribe. She had no voice, no power, and no way of making herself heard. A judge like that stepped on poor widows every day and hardly noticed. But one day, unexpectedly and out of the blue, she got justice. Her opponent in court was amazed and caught out, because normally in this world you can exploit widows and poor people and get away with it. We often read the story as though it’s what you’d expect to happen. But actually this is a story in

THEME

Mus tard See d s

which what you don’t expect to happen really does. The normal ways of the world are overturned. This is a different kind of story. Perhaps we don’t need to assume that Luke is right about what this story means, or at least that he has the only possible interpretation. These stories of Jesus have more possibilities than even a Gospel writer might spot, and they deserve to be set free among the people of God, so that they can continue to amaze and surprise us with new meaning. We need to be reading them and preaching on them in ways that constantly say, ‘What do you think? How do you read it?’ One way of waking yourself up as a Reader is to go to a community very different from your own and see how they read the parables. Whether you go to the teachers of the early Church, to a church in the global South, to your grandchildren or to the congregation round the corner, you could be in for a surprise. Did you know that in some parts of the world, when you read the parable of the talents, people cheer the third servant who refused to collude with the corruption of the master and didn’t invest his dirty money? Have you ever noticed that the parable of ‘the prodigal son’ has so many echoes of the story of Joseph and his brothers from Genesis? Have you ever wondered why it could be wrong to turn up at the feast of life not dressed for a wedding? For most of us, we have just skimmed the surface of these remarkable stories, and there are those all around us who can help us dive deeper. There’s really no excuse anymore for thinking there’s not much more to say about the parables. So readers of the parables unite… Susan Durber is the author of Surprised by Grace; parables and prayers. Each of the 31chapters contains her own translation of a parable, a reflection and a prayer. You can order it online at urc.uk/store or telephone: 0207 916 8629 1 Edwin Morgan, The Fifth Gospel in Poems of Thirty Years, Carcanet New Press, Manchester, 1982

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Story Telling… Conversations, articles in magazines and papers, books and the media – recently the subject of story telling has been emphasised. Television loves to present one heart-rending story which draws out our sympathy in order to further its agenda on same-sex relationships, abortion, euthanasia or other hotly debated subjects. Politicians follow this model of influencing and forming public opinion. Stories influence people in our modern age even more than rational or scientific argument. The post-modern world in which we live revels in life stories more than objective debate and argument. For many years I taught a one-term course on Story Telling at All Nations Christian College near Ware and still every year teach one evening at their annual Islamics Course. This is always much appreciated and I observe how people respond with enthusiasm. If we want to communicate effectively in our churches and communities, we need to learn to tell stories. Christians have been telling biblical stories to our Sunday schools for centuries. That is nothing new. Of course we need to encourage our children’s teachers to tell these stories in a lively, relevant up-to-date manner. The fascinating Bible stories of creation and the fall, Noah’s ark, Abraham’s call to sacrifice Isaac, Joseph in Egypt, Moses, Daniel, Jonah etc. lend themselves brilliantly to the art of story telling. Such story telling is also practised in most homes up and down the country as parents tuck their children up in bed each evening or sit on the sofa with a child on either side reading traditional fables or other exciting stories. Many know well the Christmas pantomime stories of Cinderella or Jack and

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the Beanstalk. So we cannot really refuse the challenge of telling stories also to adults in our churches and more widely. We all have experience in this method of communication, so we cannot honestly say that we don’t have the gift of storytelling. My personal experience ‘If we want to communicate effectively to Muslims, we have to learn to tell stories.’ These words from a brilliant Canadian missionary doctor in South Thailand came to me as a word from God and have affected my life ever since. I soon noticed that a well-told story could hold a crowd of 500-1,000 Muslim men for an hour or so, whereas more traditional forms of open-air preaching soon dispersed the crowds. People who heard my stories would often return home excitedly retelling my story to all their friends and neighbours. In our churches we want our people to be so fascinated by our teaching and preaching that they then share it with their friends too. Later I served in Malaysia with its Muslim government. Sharing the good news of

Martin Goldsmith is a Jewish Christian, an international speaker, teacher and is author of a recently published book

Jesus with Muslims was illegal. I then found that adapting Jesus’ parables to a Muslim context and to Muslim questions fitted that situation ideally. I am no good at making up my own stories and have much admired All Nations students who thought up brilliant stories to teach basic Christian truths. But I find that I can take over other people’s stories and adapt them to a very different audience. In Malaysia the secret police and my Muslim friends never guessed that my stories came from the Bible or were opening the door to a search for salvation and new life in Jesus Christ. In more recent years I have rejoiced to see my stories leading to radical new life in a church and also wonderfully blessing individuals here in Britain. And stories stick in people’s memories long after everything else is forgotten. Sometimes people come to me and remind me of a story I recounted even twenty or thirty years ago – and they then tell me what that sermon or talk was teaching and what it has meant in their lives. God uses stories! Such personal experience has encouraged me to write my new book on this subject Storytelling – sharing the Gospel with passion and power published by IVP. It can be obtained from any bookshop, through Amazon or direct from IVP. It is also on ebook for your Kindle!

The second form of Jewish teaching is Haggadah. This consists of stories, dramatic action and pictorial words. Even the epistles contain considerable haggadic teaching. For example, Paul refers to Abraham’s life, to Hagar and Sarah. James talks of a rudder, the tongue, forest fires etc. And Jesus constantly teaches through parables, little everyday allusions and such pictorial teaching forms. In the Old Testament the prophets also teach through vivid actions – hiding a cloth in the ground, lying on one’s side for ages, breaking a stick in two, narrating the picture of a pot spilling out its contents etc. And the example of the potter has enthralled many of us. So our teaching and preaching today should be laced with both true historical stories and also parabolic teaching. We long for the fullness of the Christian message to regain a vital impact on our people and nation. I believe that stories can play a significant part in this. And I hope that my new book can help us all to see the role of stories in shaping people’s lives. Stories in other faiths We take it for granted that Christian children are brought up in church on the stories of the

Bible. But sometimes we forget that followers of other faiths are equally nurtured on the stories which are told to them as children. So in our Religious Education at school or our study of other faiths later in life we tend to concentrate on their theological beliefs. Of course in schools much attention is also rightly given to worship practices and festivals which do indeed play a significant part in forming their religious life and practice. But each religion also has specific stories which mould their faith as children and on into adulthood. Thus many Buddhists are brought up on the stories of the previous incarnations of the Buddha. These are recorded in the Jatakas with fascinating stories of Buddha’s earlier reincarnation as a swan, a tortoise and other beings. Likewise the Hindu will listen with rapt attention as a child to the exciting stories recorded in the epic scriptures of the Ramayana. These stories will form their understanding of the gods with their battles and loves. From the Bhagavad Gita they will also learn about the life of Krishna. Of course the deeper philosophies of Advaitin Hinduism with the writings of Sankara, Ramanuja and more recent thinkers like Radhakrishnan lie behind these stories, but it still remains the stories which influence widely in the home and the temple. In my experience most Muslims have little understanding of the theology of Islam. As children they will learn to recite the Qur’an, but they generally don’t know its theology. As Christians we need to think through the relationship of Muslim understandings of the nature of Allah to our own Christian beliefs. But most ordinary Muslims have never probed into the theology of Tawhid/oneness or the nature of Allah as shown in the 99 Most Beautiful Names of Allah. Indeed they will usually know little of any aspect of Muslim theology. Their religion will actually be formed through the stories of the Sirat, the life, battles and family life of Mohammed. Hearing these stories as children, they will come to a love for Mohammed which underlies their whole faith. This lies behind the outrage felt by Muslims at the Danish cartoons of Mohammed and Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. As Jews we are brought up with the story of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, God’s miraculous redemption of Israel in the Passover and Exodus, God’s giving of the Law on Sinai

and then our exile wanderings in the wilderness. Of course we know too that this exilic life will finally come to an end with our entry into the Promised Land. In the last sixty years these stories will lead onto the horror of the Holocaust and the ensuing redemption in the return to the Land. These stories stand behind the life and thought of most Jewish people.

THEME

Jewish Teaching There have always been two categories of Jewish teaching which determine the style of the whole Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament. On the one hand, we have straight legal teaching which is called Halachah. Indeed the word Halachah is often used as if it were the same as the Torah, God’s covenantal Law through Moses for Israel. Such clear legal ‘do this!’ and ‘don’t do that!’ is formative in the whole life of Israel and still of the Jewish community today. And the Bible contains considerable sections of legal, doctrinal and ethical teaching of this sort. For example, the New Testament epistles are largely formed of Halachah. Traditionally in Europe our teaching has also followed this pattern. Thus our creeds somewhat amusingly jump directly from the fact that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary to the climactic truth that he ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried’. Did nothing happen between Jesus’ virgin birth and his crucifixion? Half the New Testament lies between those two affirmations! But in our culture the stories of Jesus’ life do not have didactic significance. We know, however, that the Gospel writers had definite theological axes to grind. Their account of the story of Jesus’ life was not just fulfilling a historical purpose. It was didactic.

We live today in an increasingly multiethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious society. And in today’s small world we in Britain will be very much affected by developments elsewhere. We need therefore to understand the background stories of other faiths and to learn to communicate more through the use of stories. In our post-modern context stories are in vogue. I hope therefore that this new book, Storytelling – sharing the Gospel with passion and power (IVP), will be a real help. Conclusion Stories influence people’s lives deeply. Stories have generally formed their thinking and beliefs. It is through stories that people communicate in most cultures of the world. In my new book on storytelling I give many examples of stories I have used in Britain as well as in Asia – I hope that people here will feel free to use some of my stories as well as making up their own. I also look at the use of stories in biblical teaching and now also in Narrative Theology. It is my prayer that many will begin to develop their use of stories practically in teaching, preaching, and everyday witness. In the glory of Jesus Christ we have the most exciting story to tell which can meet the needs and heart-cries of our broken society. ‘Is there nothing more to life than what I have?’ comes the often unspoken cry of people around us. In the great story of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension God has given us the excitement of his ‘Yes! There is indeed much, much more!’ International speaker, teacher and missiologist, Martin Goldsmith is a Jewish Christian who trained as a Russian interpreter. He and his wife Elizabeth spent ten years as missionaries in South East Asia, and were involved from the start with All Nations Christian College. Martin and his wife are available for preaching and speaking in churches or other meetings – their email is [email protected] See also martingoldsmith.wordpress.com

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A Story about Story Writing Philip S. Davies is Acting Chair of the U.K. Association of Christian Writers

Why would anyone choose the insecure life of a writer instead of a vicarage and a stipend? I received the stipend of a Church of England parish priest for eleven years, and a vicarage was ‘home’ for fifteen years, but now I have neither. And all of this has been my choice too. Over fifteen years as a vicar I became increasingly concerned about the dwindling numbers of older children, teenagers and young adults in our churches. The statistics confirm that they are leaving our congregations in droves, or not joining them in the first place. By and large, we’re simply not very good at keeping or attracting them. Of course, some churches have great youth groups and student ministries, but those places have become comparatively rare. In general, the young people of our nation are not coming to services or listening to sermons. But we’re told that they’re open, seeking, and even spiritual. So if they’re looking for answers to the questions of life, then in general they’re not finding them in institutional church, or organised religion. I guess that my response to this stems from the heart for mission that I’ve had for the last thirty years or so. I was converted as a student at St Aldate’s Church in Oxford in the days of Canon Michael Green. And during my years as a vicar, I tried to lead the various congregations (with mixed success) in being witnesses to Christ. So today I suppose you could say that I have a heart for young people. And in short, if they’re not darkening our doors, then we

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need to go where they are. If they won’t come to us, then we must go to them. So what are these young people doing? They’re in school or college, of course, but the Christian content they receive there may be small at best. They’re growing up in largely non-Christian families, among non-Christian friends. They’re on the internet, social media, on mobile phones, playing computer games, watching TV and films, and – some of them – reading books. My concerns increased when I discovered what is being published in teenage and young adult fiction today. There are vampires, werewolves, zombies and fallen angels, of course. And then the books on these shelves include stories of self harming, eating disorders such as anorexia, terminal illness, cruelty, abuse, torture, suicide, murder, curses, the paranormal, underage sex and homosexuality. If women’s fiction is sometimes termed ‘chick lit’, then this is ‘sick lit’, or ‘misery fiction’. The stories are often tragic and depressing. Fiction for young people used to be differentiated from adult fiction by the absence of bad language, graphic violence, and sexual content, but now that is less so. I read a chilling quote from one author for teens, Meg Rosoff, at the Young Adult Literature Convention in July 2014: ‘I like subverting impressionable minds.’ Now, I defend the right of authors to write as they wish, and to tackle the issues currently facing young people today. But for me each generation of teenagers and young adults deserves a choice: to read stories that are more positive and

wholesome, if they so choose. For those of us who believe in love, and light, and faith, and hope, we have something important to say, and to share with them. I felt God saying that it wasn’t enough to feel wretched about the absence of young people from church today, or to complain about the state of young adult fiction. I could do something about it. So I started writing stories. Instead of ‘preaching to the converted’ (as I did as a vicar for fifteen years), God’s call to me became ‘to write for the unconverted’. At first I became a part-time, House for Duty vicar, and then four years later we bought our own house and I became a full-time writer. I still have ‘permission to officiate’, but at forty-nine years old, I must be one of the youngest ‘retired’ stipendiaries in the country! So now I can help out where needed around local churches, and also develop a wider ministry as a Christian, freelance, self-employed writer. I tried short stories for my children, and then embarked on a full-length novel, the initial idea for which I had had a number of years previously. I was introduced to the world of poetry, and reading and writing groups, publishers and bookshops, literary agents and festivals, book signings, and so on. It is another world, and largely outside the church. So how can I reach out to the young people outside the Church? I am invited into schools to help with literacy, as part of building the Kingdom of God there. And in my writing,

I doubt that I’d get very far with either the writing or the distributing of my work if I were still in full-time parish ministry. And I feel this is something particular to which God has called me. Partly as confirmation of this, and through much perseverance, I now have a traditional, commercial publisher for my series of teenage fantasy adventure novels. My first book Destiny’s Rebel, is due for release in 2015 by Books to Treasure (bookstotreasure.co.uk). But you may feel that fiction (and especially fantasy) has a bad press among some Christians. After all, isn’t it just flights of human imagination, conjecture, dreaming, which takes us far away from the truth of God’s word? Shouldn’t we tell young people scripture, and nothing else? I understand and have the greatest respect for that argument, and my hardest task is to fill my stories with as much truth as possible about God, humanity, life, faith, and so on.

my neighbour?’ And now we understand who our neighbour is.

don’t bear witness and testimony to what we have experienced of God, then who will?

And so too in the story of the Prodigal Son we learn of the Father’s love for his wayward children. So too with the Good Shepherd, the Vine, the Lost Sheep and Coin, the Talents, the Workers in the Vineyard, the Persistent Widow, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, the Shrewd Manager, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and so on, and so on. Jesus told stories, and so too do preachers, with sermon illustrations. Often we remember the stories and illustrations better than the rest of the sermon. Jesus knew the power of the illustration, so He made up and told stories. In this respect we seek to follow in His footsteps, but let us be clear: none of us claim to write with the authority of scripture! Parables are imperfect, and no one parable can tell us everything about the Kingdom, or have a theological meaning and application in every respect. But stories can be true and powerful, to illuminate and convict us.

And how do we start? I suggest that we think about the ways in which the experiences of our daily lives reflect the truths of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus taught the disciples and the crowds through the parables of the Kingdom, which have deep truths in them about God, humanity and the Kingdom. They are memorable, and speak to us deeply, because they’re stories. We understand about the Prodigal Son, and the Good Samaritan, and the Sower who went out to sow, and all the rest, because they connect with our human experience.

God made us to be creative and imaginative like Him. We fulfil our natures and His purposes for us when we’re creative and imaginative too. In Jesus’ words, we’re bringing out of our storehouses new treasures as well as old. We’re proclaiming the truth about God and His Kingdom afresh in each new generation. You may not be called to write a novel, but as Christian ministers, we preach. In that sense, we are all writers, and communicators. We aim to communicate the truths about God, and ourselves, and the world, and life and death, in all that we say. Our challenge is to get as much truth as possible into what we say, what we preach, and what we write.

If you go along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho today, you pass ‘The Inn of the Good Samaritan’. Well, fair enough, if that’s where your Inn is, then make the most of the marketing opportunities of your location. But please don’t confuse Jesus’ story with reality. He made that up. The Parable of the Good Samaritan was a story He invented to answer a question from a teacher of the law who had asked ‘Who is

So may I encourage us all to be imaginative about it? We each have unique insights and experiences of God, and of His transforming love and power, and can tell our own stories as no one else can. If you and I

But I consider storytelling to be an honourable task chiefly because Jesus himself did it. Wasn’t he the Great Storyteller? And aren’t we to follow his example?

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instead of them reading only negative portrayals of God, faith and the Church, I aim to provide young people with stories that address the issues with which they grapple, without preaching. There is great power in stories, to make us laugh or cry, to move us and to make us think.

In 2011, I came across the Association of Christian Writers (ACW). I was a Christian, and a writer, and so it seemed sensible for me to join. In fact, it has been one of the best things I ever did, certainly for my writing ministry, because it was through the ACW Facebook group that I found my publisher. But more than that, partly because of my background and experience, and partly because of a continued willingness to serve, I now find myself as the UK’s Acting Chair of the Association. ACW is a wonderfully supportive, encouraging, caring and enjoyable fellowship of Christians who share a common love of writing. We have about eight hundred members across the U.K., who meet in about forty local groups around the country. We have a quarterly magazine, a bi-monthly E-News, and a website (www.christianwriters.org.uk). We run competitions, organise national Writers’ Days two or three times a year, offer a manuscript critiquing service, and so on. If you enjoy writing (whatever you write), and would like to compare notes with others, then please consider joining ACW for £25 a year. So may God continue to use our willing service, in our different ways and places, to bring the good news of His Kingdom to both young and old in our world today. Philip S. Davies lives in Oxfordshire and can be contacted on e-mail: revdavies@ btinternet.com on Facebook, and on Twitter @ revpsdavies.

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Journalling the story of our lives

Corin Child is a member of the Association of Christian Writers

To be a human being is to be in the middle of something big. This is a Christian view of ourselves and the world. Life may be brief; our horizons may be narrow; but there is something going on, something called the Kingdom of God, and we are allowed to be part of it. It is an exciting discovery, because it means we are more than prisoners crossing off days on the wall of a cell. Our lives mean something; all the hours and minutes are part of a greater purpose. Rowan Williams put it well in the 2002 Dimbleby lecture: ‘People learn to tell the stories of their lives in a coherent way when they have some broader picture to which to relate it. You can only tell the story of your own life, it seems, when it isn’t just your story’… Isn’t it odd, then, that we so easily forget this broader narrative? If you were to phone up a friend and ask them, ‘What are you in the middle of?’, you would probably get an answer about the details of the day. ‘Oh, I’m just doing the washing up.’ ‘I’m on the train, I can’t hear you very well.’ Or even, ‘I’m just sitting down with a cup of tea and my favourite quarterly magazine.’ You would be much less likely to hear about the big picture of someone’s life, such as, ‘I’m in the middle of parenthood’, ‘I’m in the middle of a career in business’, or even ‘I’m in the middle of a fulfilling ministry.’ People don’t answer this way because we don’t approach life this way. We see the trees, not the wood; our default mode is close-up, not panoramic. We need to find methods of countering this tendency if we are ever going to stand back and take stock. I have been writing a book which considers two timehonoured ways of remembering God and the grand story he has placed us in. The first way is by spiritual journalling. Christians have attributed all sorts of benefits to their journals. Some talk of their journal as an ‘Ebenezer’, recalling 1 Samuel 7:12, where recording milestones allows the journal-keeper to say, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’ Others note the advice of Socrates that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’, and its biblical counterparts such as Psalm 139:1 and Psalm 103:2, and find that journalling is a way of savouring daily experience rather than have it rush blindly past. The writer Ron Klug lists ten potential benefits of spiritual journalling, including better decision-making, being able to release emotions, and setting goals for the future.

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Spiritual journalling – writing down what’s happening and what God might have to do with it – is at heart a simple exercise, but people who decide to give it a go are often surprised at how it can change their whole outlook. Try it for yourself. At the beginning of the day (or the night before), write down one or two things you are about to do, and whether or not you are looking forward to them. Then, at the end of the day, write down how these things actually turned out, and whether you were right to feel as you did beforehand. Whenever I’ve tried this, I’ve found that there is more providence going on around me than I reckoned for. I’ve spotted moments of grace in awkward appointments. I’ve realised that during periods that didn’t seem busy, there were still things going on inside me. When we journal everyday events like this, we begin to notice what they mean. We join up observations like dots and realise that there are patterns in our lives. We break our preoccupation with the present, and start to notice the story that stretches behind us and before us. The second strand in my book is Bible reading. Having considered the value of journalling, it is worth remembering that the Bible is, in effect, a journal on a grand scale. Although it has many authors and encompasses many different types of writing, scripture has a common purpose: to set down what God has done and to understand how people have responded. The book of Psalms preserves poetry about the highs and lows of living with faith. The gospels journal the ministry of Jesus. Israel’s histories detail the prosperity and ruin of God’s people. The epistles of the early church are letters worth keeping. Of particular interest to would-be journal-keepers are passages where the author is deliberately spelling something out, and, in the process, finding a way through a difficult issue. Think of Lamentations, which

same, there were moments that were highly ironic if not downright uncanny. For instance, I was writing a reflection entitled ‘The freedom of finding you’re foolish’, based on the first two chapters of Jonah, when I turned up to a clergy cricket match two weeks early in a hare-brained state of mind. I felt foolish. In the middle of a reflection about being sparing with words, I attended a long funeral that had too many So, journalling and Bible reading are both helpful speeches. While writing about Paul and his friends means of finding perspective, finding rest, I had a long of remembering the broad pastoral conversation with At the beginning of the day sweep behind the daily tangle. somebody who needed, more (or the night before), write down Now would be a good time than anything, a break from one or two things you are about to let you know the name of a stressful situation. Whenever to do, and whether or not you my book Journalling the Bible. this sort of thing happens, life are looking forward to them (Perhaps you can see how situations where we step back and ask, ‘Wasn’t I thinking I arrived at the title!) What about this recently?’, it is I have been working towards hard not to wonder whether our lives are being is material for both individuals and groups to choreographed, whether God would like us to make discover how Scripture can act as a springboard for certain connections between our reading, our writing our own journalling. For instance, someone under and our living. pressure at work or in ministry might read Acts 16 and notice how, amid all the action of Acts, Paul and Throughout the ages, people have kept memoirs and his friends found moments of calm and refreshment journals, from early exponents like Augustine to at Lydia’s house on more than one occasion. There leaders like Queen Victoria and President Truman, to is a reflection on this in the book, followed by a those made famous by their diaries, like Samuel Pepys journalling exercise: identifying reliable places of rest, and Anne Frank. Some of these were profoundly relief and prayer, and considering when these places are next due a visit. The hope is that someone using influenced by faith; all worked through their delights, the Bible in this way can make a connection between their defeats and their desires by writing them down. Paul’s pressure and their own pressure, between the When you read them today, you get the impression story of Scripture and their own story. they all understood themselves better as a result. There is nothing to stop us doing the same. We too can join the ranks of those who write down their There are a multitude of similar connections to be stories and understand themselves better. And if we made. For Journalling the Bible I selected forty passages get this far, then perhaps we will also grow in (one of its uses is as a Lent book), to show how each awareness of what – of who – is shaping the story can inspire our own journalling. The story of Ruth is of our lives, and of the greater story that is going on full of turning points, and teaches us to note the around us. Mother Teresa came to believe that she decisive moments in our own lives. The curious cast was ‘a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who of characters in 3 John can prompt us to map the is sending a love letter to the world’. That sort of thing personalities in our own church fellowships, something that’s good to do in a group. The confrontation between is worth finding out, isn’t it? Jesus and Pilate in John’s Gospel invites us to consider Journalling the Bible is published by BRF and is available the voices of doubt and faith that surround us today. from the BRF website and from other Christian booksellers. And just as the Bible is made up of many genres, so journalling can be done in a manner appropriate to the Revd Corin Child is currently the chaplain of Norwich subject, from the protest songs of Isaiah to the rhetoric School, before which he worked in parish ministry for of Romans. Just as Scripture is written with flair, so our eleven years. He has also written a Grove booklet on own journalling can be done with a creative edge. creative writing in the church, and a group resource for young people published by Barnabas for Children. One of the peculiar things about writing the book was that the themes of the forty reflections kept overlapping He is a member of the Association of Christian Writers, for whom he has led writing workshops and written with the story of my own life. I ought not to have been a regular magazine column, ‘Finding Inspiration’. surprised at this – I have just been arguing that the These articles formed the starting point for his book point of reading the Bible’s many episodes is that, on journalling with Scripture. sooner or later, they connect with our own. All the

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gives sorrow a sort of structure and moves in the direction of faith and hope. Think of John’s comments on his own Gospel (such as John 20:31), where, having recounted events, the writer points out that both he and his reader have to respond. The Bible is an object lesson in recording the moments that reveal who God is, what he is up to, and what it has to do with us.

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Scent Fran Brealey is a Reader at St Edyth’s, Sea Mills in the Diocese of Bristol

Memory sometimes plays strange tricks on you. Something insignificant happens – you catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye, you hear a voice that’s oddly familiar, and before you know it you are right back there in the middle of it all. This perfume for example – go on, why don’t you smell it too – makes me experience everything again – just as fresh and real as the day it happened. The day had begun like all the others on that journey. An early start, with fresh bread for breakfast, and then we were off. I remember the crush among the crowds, the dust clouds rising up from the road, the spring flowers growing alongside the path where we rested when we were tired. Then in the evening we stopped at Bethany. I was busy in the kitchen, helping Martha to prepare the meal. As usual she had things organised pretty well, but there were still jobs for some of us to do – chopping the fresh rosemary and basil, turning the meat over the fire, that sort of thing. Through in the dining room we could hear the sound of conversation – the Master was talking to the others at table with him. At first we didn’t notice that things had gone rather quiet, but we soon noticed the scent of the perfume. Even with the other smells in the kitchen it was hard to miss. I’ll never forget the sight of Martha’s face when she realised what her sister was doing. I know Mary was grateful that the Master had given her brother Lazarus his life back, but this was going too far. We were all thinking that, but it was Judas who spoke out loud, complaining about the cost of the perfume. And then the Master’s voice: ‘Leave her alone. This perfume is for the day of my burial.’ The sweet smell was all over the house, filling our nostrils and us puzzling over what he meant. Afterwards of course, when it was all over, we remembered his words. He’d told us that he would be arrested and put to death, but we’d refused to believe it. Now we had to listen to him cry out, ‘It is finished’ and watch others take his body down from the cross and lay it in a tomb. We knew there was only one thing left we could do for him. So we ran back to prepare what we needed – but by then it was too late. Then it seemed as if Mary had done the right thing after all. We stayed in the house all through

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that Sabbath day, and the scent of the perfume was thick in the air. So it was very early the next morning – while it was still dark, that we set off for the tomb. Better late than never, I suppose we thought. We carried the spices carefully, smelling their fragrance as we hurried along. But when we reached the garden we found the stone rolled away and his body gone. I don’t know how long we stood there wondering what to do. Suddenly two men were beside us, shining bright and saying to us: ‘He’s not here – he is risen’. We must have dropped the spices we were carrying and run, hardly able to take it in. No wonder the men thought it was all nonsense, just a crowd of hysterical women, or perhaps they found it hard to believe that we could have been the first to know. It’s a long time ago now – and I’m getting old. But that scent still brings back the memory. Some people might call it the smell of death – his death that he told us about before it happened, though we didn’t understand. Perhaps Mary did know – maybe that’s why she poured out her perfume onto his feet that day. And I guess the other Mary, his mother, had an inkling too. One day she showed me the perfume the foreign visitors had brought when he was a baby. She’d kept it ever since but I don’t think even she really knew how things would turn out. Yes it is the smell of death, but it’s the smell of life too – the life that we saw and heard and touched again in Galilee after he was risen; the life that proved to be stronger even than death. It’s the smell of healing too – we carried our sweet-smelling spices to the tomb to put on the wounds in his hands and his feet, but in some amazing way it has been those wounds that have healed us… When I smell it now,

I remember that he wants to be more than a memory, tidied away like an old perfume bottle on a shelf. He wants me to take off the stopper and breathe in his Spirit and experience his presence every day, just as fresh and real as it was the first time I saw him. And you know, this smell makes me think of something else. It reminds me how the Master wants me to live. How he wants me to be like the perfume that filled the house that day, poured out with thanks, extravagantly, shamelessly, recklessly, – a perfume that clings to your clothes and leaves its traces wherever you walk, a perfume that heals the wounds of others and brings them life. This story was written for one of a series of services on the theme of the senses. The adult congregation arriving for the ‘Sense of Smell’ service were offered a sweet-smelling ointment to rub on their hands, so that they could smell it as they listened to the story.

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Matthew’s Party

John Watson is a Reader at St Barnabas Alwoodley in the Moor Allerton and Shadwell Team in the Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales

Matthew was a tax collector. His job was to collect money from the people to give to the Romans. The Romans had taken over their country, and nobody liked that. So nobody liked the tax collectors. But it was worse than that. Most of the tax collectors used to cheat. The Romans would say ‘We want two pounds from (Sarah)’ And Matthew would say ‘(Sarah), you need to pay three pounds! Hand it over!’ Then he would give 2 pounds to the Romans, and keep one pound for himself. Then, the Romans would say ‘(Ben) needs to pay four pounds’. And Matthew would say ‘(Ben), give me five pounds! Now!’ And then he would give four pounds to the Romans, and keep one pound for himself. Do you think that was fair? No. So Matthew did not have any friends. Apart from the other tax collectors.

He was so pleased that Jesus was now his friend, that he wanted all his other tax collector friends to meet him. So he invited them all to a big party at his house, and Jesus and his other friends came too. It was a great party, with lots of nice food, and drink, and songs, and jokes, and stories. But then, along came the Pharisees. They always wanted to make sure everyone was keeping all the rules. They heard the laughing, and thought ‘That sounds like a party! In Matthew’s house! It must be those horrid tax collectors up to no good again. Lets go and check!’ So they went to look in the window.

One day, Matthew was at work in his office, all alone, counting the money, when in walked Jesus. Now this was a bit of a surprise, because Jesus did not need to pay any tax that week. But he got an even bigger surprise when Jesus said ‘Matthew, will you be my friend? Come with me!’

What did they see? Right there in the middle of the party, telling a funny story, was Jesus!

Matthew was so excited that Jesus wanted to be his friend, that he jumped up, nearly knocking his table over, and left his work, even though it wasn’t home time yet. And off he went with Jesus.

What did they see? Right there in the middle of the party, telling a funny story, was Jesus! They were so surprised that even though they hadn’t been invited to the party, they barged in.

‘Jesus! What are you doing here, mixing with all these tax collectors? You are supposed to be a good man. You teach people about God. Why are you hanging around with all these cheats and bad people?’ Jesus asked them ‘When you are well, do you need to go to the doctor?’ No. When do you need the doctor? Yes, when you are poorly. Then you need the doctor to help you get better. I’m like a doctor. I didn’t come just for the good people. I came for everybody, to help them be better.’ After that Matthew was one of Jesus best friends. And he still wanted to let everybody else get to know Jesus too. So we can also be his friends John Watson says of this story: When my children were young, I used to tell them a Bible story at bed time. One night, I asked what they would like a Bible story about. My daughter had just been to a friend’s birthday party, so she asked for a Bible story about Matthew’s party! So this story was born. After that, it became one of their favourites. I do not know what I would have done if her friend had been called George!

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Moses – a Monologue What is your worst fear? Can you name it?

I have known what it means to be afraid. I killed a man in a fit of anger once and ran away to another country, too scared to face the consequences. It has taken half my life to learn that I can’t run away from fear. Eventually you have to face it. Fear has a way of haunting you until you confront it face to face. My grandfathers’ great, great grandfathers told stories about fears being conquered by a mightier power. The stories are still passed down. In their picture language fear is always lurking deep in the sea. Close your eyes and imagine the waves surging and heaving with colossal strength. Can you hear the crashing and pounding? It makes me shudder to think of the sea monsters that might be hiding in such a hostile place. My people have given them fantastic names like Behemoth and Leviathan. Even the sound of them is terrifying. I was chosen to lead all my people to the sea shore and we faced our worst nightmare together. There was no going back. Slavery and oppression belonged to the past. There was nothing to go back for, we had to go forward and face the terrible sea. I raised my staff as I had been told to do and the Mighty LORD who commanded me cut a path right through the water! The thing we dreaded most was insignificant to the LORD God, it shrank back. God put it in its place. This is something worth shouting about. Not your everyday, ordinary happening. Bring out your worst fear. It doesn’t have to haunt you anymore!

Jane Brocklehurst is a Reader and runs Home Freed as a domestic de-clutterer and organiser! This is one of four monologues which were intended for performance. The inspiration came from a visit to The Royal Armouries in Leeds where exhibits are ‘demonstrated’ by actors in costume reciting a monologue spoken, as it were, by somebody from the time of the particular piece of armour or weaponry they are using and describing. Even my children, who were at secondary school and college, found it gripping. In 2004 I was involved in the organisation of a Bible Comes to Life Exhibition as part of the four-yearly Saddleworth Festival. I wrote the monologues to be performed several times over a long weekend. They were well received. The Moses monologue had the greatest impact, one lady even came back especially to hear it for a second time. Since then she has turned the Moses theme into the poem The Fear of Moses which was published in our anthology The Word is Out in 2012. Jane also runs Home Freed as a domestic de-clutterer and organiser; she is coordinator of Clitheroe Writing Group, and enjoys reading, sewing and being in the garden.

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The Apprentice

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The Parable of

(with apologies to Matthew 25: 14-30) ‘Again, it will be like a certain well-known entrepreneur going on a journey, who called his apprentices and entrusted some of his business interests to them. To one he gave his electronics company, to another his beloved football club, and to another his chain of restaurants, each according to his ability. ‘Then he went on his journey. The apprentice who had received the electronics company went at once and made a take-over bid for one of its competitors. So also, the one with the football team appointed a new manager, and the team moved to the top of the league table. But the apprentice who had been entrusted with the chain of restaurants sacked all the staff and locked the doors.’ ‘After a long time, the entrepreneur returned, and summoned the three apprentices to come to his board-room. The apprentice who had received the electronics company showed him the latest set of business accounts. “Lord S”, he said, “you entrusted me with your electronics company. See, I have taken over one of your rivals, and doubled the stock market value of your business.” ‘Lord S replied, “Well done, good and faithful apprentice! You have been

faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and be my business associate!” ‘Lord S then turned to the apprentice to whom he had entrusted his football club. “Lord S”, he said, “you entrusted me with your beloved football club: see, I have appointed a new manager, our results have improved, and we are about to move to a new purpose-built stadium.” ‘Lord S replied, “Well done, good and faithful apprentice! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and be my business associate!” ‘Finally, he turned to the apprentice who had received the chain of restaurants. “Lord S”, he said, “I knew that you are a hard man, being arrogant and rude and profiting where you have not invested. I was afraid that the

Mark Neave is Reader-in-Training, St Edmund’s Parish Church, Dolton Devon

customers might make your restaurants dirty and break all the plates, so I sacked all the staff and locked all the doors, to keep them safe. See, here are the keys to all your restaurants.” ‘Lord S. replied, “You wicked, lazy apprentice! So you knew that I am arrogant and rude, and profit where I have not invested? Well then, you should have leased my restaurants to MacDonalds, so that when I returned I would at least receive their rental payments, and get a free Big Mac. ‘Lord S turned to his trusted aides, Nick and Karen, and said to them, “Take the restaurants from him and give them to the first apprentice. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And as for you, you lazy and worthless apprentice – you’re fired!”

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And now a true story…

Angel in Disguise Several years ago I went on holiday with my husband to the Costa del Sol in Spain. We had been looking forward to our holiday for some time, especially after such a long wet winter in South Wales. Our early morning flight from Cardiff airport went well and on arrival at our resort we wasted no time in getting out into the beautiful sunshine for a stroll along the promenade. As we walked along, however, we were continually badgered by people trying to sell us a holiday home in Spain. Initially we were quite pleasant to these people as we smiled and moved on. But after a while we became increasingly irritated by these time share agents, who never seemed to give up pestering people as they cheekily asked ‘Are you English’? ‘No’, we answered – ‘we’re Welsh, and we are not interested, thank you’! By now we were feeling a little jaded, so we returned to the comfort of our hotel. The next day we decided to go somewhere different, hoping to avoid the over-enthusiastic time share representatives. As we were new to the area, we browsed through the local tourist information and we thought we would visit the nearby mountain village of Michas. It was a very hot day, as we set out in the early morning sunshine to explore the delights of this small mountain village by public transport. Our bus journey took us up a long and steep winding hill, which seemed to be never ending, but some twenty minutes later we arrived at our destination. Michas is a peaceful little village, bedecked in flowers, and dotted with little whitewashed houses: it all seemed so perfect.

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Susan Powell is a Reader at St Michael’s Church, Cwmavon

Sadly, however, our visit was unexpectedly cut short as quite soon after our arrival at this beautiful location, my husband began to feel unwell! We decided there was nothing we could do but to catch the next available bus and return to our hotel. When the bus arrived there was standingroom only and we had no choice but to stand in the aisle of bus, holding on for dear life, as it shakily made its way down the steep and winding mountain road. The journey seemed endless, but eventually we arrived at the bus terminal in Fuengirola. Then just as we stepped off the bus, my husband, who by now was feeling decidedly unwell, collapsed on the pavement! No one seemed to take any notice or show concern as people just hurried on by or simply stepped over him; I think they thought he was drunk. By this stage I was quite frightened, because I could not speak Spanish and I did not know where to go for help. Then suddenly, as if appearing from nowhere, I heard this English voice behind me saying ‘Don’t worry – let me help you call a doctor’. It seemed that a ‘Good Samaritan’ had come to our rescue. But it was not one of the many holidaymakers, who just hurried on by, but none other than a young English timeshare representative, one of the people who had been annoying us the day before selling holiday homes. Thankfully an ambulance soon arrived and my husband was soon whisked off to hospital in Malaga where

he quickly recovered from what turned out to be nothing more than mild sunstroke. After a series of tests, he was released from hospital the following day and we were able to enjoy the rest of our holiday free from any further incidents. On our return home as I reflected on our experience, I thought of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). I was so grateful to the young woman who came to our assistance. I never saw her again to say ‘thank you’ because she quickly disappeared once medical help arrived. Sometimes it seems that the most unlikely people are sent to help us, just like the Samaritan in the story but I thank God for sending us an angel in disguise!

As a former Orthodox Jew it may come as no surprise that my delight is in Hebrew prayer, and the telling of the Old Testament stories, except I didn’t at that time know they were from the Old Testament as I was unaware there was a New (Testament). To me they were (and still are) simply the Hebrew scriptures. My life now has changed beyond all recognition, some ten to twelve years on, as Reader Emeritus in Manchester Cathedral. (Now how did that come about and why did it take me so long? But that’s another story!)

‘We’re not drunk! It’s only nine o clock in the morning!’ (Acts 2:14-15).

I still love reading and studying what we Christians call the Old Testament, with all its drama, and pathos, humour, tenderness, romance, and sorrow. The entire gamut of human emotion is here, opening the door to a deeper reality of the Divine-human relationship. For beneath its biblical imagery and metaphor, is embodied this profound truth of relationship.

And what about the wonderful account of Moses, burdened with a resentful people, roasting in the desert heat, longing for their cucumbers, onions and garlic, (Numbers 11: 4-5) Moses is not slow to have a go at God – ‘Why me?’ he asks ‘why do you lay the burden of this people on me?’ (Numbers 11: 11-15) How many of us in ministry have had that very same thought! Then there’s the joy (2 Samuel 19: 4-5) and the grief of King David (2 Samuel 19:4-5), so handsome, so emotionally vulnerable despite his military prowess, and so sexy.

These few years on in the Christian life, and with grateful thanks to the thorough Reader training programme, I have become familiar with the ‘New’, especially the Gospels, and in private reading I read both ‘old’ and ‘new’ as one continuous story. What strikes me so powerfully in all this is the glory of Christ lifting the human consciousness out of the muddle of human existence, to a Living God who comes to us in the very ordinary things of daily life.

And dear, faithful Ezekiel – so weary with being sent out time and time again to deliver God’s words to the people. ‘Ah no Lord! ‘ he exclaims in protest, ‘ they are saying of me, ‘Is he not a maker of parables? Ah no Lord! Not another parable!’ (Ezekiel 20: 49) What about the tenderness of the romance? Ruth and Boaz, a gorgeous man by all accounts who greets his workers in the fields every morning with the words we Christians now know so well – ‘Adonai imochem’ – The Lord Be With You’. (Ruth 2:4)

How amazing is that?

Or Rebekah, journeying with Abraham’s servant to an unknown destiny. ‘Who is that man over there?’ she asks, spotting a distant figure walking towards them. ‘It is Isaac,’ the servant replies. And Rebekah covers her face with her veil. (Genesis 24: 63-65)

And yet, even at a surface level, what riches we have in these Bible stories! I’m never trusted to read publicly at Pentecost anymore because I can’t stop laughing at Peter’s words – ‘Drunk’?

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IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE

Raylia Chadwick is Reader Emeritus, Manchester Cathedral and Manchester Diocesan Spiritual Director Nor is the New Testament lacking in this Divine story telling. Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman is priceless (John 4:7-30) And what can one say of the faithful women at the foot of the Cross? (John 19: 25) Nothing. It is beyond words. One can only stand with them, mute, in awe and wonder – a moment in death that unites us with everything that lives and breathes. So is the Bible divinely inspired? Of course. You just couldn’t make it up, a biblical blockbuster by the greatest script writer in heaven and earth. But the bible is not just for our entertainment, entertaining though it is, which is why we approach it with love and reverence as a gracious gift from the Almighty. It is for our enlightenment, carrying us on a transformational journey to the Christ who carries us the last steps home to the Father. Not in separation or the duality of the creator and His creatures of the Old Testament, but in union with Him who is in union with the Father, the True Divinehuman Relationship for which our hearts ache with longing. ‘On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you…’ (John 14: 20) How amazing is that?

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Just as I am Not long ago I was told that someone in a Bible study group had put forward the thought that we bring nothing to God but our sins. I had assumed that this old sound-bite had long since bitten the dust. Since it apparently hasn’t, at least not everywhere, I want to suggest that it is scripturally unsound and psychologically damaging. Scripturally unsound? I have been scan-reading Luke’s gospel to see what people brought to Jesus. One man bought his demons and Jesus sent them packing so that the man could be his true self. Simon’s motherin-law brought her fever and in Jesus’ presence it left her. A centurion brought his concern for his ill servant and Jesus healed him at a distance. A widow brought her dead son and Jairus his dead daughter and Jesus raised them to life. The disciples brought the hunger of the crowds and Jesus fed them. A cripple brought her disability and Jesus enabled her to stand up straight and see and function in the world normally. Some men brought their paraplegic friend and Jesus restored the power to his legs. Very unusually, in this context, Jesus first of all told him that his sins were forgiven. The religious leaders brought their preconceptions and Jesus dismantled them. Jesus saw people as individuals with different needs, gifts and personalities and treated them as such. He never suggested that they brought nothing to him but their sins. He forgave sins, certainly, but he did a lot of other things as well – he taught and healed people, he interacted with them as unique indivduals, aware of their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. They came to him, just as they were, bringing their sicknesses and sorrows, their questions and brokenness. And isn’t that what we do too – come to God bringing ourselves just as we are? Bringing the selves which he created and loves, which he made in his image, with our unique personalities, temperaments, gifts, backgrounds and experiences? Sure, that image is marred and needs his restoration and, sure, every aspect of our life and world is out of kilter and needs his

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transforming and healing touch, but we and all of it are not junk! God didn’t make junk; all that he made was originally very good and he is at work to make it very good again. He works with damaged material. We are his flawed but loved and potentially good and beautiful creation – his work in progress. Psychologically damaging? I have no statistics to prove this but anecdotal evidence aplenty and some experience concerning the psychological and emotional damage that the ‘total depravity’ teaching causes. A distorted picture of God, depression, anxiety, guilt, fear of rejection by God – these are just a few possible outcomes. Good Christian counsellors, or indeed simply good counsellors, can help people who come to them and are willing to open up about their picture of God and consequently of themselves. Sadly, others may live lives of quiet desperation under clouds of guilt and fear which can drive them to suicide or, even if it doesn’t, will rob them of the abundant life that Jesus came to bring. Of course it’s not a sin-free life but with God’s loving acceptance and the Holy Spirit’s presence within us, we can be growing into greater freedom and wholeness. In my own context, as a young person I was sent to a missionary boarding school which had lots of good features but where our sinfulness was heavily emphasised. At some point, I reacted against this in a knee-jerk ‘bolshy’ way as an alternative to feeling crushed by it. Later Bible reading and study at personal and professional levels, as well as life experiences, gave me more solid grounds for reaching my conclusions.

Jean Watson is a Reader in Rochester diocese I am now a grandmother and some people tell me that the pendulum has swung too far the opposite way – children and young people nowadays are not taught often enough that they are sinners. This may be true about some but I can’t help thinking about the many children and young people who are carers for, or abused by, their alcohol-addicted or drug-dependent parents; or those who self-harm and suffer from depression. They do not need to hear that they bring nothing to God but their sins. The gospel message should never be reduced to a one-size-fits-all formula. Of course human sinfulness is part of the gospel story; but the context and way in which that message is conveyed to us is very important. How it strangely warms my heart when I come into church and am told that God loves and welcomes me as my heavenly Father before being told to focus on the intolerable burden of my sins. Then, reassured by God’s goodness and love, I am ready to face my faults and failings, receive forgiveness and start making necessary changes. When it’s the other way round, particularly if I am already feeling down and insecure, I feel even worse; either that, or I dig my heels in and get defensive. I may, of course, be the only one who reacts in these ways – but I don’t think so. Jesus’ story of the prodigal son/loving father tells me, if nothing else, that God’s loving welcome is more than ready for me even if I have messed up spectacularly in a far country and even before I get down on my knees and confess this. I’ll let C.S. Lewis have the last word from The Chronicles of Narnia: ‘You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,’ said Aslan. ‘And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.’

Theology Summer School 2015 2-8 August & 9-15 August at Christ Church, Oxford A residential summer school for members of the clergy, theologians, teachers of religious education and lay people with an interest in study at university level Exploring the theme: Christian Spirituality and the Human Vocation

Offering one-week seminars taught by members of Oxford’s Theology Faculty, distinguished theologians and prominent church leaders

Providing the opportunity to study, live and dine in Christ Church, one of the most beautiful colleges in Oxford

www.conted.ox.ac.uk/theologysummerschool

I question what I’m doing and why I’m doing it […] because I try to live by a set of values. Conservative Party politician Nadine Dorries discusses her faith and values in an inter view. (Third Way magazine, June 2014)

Suggestion You could use the quote in a talk that encourages your listeners to make the time to review their lives. It is easy to just keep on going from day to day without pausing to reflect on the direction our life might be taking. Are we making the best use of our skills? Are we fulfilling our responsibilities? What is the state of our relationships? What does the Bible have to say about making time to review our motives and priorities?

I think that being a Christian is one of the main things that defines me as a person. It’s such a big part of my life that I couldn’t hide it and I wouldn’t want to. The Great British Bake Off contestant Martha Collison talks about her faith in an interview. (Christian Today, 10th September 2014)

Suggestion You could use the quote to help your listeners think about what being a Christian means to them. Martha’s faith defines who she is. In what ways might it be helpful to be open about your faith, as Martha is? How can our beliefs help form our identity? What does the Bible have to say about Christ being our identity?

Whoever we’re with, we are alone.

Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones) reflects back on her troubled affair with author Charles Dickens in biographical drama The Invisible Woman (Lionsgate, 7th February 2014)

Suggestion You could use the quote to talk about aloneness. Do you agree with Nelly; are we all essentially alone, even when surrounded by other people or in intimate relationships? What does the Bible have to say about being alone? What does it mean to be relational? God has promised to be with us always; if that is true can we ever be alone?

People who want to change the world tend to suffer a lot for it.

Television producer and writer John Lloyd reflects on the death of Robin William s, and the correlation between creativity and mental illness. (BBC News, 12th August 2014)

Suggestion You could use the quote to talk about our calling as Christians to bring God’s kingdom in a broken world, and the cost that this calling will involve. When Jesus asked us to follow him he said we’d have to take up our cross – what do you think he meant? How do we tally up what it might cost us to follow him, and is this a price we’re willing to pay? How could following Christ help ‘change the world’?

And I will captivate you, With everything I’ve got, To bring the best out in you .

Alternative rock band The Mar mozets in ‘Captivate You’, a song from their debut album, The Weird and Wonderful Marmozets (Roa drunner Records, 9th September 2014)

Hundreds more illustrations, including new stories, statistics and suggestions for clips from films currently in cinemas, can be found on the Tools for Talks website run by Damaris. You can get a 20% discount on a year’s subscription to the site at: www.toolsfortalks.com/reader

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r fo s te o u q Th e Reader Quotable

I do not for one moment apologise for approaching moral philosophic questions in a logical way.

Evolutionary biologist and atheist thinker Richard Dawkins defends comments he made on Twitter, where he advised a user to abort her baby if she found out that it suffered from Down’s syndrome. (BBC Blog Ouch!, 21st August 2014)

Suggestion You could use the quote to instigate a discussion about whether we can always depend upon logic to help us find the correct moral response. Only God is allknowing, and our logic will inevitably be flawed. In addition, we should take into account that there are important aspects of truth and reality which ‘logic’ may not lead us to – such as love, or mercy.  How can we learn to trust God and his Word for our moral guidance? How can we ensure we listen to our hearts, as well as our heads?

The Doctor: Am I a good man? Clara: I think you try to be and I think that’s probably the point.

turer The latest incarnation of time-travelling adven Clara anion comp asks di) Capal (Peter r Docto e Th ter in (Jenna Coleman) about his own moral charac television’s Doctor Who (BBC One, 30th August 2014)

Suggestion You could use the quote to talk about the concept of ‘being good’. We don’t always get everything right, and Clara isn’t wrong in saying that we should keep on trying. But perhaps if we learn to live in the knowledge that we don’t need to be good to gain God’s approval – we are covered by Christ’s righteousness – then we’ll be free to do good without the fear that we’ll get it wrong. What does the Bible say about being good, and about persistence?

Suggestion You could use the lyric in a talk about how we’ve been bought at a price, and for a reason. Jesus gave up heaven and came to earth to be confined in human form so that he could die for our sins and make a way for us to return to God. Then - as well as redemption – he offers us a relationship with God, so that he can ‘bring out the best’ in us and help us become all we were meant to be.

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THE VI When I was at school, we were occasionally given the ‘opportunity’ to lead the rest of our tutor group in a kind of mini-assembly, and as is always the way in these situations, it was a constant battle to see how little effort we could get away with without being lambasted by the tutor. However, I also had on my mind a secondary objective: to see if I could shoehorn a Star Wars reference into every session, regardless of topic. Usually a Yodaic proverb would sneak in there, and I’d work out some tenuous link to the assembly – students would be mildly more entertained than usual, and all would be well. There can be a tendency amongst those in the church to see cinema in this form. Useful to stick into an otherwise sleepinducingly dull sermon; a way of making the theme seem ‘relevant to the modern audience’, or just a nice excuse to show our favourite clip from The Lord of the Rings. But what we fail to see, beyond using clips as service gimmicks, is the power the medium itself can have within the church – if utilised properly. In 1910, a Chicago pastor named Herbert Jump argued that ‘the modern motion picture offers the most colossal opportunity for making a fresh moral and religious appeal to the non-churched portions of the community that has risen in the history of recent Christianity.’1 The challenge to the contemporary church is whether or not, in the past century, we have truly grasped that opportunity to its full potential. The church, throughout most of her history, has realised the power and worship potential of music. Through music, an individual can feel enveloped within the group and even the music itself. When used to worship God, this can help them look beyond themselves, throwing themselves towards the one transcendental God of creation and imminent God of relationships, all in the great community of the Church. Music can fill the worshipper with an experience of God beyond that accessible through the sermon. As a result of this knowledge, churches have used music to wonderful effect in services alongside the sermons, intercessions, liturgy, and other elements. Cinema can be equally powerful, and yet in ways often underestimated by the Church. Cinema, like the Bible, holds within its long, rich history glimpses into every element of human existence, narratives that speak into the soul and take the audience members beyond themselves. Cinematic narratives, through their tales of good and evil, of destiny and a grand plan, allow the viewer access to a world of direction, order, and ultimately, redemption.

As a result, films can be powerful vehicles for meaning in modern life, and Clive Marsh argues that individuals can use films to ‘locate a set of narratives within which to live, and to understand life.’2 The church cannot underestimate its power in this regard, nor simply condemn it and hope it goes away. Rather, the Church should use film in order to show that the direction, order, and redemption that audiences seek in cinema is not found in the direction-less secular worldview, but rather through relationship with the Divine Director. People long for meaning in their lives and many seek it in the cinema – but rather than the Church condemning the silver screen as a ‘false idol’, we must use cinema to show people where the true meaning in life they are seeking can be found. To truly engage with cinema, however, we must be using films in their full form and environment – we don’t sing 20 seconds of a worship song, why only show 20 seconds of a feature film? Indeed, Jump recommended that an hour and a quarter service consist of three films totalling an hour in length, and a fifteen minute long sermon after this!3 This may seem a touch extreme, but to truly engage with the power of film we need to be willing to allow for the immersive and social experience so unique to cinema – and this includes showing and engaging with films in their entirety. But which films should we utilise and support, or even create? There is undoubtedly a place for very conventional ‘sword and sandals’ adaptations of Biblical stories onto the big (and small) screen. Indeed, just last month I was speaking to a couple whose longing for church was rekindled following decades of absence after watching The Bible4 mini-series on Channel 5 last year, and the mainstream success of films such as Noah5 shows that there is demand for and interest in direct adaptations of Biblical narratives. The Church must embrace this opportunity, including the upcoming Exodus adaptation6 from Ridley Scott, and find a way of engaging those audiences with the depth beyond the screen. However, we must also move beyond the direct adaptations – exciting as they are. Like the history of cinema, Biblical narratives are filled with violence, sex, betrayal, love, sacrifice, redemption, loyalty, drama, pathos, comedy… stories that speak to every element of human existence, and yet all exposing the divine in some form. Indeed, Jump points out that ‘when Jesus desired to set forth the essential meaning of Christianity in a universal language that should speak to men of every age and all races, he chose a dramatic story’,7 the parable of the Good Samaritan, as an exemplary case in point – even arguing that ‘the only thing needed to make the parable of the Good Samaritan a conspicuously successful motion picture film is a new title.’8 So if Christ himself can use dramatic stories drawn from contemporary experiences, even those involving horrific violence and shocking apathy, then perhaps the Church can find ways of better utilising the modern motion picture in their work.

To do this fully, preachers need to carefully educate themselves on cinema and, in particular, on the films they are using. Without an understanding of the footage being used, the characters, plots, themes and overarching feel of the piece, we can be in danger of either misinterpreting material, and thus potentially using material with contrary intentions to our own, or missing out on material that would otherwise be perfect for the point being made. This needn’t mean burying oneself in dozens of film theory books (although one or two won’t hurt!), just a case of doing some research. This could be as simple as rewatching the film you thought you knew, just to make sure it has the message you remembered, listening to the often available Director’s Commentaries, or finding articles about the conception and meaning of the film online. This is about properly understanding and interpreting the message of that which we use to preach – Cinematic Hermeneutics.

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IEWER

Rob Symmons is a freelance writer

However, we must also look beyond simply drawing scriptural messages from pre-existing films, but also looking to scripture as a source for creative ideas in film – beyond just the standard Charlton Heston epics. Having followed the progress of The Pitch over the past few years, it has been amazing to see the breadth and fruitfulness of ideas pulled from the pages of scripture. This years’ shortlist features World War One dramas, dystopian technological thrillers, and gangster neo-noirs – all drawn from biblical stories, themes, or ideas. The Pitch offers amazing potential as a resource for showing churches, filmmakers, and the film industry at large the potential of the relationship between scripture and cinema. A century later, Jump’s challenge to the church is as relevant as ever. With Biblical films all the rage, and Exodus, Gods and Kings promising to be a big Christmas blockbuster, cinema continues to offer enormous potential as a preaching and missional tool – it’s our task to grasp this opportunity with both hands.

Rob Symmons is a freelance writer and a recent theology graduate from the University of Durham where he made a particular study of theology and film. 1 Herbert A. Jump, ‘The Religious Possibilities of the Motion Picture (1910)’ in The Religion and Film Reader, eds. Jolyon Mitchell and S. Brent Plate (London: Routledge, 2007), pp.14-24 (p.17). 2 Clive Marsh, Cinema & Sentiment (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005), p.10. 3 Jump, p.24. 4 The Bible, created by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett (Lightworks Media, 2013). 5 Noah, dir. Darren Aronofsky (Paramount Pictures, 2014). 6 Exodus: Gods and Kings, dir. Ridley Scott (20th Century Fox, 2014). 7 Jump, p.15. 8 Jump, p.17.

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‘…giving to anyone who has need.’ Louis della-Porta is a Reader in the Diocese of West Yorkshire & the Dales

A fellow Reader who is also a donor to Acts 435, recently suggested the possibility of the Reader magazine as a channel for inviting you to become involved in this simple yet effective way to help people in need in the UK at this time.  Acts 435 is the Archbishop of York’s online giving charity based on Acts Chapter 4, verse 35, where the early church were ‘giving to anyone in need’.  Local churches post requests on our website, capped at £100, for people in their local community who they know are in need/come to them with need/ are referred by other organisations as being in need.  The requests are for specific items such as a washing machine, school uniform or emergency travel.  ACTS 435 is a remarkable charity, with a revolutionary website that allows people to give money directly to those that are in need. Managed through a network of churches, its goal is to get 100% of every donation quickly to those in need. Archbishop Sentamu stated ‘ACTS 435 is designed to help us fulfil Christ’s calling to give to those in need’. As this article will reveal, ACTS 435 is a unique charity that helps us fulfil both pastoral and mission ministry. So how did ACTS 435 come about? The idea came from an anonymous entrepreneur, inspired by Acts 4:35: ‘They then would give the money to each as any had need’, so it is all about seeking and, with compassion, helping those in need. As a committed Christian from Yorkshire, he saw how he could enable the Church as a readymade network (as there is, after all, a church community in every parish in the land) to connect need with donors to alleviate poverty. The gem of the idea was the incredibly simple concept of linking need to a readymade means of delivery. The other gem of an idea was for the ambition of 100% of the donation to go directly to the person in need. The idea was, wonderfully, as uncomplicated as that. With good fortune, Archbishop Sentamu

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then revealed, ACTS 435 has a much more profound effect than simply the relief the donation creates; the element of pastoral care the Advocate brings to the recipient has a far greater lasting impact.

Jenny & the Archbishop of York.

heard of the idea and became a patron and great supporter. The charity and website launched in 2009, with just four requests for help; these were fulfilled by donations in the same week. The Archbishop unashamedly used every opportunity he could to tell the world about this tiny charity. Five years on, over £250,000 pounds has been donated directly helping over 3,000 people in need across England.

‘It’s that sentence “your unseen gift of love has filled me with a sense of hope” that really moves me Originally run by Margaret Sentamu, Jenny Herrera came on board in the first year as a part time book-keeper. A trained accountant, she was over-qualified, but she listened and reacted to the call of the Holy Spirit. Asking Jenny what is the essence of ACTS 435, without a second thought, she beams ‘really to bring the supportive community of the Church out into the world and to show that the Church cares and wants to help, that we love and care for people in real need.’ Jenny

Why Jenny is involved is clear. After years of working overseas for an International Aid charity, she realised through ACTS 435 that poverty and need is here in the UK on our own doorstep. This has given Jenny a real sense of mission, her motivation is not hard to figure out when she reports: ‘I see the ‘thank-you’ messages that go out to the donors who give to a particular request and this one choked me up with emotion: ‘After a terrible time over the last 12 months due to the break-up of my marriage and consequent bankruptcy, I was left with an empty house. I turned to drink and contemplated suicide. With the support of my mother and Christians, known and unknown, I have now managed to turn a corner. Your unseen gift of love has filled me with a sense of hope. Words are nothing without actions and your help has given me the chance to start acting on rebuilding my life.’ Jenny continues: ‘It’s that sentence “your unseen gift of love has filled me with a sense of hope” that really moves me. Also, the evidence of how a community has come around him, as he says, family in the case of his mother, and then Christian supporters, both known through his local church contact and unknown in the form of ACTS 435 donors.’ Well, dear Readers, through ACTS 435, I cannot think of a better way to express Christ’s love in such a direct way to people in need. This support is as much about compassion and our expression of God’s love in action as it is about practical financial support. This is pastoral ministry work at its most pure and simple.

What ACTS 435 is struggling with is having enough Advocates (church representatives), who seek out those in real need in their parish. As the charity is committed to 100% of the donation going directly to the person in need, very little money is spent on administration, marketing or promotion of the charity. It all relies on word of mouth, which is the motivation to write this article, to help draw attention to their need. There are just over 150 Advocates from around 120 churches at the moment, some being more active than others. More significantly, there are large areas of need, with no Advocates in the West Midlands, only one in Leeds and very few in the South East and London. These are large areas of population, which ACTS 435 would love to serve. Let me explain what an Advocate is and what they do. The role of an Advocate is very much one of ministry (hence writing to you through this magazine). An Advocate goes out and finds people in need in their parish. They identify the specific request for help and submit it to the ACTS 435 website. If/ when the donation is received the Advocate may also be involved in passing this on to the recipient or may purchase the goods or service needed on their behalf. That’s the technical side. What most Advocates report back is that their real value is as a listener and a support to the person in need. Advocates have discovered need through many channels. Once they are known as the ACTS 435 Advocate in their church, then word of mouth does much of the work, often with the congregation inspired and motivated to support the Advocate. Advocates often link into church and nonchurch Citizens Advice Bureau services and other groups such as Christians’ Against Poverty. Some, through direct action on street walks, and getting themselves known around the local community groups, find where need is. Advocates say ‘if you are practical minded, need is not hard to find’.

in need. Being organised to process the request and donation efficiently does help a lot, as well.’ A key requirement is for the PCC to adopt the scheme, as the donations are usually paid direct to the local church to administer via the Advocate. The process is quick, direct and simple, as soon as the request has been met, the money is transferred to the church’s bank account. ACTS 435 is determined that administration will not get in the way of alleviating suffering or need.

Volunteer fills in an application form for a client.

The Advocate’s role carries a responsibility, as they (together with PCC or other congregation support) find people who need help, identify the need, create the request, and transform the donation to alleviate the need. So the Advocate helps to shape the donation request. Such direct social action is justified well by James 2:14 &17. The best way to describe the value of being an Advocate is directly from an Advocate, Susan Sadler, who is an ACTS 435 Advocate in the North East. ‘As I write this I feel overwhelmed by what has happened in a small town called Newton Aycliffe over the past 6 months. At the beginning of March

we were just a small group of 8 people that met on a Thursday evening in a friend’s home then ‘suddenly’ God began to push us out of our comfort zones. For us, it was time to seek and accept more opportunities to share Jesus; to meet the needs of those God placed in our paths by sharing God’s love through acts of kindness. As it says in Acts 20:35; ‘It is more blessed to give than receive’.

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And the wonderful thing is people understand the simplicity of the act of direct giving to someone who is in real need, in despair or frightened of what is happening to them. There is no shortage of donors, with over 25% of donors repeat giving again and again, to date an incredible 98% of requests have been met in full.

For people that we helped through ACTS 435 there was one rule: that they should bless someone else and ask that person to do likewise. There are no exceptions as every person can make a difference in the world by doing good, it will impact many lives as they put their faith in action. Beneficiaries have been empowered to believe they can help others and have gone forwards to do so. This concept has created powerful momentum and it’s easy to see how a whole community can be transformed when they take hold of this idea. Many of these people have now become followers of Jesus and in 4 months we have grown 10 fold from 8 to 80 people. There are countless stories of individual lives changed: Deborah came to us in financial need and so we applied for a grant from ACTS 435 to help her. She then wanted to help others. Six months on, she is now a Christians Against Poverty Job Club Manager. She wants people to know that there is always something good in every person and to love and care for them. Do we get actively involved in helping strangers, our friends, family and colleagues, or do we simply wish them well?’

See acts435.org.uk

Asking Jenny what would be useful qualities for an Advocate, she says, ‘it’s really simple – above all else – a person with passion, someone who wants to make a difference. Oh, and having initiative to seek out people

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How should the Church engage with immigration?

Guy Brandon works for the Jubilee Centre

The recent success of UKIP has shown that immigration is an issue that isn’t going away any time soon. The popular perception is that immigrants are taking our jobs, claiming benefits at our expense, and placing strain on public services for which we pay. Of course, there are areas of the country that genuinely have problems because of the high rates of immigration and poor integration. But all too often the concerns are exaggerated or illfounded – fuelled by a tabloid press that knows what keeps people coming back for more. And then there’s the reality we often conveniently ignore, or aren’t told. The NHS simply couldn’t work without foreign doctors and nurses. Recent immigrants on average claim fewer benefits and pay more taxes than native Brits. Unemployment is falling sharply, our economy is recovering fast, and the lack of barriers to immigration doesn’t seem to have affected that. Either way, immigration is a subject that sells newspapers and shapes election campaigns. It’s something that Brits tend to have strong feelings about – and many of them will be sitting in your church on Sunday. What does the Bible say about immigration? Given that immigration is such a big and emotive topic, it’s surprising we don’t hear more sermons preached on it. Perhaps a part of the reason is that the Bible’s teaching on immigration isn’t always clear, and it’s easily misunderstood. In fact, there’s plenty about how the Israelites were to treat different types of immigrant in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the picture changes, because unlike the Israelites the early Christians were not a nation of people who needed to know how to relate to those outside their country – they were pockets of believers in churches scattered across the many nations of the Roman Empire. In both testaments, God’s people are supposed to have a particularly keen insight into what it means to be an immigrant, since they are ‘aliens and strangers’ themselves (1 Chronicles 29:15; 1 Peter 2:11). Like the UK, immigration and displacement was a core part of Israel’s history. The exodus from Egypt was the story of the Israelites’ escape from an abusive dictator. It’s worth noting that it wasn’t just the Israelites, either: Exodus 12:38 says that ‘many other people’ went up with them – a phrase variously translated as a ‘mixed multitude’, ‘rabble of non-Israelites’ and ‘ethnically diverse crowd’. Israel wasn’t just made

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up of a group of direct descendants from Jacob, just as the UK is a patchwork of different waves of immigration over the years, right from the time of the Romans. Resident alien vs foreigner? Once they settled in the Promised Land, the Israelites often had to deal with people from foreign nations. There were broadly two categories of immigrant. The ‘resident alien’ (or ger, in Hebrew) is often mentioned alongside other marginalised and vulnerable groups, such as the orphan and widow. God commanded the Israelites to love and look after them, because ‘you yourselves were aliens in Egypt’ (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). These were often people who had come to Israel to escape hardship of one kind or another, and were usually dependent on the Israelites for work and support – perhaps broadly equivalent to today’s asylum seekers and low-paid economic migrants. However, a defining characteristic was that they were willing to become a part of Israelite culture and worship God like the Israelites (rather than worshipping other gods, or worshipping Israel’s God using their own customs). Once they had done so they were to be welcomed unconditionally and treated like any other Israelite under the law. Then there was the true ‘foreigner’, or the nokri. These were people who came from outside of

Israel and were typically financially independent. They generally had little reason or desire to integrate with Israelite life, instead posing a threat to the culture and religion of their host country. For this reason they were treated more cautiously under the law, which recognised that they might otherwise exploit the Israelites and lead them astray. On many occasions throughout the Bible, influential foreigners enticed the Israelites to worship other gods. A light to the nations Israel’s role as a ‘light to the nations’ meant that they were supposed to be an example to others. They were open to immigrants and had a particular concern for the poor and marginalised. Those who came to Israel were accepted and treated the same as native-born Israelites, so long as they were willing to integrate religiously and culturally. Those who had different values were by nature a threat to Israel’s faith and culture, and were treated cautiously in order to protect everyone else. Israel had a clear vision of what it meant to be God’s people. The Bible shows that they didn’t always get it right, but the principles that underpinned their society were intended to give everyone a chance of material provision, freedom from oppression and the ability to participate in and protect the relationships that were fundamental to the health of their

In fact, this is the requirement that was made of every Israelite. In the Bible, God lays down the ground rules of the kind of society he wants; it is down to individuals to act the right way if they want to be a part of it. For the immigrant, that choice was simply more explicit. Our national vision Israel’s vision was based on its faith, which determined every area of law and life. Although Britain has a strong Christian heritage, we can hardly claim to be a Christian country any more. Christianity no longer plays a leading role in shaping what we stand for. For several years in the late 90s and early 2000s, multiculturalism was the vision that guided Britain’s immigration policy: that everyone, regardless of faith or values, could live alongside each other. When this was abandoned after it became clear that it simply didn’t work in practice, there was nothing to replace it. We have a vague sense of a time when our identity was stronger, like John Major’s famous memory of ‘the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers...’ But now, the loss of a vision of what it means to be British means we have very little to hold up to the world and say, ‘This is what we stand for. You are welcome to join us if you stand for the same.’ It has left us in a mess as far as immigration goes, but this is where the church has something unique to offer.

The role of the Church Lacking a coherent national sense of who we are, there is both a need and an opportunity for the church to provide a vision and act on it. The church has a far stronger sense of its identity and purpose than the country as a whole. Like Israel, its role is to be a light to the nations and to bring about God’s kingdom on earth. Individual churches are often well-placed to make a real difference in their local communities, participating in a range of initiatives amongst diverse groups of people. Ultimately, the ways that churches engage with migrants aren’t so very different from the ways they interact with anyone in the community, foreign or native born, newcomer or longstanding resident – though recent migrants may have particularly urgent needs in some areas. For the sake of simplicity, this can be seen in three stages. 1. Arriving At the most basic level, churches can provide hospitality – giving people a simple welcome and engaging with them where they are. God asks his people to take particular care of the poor, but this doesn’t only mean those with little money. In the Bible, the poor were those who were marginalised and vulnerable. They lacked financial means, but that went hand-in-hand with lacking support and caring relationships. This might describe the experiences of many local people, including migrants who come to the UK for a variety of reasons and find themselves isolated and lonely, without their extended families, friends or those who speak their first language – regardless of whether they have a job or enough money to live comfortably. 2. Engaging Integrating into a community means being able

to access the services and facilities many of us take for granted. This might mean taking an elderly person to the GP, helping parents apply for schools, families fill out paperwork, unemployed people find work, giving someone a hand with their shopping – everyday activities that can be made far harder for those with poor English or who are new to an area. This is also an opportunity for churches to become focal points in their communities and take ownership of their local culture.

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families and communities – a far cry from their experiences as slaves under a harsh ruler in Egypt. But this society came at a ‘cost’ of everyone in it holding the same values. This was the choice that faced the immigrant: God welcomes you, but if you want to be part of his model society, you have to keep his rules.

3. Serving Lastly, participating fully in a culture isn’t solely a matter of being able to access the right services. It’s about giving back, too: finding our place and what we can bring to a community as well as take from it. Enabling everyone to do this, including migrants, allows people to feel truly at home – and it defuses some of the arguments and tensions over migrants being a burden to their host countries. Conclusion Some migrants travelled to Israel because they had heard of Israel’s God and wanted to know more. But it’s reasonable to expect that most came out of need or (in the case of the independent nokri) for trade or other reasons. The welcome they received and the conditions attached to it would determine whether they stayed, and the extent to which they decided to be a part of Israelite life. One lesson for churches today is that people will come to the UK from all over the world for all kinds of reasons. Whether they stay, and to what extent they become and feel a part of the place they have arrived in – whether that means the place they live, their workplace or their local church itself – will depend largely on the welcome they receive and how attractive those communities are to them. The Church can have a significant role here by displaying a vision of the community it wants to model and inspire others to adopt, in effect saying: ‘This is who we are, what we believe, what we value. We would love to welcome you if you would like to be a part of this.’ Guy Brandon works for the Jubilee Centre, an organisation that seeks to understand and apply the Bible’s teaching to key areas of modern life.

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Christopher Burkett is Director of Ministry in the Diocese of Chester

Preaching in a

‘Nostalgia,’ they say, ‘isn’t what it used to be.’ I appreciate it’s an old joke but the truth of it hit home on a recent holiday. I was visiting some of the capital cities of Eastern Europe. In each place we were given an ‘orientation tour’ by a local guide. Inevitably the tours included places of worship. In the synagogues the commentary was supplied by a Jewish believer. They related the building and its contents accurately and fulsomely to the Hebrew Scriptures and to Jewish history. In churches the commentary was given by our own tour guides. Their comments ranged between what was simply wrong and tentative sketchiness. This was not an indicator of working in a second or third language. In other areas their commentaries were witty, profound and insightful. The difference seemed to be that it was assumed they had enough culturally learnt knowledge of Christianity to give voice to that faith’s meanings and history. In reality much of Christianity’s story was outside their easy recollection. That’s not to criticise their obvious skills and competence. Rather it is simply to note that a long history of Christian faith in a place does not guarantee the liveliness of that history and understanding. That so many of the churches visited had nothing within them to indicate continuing worship reinforced the point. Buildings and commentary were empty shells, bereft of a living presence and appreciation. A Forgotten Faith That experience is a good illustration of how socially forgetful of Christian faith our Western culture has become. Christian understandings, symbols and history do not ‘connect’ as they once did. Any preacher is likely to have had the experience of once commonplace theological ideas or biblical stories prompting blank stares or incredulity. The parable of the Unjust Steward (Lk 16.1-9) provoked in one congregation exclamations of ‘That can’t possibly be in the Bible; you’ve got to be pulling our legs.’ In another non-church gathering it was plain that a good number of people thought that Joseph (and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) was the husband of the Virgin Mary and the head of the Holy Family at Nazareth. Recent research (quoted in The Daily Express 24 May 2013) suggested that

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a quarter of UK school children don’t know that Easter celebrates the resurrection or that the scriptures record Bethlehem as Jesus’ birthplace. A shared understanding of Christian ‘basics’ cannot be assumed. In Reaction Faced with that loss it is easy as people of faith to react defensively. We tend to over-emphasise how recent the problem is; forgetting that the knowledge and understanding of the Christian faith varies enormously over time and social class. We forget, for example, that army chaplains in World War I were alarmed to find that many squaddies did not know the Lord’s Prayer. To assume that things were so much better in the past is itself an unjustifiable nostalgic gloss. There simply has never been a time when the social knowledge of Christianity in its depth and subtlety could be straightforwardly assumed across the whole of society. Christian faith always has to be learnt and it is never more than a generation or two away from being forgotten. We tend also to locate the source of our problem in the demise of supporting institutions that have somehow let the side down. Schools, colleges, broadcasters, and publishers don’t give Christianity the prominence they formerly did, it is said. Justifications on the grounds of a proper pluralism, equity of access, and consumer response fail to persuade that the inherited faith of this land has been given the prominence its history demands. The trouble with this argument is that it appears to attribute fault to places beyond faith’s reach. It comes across as whingeing and negative. It offers no response to

secularism’s insistence that faith is a wholly personal issue that should be kept out of the public domain. To demand prominence on the basis of history fails to convince those without a prior commitment. Choice-rich contemporary society does not allow for special pleading for what it considers one perspective amongst many. The only justification for the public rehearsal of the Christian faith is its truth. Reclaiming Remembering As strange as it may seem, only a wholehearted focus on God will answer the social forgetfulness of the Christian God. Understanding the nature of faithful remembering becomes an attractive way of uniting action and faithfulness. A distinction that has to be made is that between recollection and active memory. Much of what troubles us is about what our contemporaries cannot recollect about the Christian faith. This is a matter of the recall of apparently isolated information that needs to be attached, as it were, to particular objects and meanings. It comes across as authoritarian, dispassionate, and rather remote. Memory, by contrast, is of itself closely associated with performance and forms a person’s attitudes and actions. Memory in this sense is something that a person does rather than something a person has. It becomes embodied faithfulness rather than sterile custom. Biblical Remembering The New Testament frequently uses the idea of remembering in this active way (which, of course, is also the way it is used in everyday

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Forgetful Age speech). Remembering here refers not only to things in the past, but also of things in the present (e.g. 1 Thess 1:2 or Col 4:18), or the future (e.g. Heb 11:22 – here Joseph literally remembered his own burial). As in ordinary usage, ‘remembering’ is used not only of calling to mind the past but also of thinking of someone or something, or thinking about in prayer, or keeping in mind (in the sense of providing aid). Even when the object refers to the past, the principal concern is often more than just recalling an event. For example, in John 16:21 the woman who has given birth no longer remembers her anguish because of the joy of bringing a child into the world; and similarly Paul in Philippians 3:13 forgets the past, in the sense that it no longer shapes his life, although he still remembers it. This linkage between memory and action becomes even clearer in biblical passages in which God is the subject. For example, when God hearing the cries of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt remembers his covenant, he determines to act in freeing them (Ex 6:5); or again, when God receives his people’s confession of disobedience he remembers the covenant, and that moves him to remember the land for good (Lev 26:40-45); and similarly, Zechariah’s prophecy after the birth of his son John says that the raising up of a Saviour is the consequence of God remembering ‘his holy covenant’ (Lk 1:67-79). When God no more remembers his people’s sins he pardons them – an association of the act of mercy with forgetting that occurs, for example, in Heb 8:12; Jer 31:34; and Is 43:25. It is not an exaggeration to say that in scripture salvation is a consequence of God’s remembering. The Sermon as Mnemonic Sign Locating remembering first and foremost within God’s memory of us overcomes our worries about forgetfulness. God’s merciful remembering is always prior to our human fallibilities. The preacher’s role here is vital.

The preacher must call to mind amongst the faithful the reality that it is God who remembers us. All our lesser efforts at remembering, and spurring others to remember, are rooted in the reality of God. This is an effective antidote to our negativity about human remembering. Our first obligation as preachers is to help the faithful remember what they have received. Like the ancient biblical Jewish festivals in which Israel ‘remembered’ God’s action in history and thereby made the liturgical actions mnemonic signs, so the preacher’s words are to sustain such active remembering now. Such thinking is evident in Saint Paul’s repeated use of the formula ‘just as you know ...’ in 1 Thessalonians (1:5; 2:1,4,11; 3:3,4; 4:2; 5:1f); Jude’s use of the expression ‘the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints’ (verse 3); and 2 Peter’s ‘I intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you already know them’ (1:12). Our preaching must be a similar reminder. In Practice And so to practicalities: what does preaching as memory work look like? It has to be intentional. The preacher must speak so as to be remembered so that those who hear can themselves speak what they remember. This means making the structure orally obvious, signalling transitions very clearly, using repetition creatively, and using a colloquial tone. This must be more than ‘knowing about’ so an authoritybased distance between speaker and hearer is best avoided. The whole congregation is remembering together. The preacher will strive to speak to all the constituencies present, though not all at once and not only to the obvious ones like age or occupational groups. Preaching as memory work crosses the stale divides between teaching and narrative, between information and emotion, between induction and deduction. Instead, it is intentional soul work that immerses itself in the scriptures and demonstrates tangibly how

we learn and live out of tradition. It will talk out of scripture rather than about scripture, and it will never ignore scripture in a way that treats it as not much more than wallpaper to cover the gaps in worship. This immersion will prompt imaginative leaps that go beyond the obvious. Composing a sermon is a creative art. The intention is to create links in the uniting chains of Christian collective memory and allow their power and potential to be apparent. The preacher will aim to create links between the scriptures and people’s mindsets and experiences. Such preaching will dwell on what these scriptures and the tradition born from them means now. Remembering as action always serves the current commitment, values and aspirations of the group concerned. Tradition thought of in this way is not a dead letter of something that has been but rather a dynamic interplay of current practice and inherited and evolving understanding. It is essentially ‘presentist’ in that it serves what God needs of us now. It will be perfomative in that it will create what it aims to demonstrate. Performance should draw people in and enable them to become participants. In this way the sermon will be productive since it will make memories and show how yet more memories can be made. Preaching in this way is always a dialogue between the speaker and the hearers facilitated by the Holy Spirit. There is joyful work for everyone present, albeit that usually a single voice is heard. In Romans Paul says ‘I have written to you rather boldly by way of reminder’ (Romans 15:15). Let that be a spur to all of us who are preachers to keep in mind constantly our part in keeping the Christian memory lively in an amnesic age. Christopher Burkett is Director of Ministry in the Diocese of Chester and author of the popular website PreacherRhetorica.com The discussion of memory in the New Testament is based on Nils A Dahl (1976) Jesus in the Memory of the Early Church (Augsburg Publishing, Minneapolis).

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Reviews for THE READER Scars: Essays, poems and meditations on affliction Paul Murray O.P. Bloomsbury £10.99 pbk 9781441175632

Paul Murray is a Dominican priest, writer and poet. Scars is a mosaic of reflections on the experience of suffering. The first of four essays explores how poetry rather than prose has the power to ‘name affliction’; suffering cannot be explained away but poetry reaches into the experience. A second essay challenges limited explanations of health and wellbeing. On the one hand we cannot sever the body from the soul but on the other, health is ultimately to be found in relationship with Christ who body and soul shares our pains as much as our joys. Murray goes on to examine the witness of martyrs in our time, enduring hardship out of human solidarity and a concern for justice rather than in defence of particular beliefs. In his reflection on correspondence with a friend in the final days before she died, Murray traces the invitation to find life and love even as we seem to be letting these gifts go. The second part of the book contains Murray’s own poems on hope within affliction. His poems are simple but deep, the fruit of intimate conversations with God who is always mystery. Scars ends with reflections on the seven last words of Christ on the cross, drawing on the insights of Christian mystics. The book does not attempt to be a joined up examination of affliction and Christ’s presence within it. Read this way it might feel disjointed. But it is a rich source of insight and help for the Easter journey we must all pass through in life and in death. I recommend it for Lent and Holy Week reading. CHRISTOPHER CHAPMAN

What Motivates Christian Educational Practitioners? Howard J Worsley Grove £3.95 pbk 9781851748815

In his introduction to this booklet, the author records a comment on the planned project – that it would have value ‘if it connected theology to a context where pupils needed to make two levels of progress in English and Maths in a given year’. And he has convincingly taken the points made by a conference of Christian teachers to argue that just as grace does not contradict law but goes far beyond it, so education does not contradict measurement or Ofsted but goes far beyond them. Yes! Yes! The fifth of five chapters takes a different direction to consider ‘what is distinctive about the Christian contribution to education’ – pretty much impossible to do in four pages it turns out. Several frameworks – models for mission – are scarcely more than temptingly listed. ROSEMARY MEDHURST

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Doing Christian Ethics From the Margins

Miguel A. De La Torre Orbis/Alban Books £23.99 pbk 9781626980754

In offering a withering critique of western politics, religion and ethics from the ‘margins’ of society, this book defies those critics of liberation theology who have argued that it ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism. De La Torre’s approach to Christian ethics is refreshingly different from usual textbooks on the subject. His contention is that the western European and US ‘mega-narratives’ consciously and unconsciously prioritise white, male, middle class capitalist values in every aspect of ethical decision making. Such a pervasive and dominant mind-set means that even well-meaning Christians fail to deal with deeply engrained social injustices and in fact only reinforce the ‘structures of sin’. Doing ethics from the margins is not a question of systematically applying Christian principles to problems; in reality it is a much more complicated procedure where the practice of justice is far more important than theory. For at the heart of all Christian ethics, De La Torre argues, is the biblical notion of justice: not merely the secular principle of distribution of goods but the establishment of full, creative and loving human relationships so that life might be lived ‘abundantly’ (John 10:10). As Christian ethics is essentially this-worldly and practical, De La Torre offers a five-fold hermeneutical process by which ethics can be done: observing, reflecting, praying, acting and reassessing. The bulk of the book is therefore given to analysing key social relationships such as global poverty, war, environment, political campaigns, business relations, private property etc. Although De La Torre’s examples are almost all from the USA, his numerous case studies can easily be related to similar situations in the UK. Overall there is probably too much factual detail but the case studies and hermeneutical method provide a refreshingly new way of doing Christian ethics which all Readers will find helpful and provocative. MICHAEL WILCOCKSON

Preaching matters Jonathan Lamb IVP £9.99 pbk 97817883591497

This is a thoughtful book about one of the most important tasks of Readers. Lamb comes from the Evangelical tradition, with its purpose and passion about preaching. Communicating the message of the Bible in a way which is true to the tradition and applicable to the congregations we serve is important. Lamb has been a key force too in the Keswick Convention, so he has had his belief in this method tested by experience. This book shows that at its best, the sermon is one of the most powerful ways in which, through the words of humans about the word of God, the Holy Spirit can challenge and transform lives. CAVAN WOOD

Surprised by Scripture Tom Wright SPCK £12.99 pbk 9780281069859

Subtitled Engaging with Contemporary Issues, this latest work by Wright seeks to do exactly what it says on the tin. Over a dozen essays, he engages with major, yet familiar issues such as the divide between science and religion, the ordination of women and the problems of disasters and evil. However the best essays engage with Idolatry, Politics and the Apocalypse. On Idolatry, he writes of this present age as being one of enlightenment based upon Epicureanism, but goes further suggesting that mankind unwittingly worships three ancient gods – Aphrodite (eroticism), Mammon (money) and Mars (war). The arguments he presents are compelling and challenging given Christians are called to be ‘…in the world, but not of the world.’ On Politics, he writes in the context of a Post-Modern, post-9/11 world. He asserts that Christianity, in a world swinging between an unholy trio of Deconstructionism, Fundamentalism and Secularism, needs to be heard again ‘through wise, holistic exegesis’, so that it is read and experienced ‘for all it’s worth.’ Finally, the Apocalypse, which he defines as ‘the key to understanding and re-expressing the beauty of God.’ He goes on to spell out a biblical worldview, which ties in with his other work on Justification, using art as a metaphor throughout and drawing the reader to a refreshing reappraisal of passages such as Revelation 22. I heartily recommend this book to all. ANDREW CARR

Heart and Mind

Alexander John Shaia with Michelle L.Gaugy Mosaic Press £27.99 pbk 9781743240618 (2013)

Heart and Mind is a guide book, combining Bible scholarship, psychology and spirituality, for a sequential Four Gospel Journey, ‘Quadratos’, towards radical personal transformation. Dr Shaia argues that each gospel was written for a particular community at a crucial time addressing specific issues. These in turn have significance for us at different stages of our journey. For instance, Mark’s gritty gospel, written in Rome at a time of fierce persecution under Nero, addresses the question of how we move through suffering, using wilderness and water imagery. I was fascinated by this slant on the gospels, particularly the relationship between the nature of the text and the needs of the early Christian community. This is a detailed book with a very specific approach to the gospels, perhaps not the best starting place for study but certainly of interest. As a spiritual guide book it is rather complex and I suspect some travellers may get lost on the way! APRIL MCINTYRE

Wayne Morris Bloomsbury T & T Clark £19.99 pbk 9780567532091

The title ‘Salvation as Praxis’ requires some explanation and justification. Why not ‘practice’ rather than ‘praxis’? The author draws a somewhat fine distinction between the two which may leave some people wondering if they have missed the point. Praxis in this context is ‘committed action’ whereas ‘practice’ refers to the ‘descriptions and interrogation of historic and present purposeful acts of Christians towards people of other faiths’ that the author believes need to be addressed. Beneath the turgid theological language of this book, I suspect there lurks an important statement relating to the way we enter into dialogue and engage with people of other faiths (and none?). But this is not an easy book to read and is possibly only fully accessible to Readers with a background in academic theology, which means the valuable insights being offered will not reach many, including those Readers who are already endeavouring to engage in gracious dialogue with their neighbours of other faiths. MARION GRAY

Reading the Liturgy Juliette J. Day Bloomsbury T & T Clark, £16.99 pbk 9780567063359

All Christian ministers must engage the liturgy, understand its meaning and use it prayerfully to facilitate strong and healthy worship; for, as the author emphasises, the liturgy stands between God and the worshipping community. This scholarly work analyses the characteristics of ancient and modern texts, notably Common Worship, delving into their narratives. It will probably be of most interest to academic liturgists or liturgical authors rather than worship leaders, since it is quite dense with linguistic terminology and employs some difficult semantic analysis. Nonetheless, the scope and range of the material, with many well-referenced sources, will attract the attention of specialists in liturgy while all those who regularly lead worship will find some insights, particularly in the sections on narratives, the development of Eucharistic prayers and in the concluding chapter on worship. There is gold here, but the reader must dig deep to find it. PETER CLOUGH

Sanctified by Grace

Kent Eilers & Kyle C Strobel (eds) Bloomsbury pbk £22.99 9780567383433

This is a collection of 15 essays by US/ British theologians that deal thoroughly with aspects of our faith and practice in plain language. The subjects are separate, but all with Christ as the central theme. There are four groups of essays which explore God as Trinity; received graces such as reconciliation and redemption; means of grace; scripture; Church and sacraments and practices of grace including preaching and prayer. The bibliography is extensive. There are so many ideas in this book; it is going to take me a long time to read it properly. It is a book for all Christians who want renewal in the light of modern thinking and highly relevant for Readers who require theological depth. JOHN FOXLEE

Reception History John L. Thompson Grove £3.95 pbk 9781851748853

Subtitled ‘Why should we care what earlier Christians thought about the Bible?’ this booklet sets out with admirable lucidity the complexities and rewarding riches to be discovered in past exegesis. Thompson points out the dangers of assuming that all the Church fathers or all Protestant Reformers thought alike about any given text. He makes an extended case study of the bewildering tale of the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter from Judges 11 that has been interpreted in a strikingly varied number of ways over the centuries. The book comes with an excellent short bibliography of early Bible commentaries translated into English for those wishing to explore further. FRANCES BAIN

Coracle

Kenneth Steven SPCK £9.99 pbk 9780281072095

A coracle is a small circular lightweight boat propelled by a paddle. To Kenneth Steven it is ‘woven and stitched to bob/The slow fishponds and the deeper creeks,/The waterways of crannogs’ (little islands). These poems bob with a story or happening which may be imagined or true. In Enough we are called ‘Out of the scurry of the days’ and invited to wait ‘and let the things still hurrying to be done/ Fall silent.’ Poetry, according to Auden, ‘makes nothing happen’. Maybe. But it nourishes and survives: its rhythms and forms speak to our left brain, its words and feelings feed our right. These poems part with their secrets slowly and it helps to read them aloud. But once we enter their world and it becomes part of us, the yield is generous: we receive ‘beauty/ out of our brute beginnings.’ JEREMY HARVEY

The Great and Holy War Philip Jenkins Lion £18.99 hbk 9780745956725

REVIEWS

Salvation as Praxis – A Practical Theology of Salvation for a Multi-Faith World

Without appreciating its religious aspects, we cannot understand the First World War or the modern world. Most soldiers believed in what they were doing. Religion was still embedded in pre-war culture. Millenarian myths got taken up by Nazism and Communism. Mainstream Christian orthodoxy lost out to Spiritualism, new cults and fundamentalism. Pentecostalism grew as mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches waned. Beyond Europe and North America, the war marked the beginning of radical new forms of religion. Anti-Semitism grew as did Hasidism and Kabbalism. Without the Great War there would have been no Russian Revolution, no Third Reich and no Jewish state. The breakup of the caliphate and the Ottoman Empire created today’s problems in the Middle East. Preachers asserted that Jesus would have taken up a bayonet just as today radical Muslims cite religious justifications for violence. The author evokes the mud, stench and noise we commemorate. DEREK JAY

Apostle of the Last Days

C. Marvin Pate Kregel Academic/Alban Books £14.99 pbk 9780825438929 (2013)

Despite some proofreading errors, and the absence of an index, this is an excellent book. The thematic thread to unlock the letters is Paul’s inaugurated eschatology. The writer compares this with other eschatologies current at the time. The clash with these variants provides the opposition and flashpoints which characterise the thirteen Pauline letters. Especially enlightening are the references to the Roman Imperial Cult and its eschatological stance. The main body of the text is an interpretative summary of the sections of each Pauline letter. Detailed references to first century manuscripts and archaeological discoveries are combined with comprehensive knowledge of recent theological insights. The argument is clearly presented, signposted and frequently summarised for the reader. Information is often presented in tabular form. The book will be most useful in stretching the understanding of those already well-acquainted with Paul. The book is detailed, coherent and convincing. ERIC LEESE

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Three Days in Holy Week Robert A Gillies Handsel Press £6.95 pbk 9781871828795

Slender and readable this is not just a devotional book for Lent, its content can stimulate thought and preparation for prayer discussion and even a sermon at any time in the liturgical year. It clarifies the values of Holy Week traditions and for the Thursday centres around foot washing rituals. The following separate passages develop each of Christ’s seven words from the cross expanding upon the usual tradition of meditation so that each could stand alone. The addition of Day Three – ‘Early in Easter Sunday and Now’ further expands theological depths and gives ideal room for individual growth within the current culture of the Western church. Gillies reminds us that like Isaiah we are commissioned to live the life of discipleship to which God calls us. FRANCES-ELIZABETH EVANS

A Commentary on Judges and Ruth

Robert B. Chisholm Jr. Kregel Publications/Alban Books £23.99 hbk 9780825425561 (2013)

An excellent book alive with possibilities for sermons, Bible studies and classroom lessons in Old Testament scripture. Chisholm examines each passage in detail combining historical narrative with contemporary situations and meanings. He interacts with the text in a scholarly fashion, and perceptive comments provide a rich source of interesting material. Each biblical passage sub-divides into a translation and narrative structure and finally into message and application. For precision, Chisholm compares certain terms with original Hebrew writing. An excellent resource for study and preaching ministry. S. JOHN HAZEL

Acts and Omissions Catherine Fox SPCK £9.99 pbk 9780281072347

  This was great fun, light in the best possible way. Catherine Fox’s fictional Lindchester mixes Trollope and perhaps a little of Lichfield, where the author’s husband was a cathedral canon. Her people are a joy: an Eeyore-ish canon chancellor (‘Mr Happy’); a feisty history lecturer; a Mr Fix-It archdeacon (aka ‘the Prat in the Hat’); a twenty-something wild child with the singing voice and looks of a sexy angel; the dean’s devoted husband who fiercely protects her from marauding evangelicals. The narrative voice echoes the psalms, hymns, lyric poets – and Dr Seuss (see above). The tale has wit and warmth and a cheering sense that all shall be well. A pity though that the character whose crisis of conscience drives the plot remains rather flat and bland. However, he is a bishop, and the author may have meant it so. Enigmatic creatures, bishops. DAVID HANSON

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A Political Theology of Climate Change

Michael Northcott SPCK & Eerdmans £19.99 pbk 9780281072323 (2013)

Twenty years ago Northcott wrote The Environment and Christian Ethics, a definitive guide for understanding and properly treating our environment. He has now focused the generalities of the earlier book in two directions: on the growing impacts of climate change and on the reasons for the ineffectiveness of those who are in a position to do something about these impacts, firmly anchoring both blasts in scripture and theology. Northcott takes his readers through what he calls ‘the slow catastrophe’ looming from our relentless use of carbon fuels. Ignore the details; the authority in his argument is tying our behaviour to God’s design and purpose for his creation, whilst rubbishing conventional assumptions about the value and necessity of economic growth. The author is clear that our ‘come-up-ness’ is inevitable; the world is finite and there are intrinsic limits to our use of it. Call this prophecy if you like. The media tell us that we have ‘environmental fatigue’. Sadly, the Church shares in this. The former Chief Government Adviser on Science has warned of the approaching ‘perfect storm’ – from pressures on food, water, and energy as population numbers grow and climate change impacts. Northcott has written an important wakeup call. Read it, and make sure your Bishop knows about it, even if you have to lend him your copy. SAM BERRY

The Wilderness Within You

Penelope Wilcock Monarch Books £7.99 pbk 9780857214973

This book is described as ‘A Lenten journey with Jesus, deep in conversation,’ by the author. I ‘roadtested’ this book with my wife and we read it as a devotional Lenten guide, albeit in the autumn. The author’s unusual approach of having fictitious conversations with Jesus about topical events in a modern, everyday setting, uses biblical passages to develop her themes. There are a range of issues covered, some with answers and others left frustratingly unanswered. She propounds that we all experience the wilderness and that we should use it constructively to develop our spirituality. The syntax is not always clear and can be a little exasperating at times. This book might best be used in a small discussion group where people have a basic understanding of Christianity and want to explore another dimension to develop their faith. If you are looking for something different for Lent, this could be the book for you. HUGH MORLEY

Barefoot Prayers Stephen Cherry SPCK £8.99 pbk

9780281071258 (2013)

Prayers for a coffee break, or a dull day, sit alongside a cry from the heart for those in trouble and a plea for generosity of spirit. This eclectic collection of poem-prayers grew from the scribblings of the author in a notebook given him by a friend. The fruit of meditation, they address God simply and with honesty. This edition has been published as a Lent book with a meditation a day until Easter and beyond. More suitable for individual use than for a group setting, this is a book to keep beside one all the year round and to dip into in times of joy or pain. It is also an invitation to address God in our own words. Each week’s section with titles such as ‘Awakening’ or ‘Puzzles’ is preceded by the author’s wise advice on how to approach prayer. The introduction discusses the nature of Christian spirituality. LAURA HILLMAN

The Book of Common Prayer – A Biography Alan Jacobs Princeton University Press £16.95 hbk 9780691154817 (2013)

Alan Jacob, an American Professor of Humanities, has produced a highly commendable read for those interested in the origins and evolving history of the Book of Common Prayer. Commencing with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and the Prayer Book’s social and political origins at Croydon Palace in the England of the 1540s Jacob leads us to the present day and its widespread accessibility across the globe in different languages and settings. His high regard for the BCP is unquestionable and as many Readers will know from leading prayers, it remains a work whose language and rhythms continue to mould the devotional lives of all those who remain faithful to it. JONATHAN ROSE

Meeting God in Mark Rowan Williams SPCK £8.99 pbk 9780281072507

To be used as a Lent Group discussion book, the set questions and textual commentaries printed at the back are disappointingly slight. The book will be more valuable as a text for private study to be given to those thinking about confirmation. Based on a short series of talks given in Canterbury in 2010, it is written in Williams’s lucid, accessible style (as opposed to the impenetrable academic version). With his poet’s feeling for language and the limits of language, Williams delivers fresh insights as he discusses themes that lie underneath its surface simplicity. He challenges us to expose ourselves to the shocking, disturbing way in which Jesus’s death and resurrection completely remake what we thought we knew about the power of God. KIRSTY ANDERSON

Sarah Coakley Grove £3.95 pbk 9781851748921

The deep paradoxes underlying the intense and concentrated drama of Holy Week can pose special challenges for personal meditation as well as for teaching and preaching. This booklet contains a series of meditations that invite the reader to undergo the journey with Jesus as he approaches the Cross. They beckon one not on a tour of a drama to be simply observed, but on a spiritual journey to be undergone in a way that addresses the paradoxes of the drama with insights that are acute, poignant and personally involving. Through progressive themes of invitation and gift, betrayal and love, horror and humiliation, forgiveness and sacrifice, death and glorious resurrection, Coakley crafts meditations of depth and accessibility that are vivid and transformative. The text is in places quite concentrated, repaying re-reading, but is always engaging. These memorable meditations would valuably inform teaching and preaching as well as personal devotions for Holy Week. PETER WRIGHT

Homelessness

Playing with Dragons

9781851748778 (2013)

9781620326473

Jon Kurt, Chris Ward Grove Books Ltd £3.95 pbk Homelessness is a many sided issue and this twenty seven page booklet in the Grove pastoral series tackles the subject succinctly and with understanding and compassion. There are three main thrusts. Chris Ward tells of his own experiences as a homeless person, in four parts across the text. Very moving, and very tempting to read that in its entirety first (yes, I did); it is a real story of hope and transformation. A strong theological strand links the reality with the practical and the professional ways of dealing with some of the problems. Jon Kuhrt, Executive Director of Social Work, West London Mission writes from his experience of many years, listing causes of homelessness and exploring the pitfalls of trying to help people without the necessary understanding of some of their needs and issues. It is clear and concise and well worth reading, whatever our previous experiences of helping homeless people may be. LIZ PACEY

Andy Angel Cascade, £10 pbk

REVIEWS

The Cross and the Transformation of Desire

What are Leviathan, Behemoth and the chaos monster doing in the Bible? Why did Peter walk on water, but Jesus walked on the sea (Mt 14:25.29)? Angel’s meticulous analysis of the relevant texts in Genesis, Psalms, Job, the prophets and Matthew is enlightening and inspiring – his treatment of Job especially so. Angel reads these texts as their writers’ engagement with the fact that the forces of chaos and evil are still at large, and yet God has created them and defeated them; by doing this, he gives us a fresh and honest reflection on suffering and our response to it. The book is short but not a quick read. I would call it a gem, were it not for some poor editing: Angel’s style is occasionally plodding, there are typos, and in some narratives there are annoying switches from present to past tense and back, reminding us that the author is human after all. GERTRUD SOLLARS All books published 2014 unless otherwise stated

Need to know more?

RESPONSIBLE CREDIT AND SAVINGS

NEIGHBOURHOOD PRAYER NETWORK

The Church of England has launched a website to showcase the Church’s work on responsible credit and savings, including supporting credit unions. The website has been created by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Task Group on Responsible Credit and Savings and contains personal testimonies, videos, and blogs from initiatives across the country. Their vision is ‘to create a fairer financial system focused on serving the whole community, where everyone has access to responsible credit and savings and other essential financial services.’ The Task Group has also proposed a network of savings clubs in Primary schools to give pupils practical experience of money management. The programme would build on a number of successful small-scale initiatives already in place in parts of the country alongside evidence of what makes for an effective financial education programme. Visit www.toyourcredit.org.uk for more information. Get the latest news by following @toyourcredit on twitter, and join the conversation using the hashtag #toyourcredit

Neighbourhood Prayer Network aims to see every street in the UK covered in Christian prayer and hopes to encourage as many Christians as possible not to only pray, but get to know their neighbours. Most of our streets have people who suffer from loneliness, or social exclusion; there are estimated to be 1.7 million housebound people in the UK who rarely see a relative or friend. Loneliness is epidemic across generations. Neighbourhood Prayer Network believes prayer combined with Christians following the teachings of Jesus and loving their immediate neighbours, could transform our nation and help end this epidemic of loneliness. www. neighbourhoodprayer.net

NEW BOOK OF COMMON WORSHIP LECTIONARY PRAYERS The Act of Prayer: Praying through the lectionary is a comprehensive volume of contemporary prayers written to be easily spoken and follows the three-year lectionary

cycle. The prayers reflect the readings for each Sunday, along with some other days such as Good Friday. The structure used is drawn from the example found in the writings of the early church, with prayers focusing on Adoration, Confession and Thanksgiving (ACT), a formulation that prevents prayer from becoming narrow in its aspirations and provides the title for the book. Designed to resource and inspire people leading prayer in church services, this imaginative book is particularly suitable for any who are taking their first steps into this ministry, as well as those looking for original prayer material to use in small group settings. The author is John Birch, a prize-winning poet, who also has a website on which some of his prayers may be found www. faithandworship.com BRF is now delighted to publish John’s latest book of printed prayers—all new and not available on the website. The Act of Prayer: Praying through the lectionary £11.99, ISBN 978 1 84101 619 1

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Called to be disciples Robert Paterson is chair of the Central Readers Council

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n 2016, as part of the 150th Birthday Party for Reader Ministry, the Central Readers’ Council is offering to the wider Church a celebration of discipleship entitled ‘Follow!’ This will be held at the De Montfort Hall in the centre of Leicester on Saturday 16 July 2016. I hope you’ll be there! The call to be a disciple of Jesus Christ comes before any call to ministry. At times of crisis in the Church’s life – and this is such a time for the Church in Europe and elsewhere – the challenge is to make, refresh and sustain disciples, not simply to make converts: disciples are converts but not all converts are disciples. Converts are those who have been changed; disciples change the world. You may ask, as many have done, why some people who are searching for meaning, purpose and hope in life and seeking out spiritual answers – often looking at Jesus Christ among others – are not looking to the Church for help. Ask them and you are likely to get answers such as these, particularly from younger people.

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�

I don’t believe in fairy tales.

�

The Church is too judgmental.

�

The Church has forgotten God.

�

The Church hates science because science has disproved religion.

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I have nothing in common with the Church.

�

The Church is full of smallminded hypocrites.

television and explain it all so lucidly that critics will realise the folly of their thinking and everyone will understand the gospel and appreciate the church. Look out of the window and you may see some pigs flying past at the same time! You might invite the lady in the supermarket to an evangelistic event or to a supper that will lead into an introductory course on the Christian faith; great for some but not for many. You could invite someone to a church service but, let’s be honest, in some places that might not be the most attractive prospect. Then there’s the curious way employed by some people of communicating the good news by simply speaking louder – even shouting if they think the world isn’t listening! This technique reminds me of conversations between my late mother in her 80’s and a French lady of a similar age: neither spoke the other’s language but reasoned that speaking louder and slower would overcome the problem. One being a Celt and the other Gallic, though the languages didn’t get through to either party, the gestures did. Shouting the gospel ever louder in language that the other party can’t understand simply produces more heat than light; it’s the gestures, the actions of a redeemed life, that get through. I am convinced that we will not communicate the joy and fulfillment of being a Christian and belonging to the Church simply by turning up the volume. A church which shouts loudly but whose message is shallow won’t be heard. A church whose members are mean-spirited will be pitied. A church that is preoccupied with its own survival will rightly be ignored.

Whether people are right or wrong, they certainly make these remarks. I overheard the last one from someone making a mobile ’phone call in a supermarket. So how do we respond?

So what will get through? Counterintuitive though it may appear, if Christians are to communicate the gospel effectively, our words will have to be sparing and follow, rather than precede, our actions. People need to notice that something is different, holy, consecrated, and they will see that when it is embodied in disciples. Then they may ask why.

We could get some expert apologist for the Christian way to appear on prime-time

Mark’s Gospel describes the scenes when Jesus called his first disciples in

Mark 1:18-20 and 2:13-17. Simon and Andrew, the fishermen, were certainly not among the landless poor – Zebedee, their father, had hired servants. Levi, on the other hand, was a tax-farmer in the pay of the Roman power whose betrayal of his religion is emphasised by Mark’s use of his priestly caste name. To these middle-class entrepreneurial fishermen, and to the selfseeking traitor, Mark tells us that Jesus gave a curt military order – an order which the two apparently could not refuse: ‘Come after me!’ They were not becoming disciples of yet another rabbi because, although Jesus is going to spend some time and energy teaching them over the next three years, the purpose of his calling is to invite them to share an apostolic task, that of proclaiming the Kingdom of God. ‘l will make you fish for people’ might have had unpleasant overtones for the new disciples, if they were well-versed in the Old Testament, where Jeremiah describes the Lord ‘fishing’ for evil people and hunting them down! But these three are being called to fish for people in order to save, to heal, to make them whole. What that means for the Church is that the whole community of faith is called to the discipleship of God’s mission: we are, each and all, ‘missionary disciples’ and the Church is ‘mission-shaped’. Don’t let’s make an enormous leap in our thinking to assume that, because we are all equally members of the community of missionary disciples, we all have to exercise some ministry in that community. No, it means that we are all responsible for being missionary in our discipleship, including those of us in leadership who can sometimes become so involved maintaining the institution that we ignore this primary calling. It is interesting to contrast the discipleship to which Jesus called his first apprentices, the curt order, ‘Follow me!’, with the discipleship to which people were called by the Apostle Paul. Those converted through Paul’s ministry were generally expected to exercise their discipleship in the place where they found themselves

when they were called: ‘Each one should accept the lot which the Lord has assigned him and continue as he was when God called him. That is the rule I give in all the churches.’1 This distinction between Jesus’ more radical, apostolic calling of his first disciples and a more locally-rooted calling by Paul highlights something of the apostolic nature of leadership in the Church, that it is expected to be focused on proclaiming the reign of God. In other words, the same call to discipleship leads some to a life of witness (‘Christ in you’) and some also to a ministry of proclamation. It has often been falsely assumed that, because the twelve disciples were called to exercise this ministry of proclamation, as in their being sent out two-by-two to drive out demons, heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God,2 that’s a commission for all disciples. To claim that ministry for all disciples is a distortion of what the New Testament as a whole means by being Christian. Yet every Christian disciple is called to be a witness who tells, using actions and words, what God has done in his or her life. That calling is neither conditional nor provisional. Witnesses in a court of law will be called to order if they presume to apportion guilt or to pronounce on matters of law. Their job in the legal system is to relate their experience, to make a public declaration to the court of what they saw

T O

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D I S C I P L E S

and heard: we speak of someone ‘testifying’, and the word in the Greek of the New Testament is ‘martyrdom’. It is no wonder that the word came to be used of those who, in being willing to lose their lives for Christ, are ‘martyrs’ or witnesses right up to death. Lifelong testimony is an indelible mark of the disciple. Christ’s call to ‘Follow me!’ is all it takes. Ray Anderson makes the point that ‘Where Christ is not clearly visible as the life of the community of faith, the boundary lines tend to become more visible, often to the exclusion of those who are themselves ambiguous with regard to their spiritual identity.’3 If the disciples – not just clergy – are failing to make Christ visible, being Christian, living Christianly, then the way in to the community of faith becomes harder for those who might be attracted to the Christian way because they need examples, apprentices, to be their companions. Discipleship is for all, equally, 24/7, and apprenticeship is a great leveller. For too long we have defined ‘church’ in terms of ministry, reducing the scope of the ancient creedal description ‘apostolic’ from its broader, New Testament sense of ‘missionary’ into something about holy orders, thereby re-defining church in the image of its clergy! Ministry is a calling for some Christians, not all.

So much of our understanding of what we mean by ‘church’ is dependent on thinking about its ministry, a very upside-down theology! If you want to run a train service you need engineers, track, rolling stock, stations, staff, customers, and so on. A vital element would be the engine drivers, but a strategy for a railway company that was defined almost exclusively around its engine drivers would never even begin to operate. Vital as our public ministers are to the life of the Church, their ministry is contingent on the existence of Christian disciples, the community of the baptized. The sacrament of baptism comes first.

CRC NEWS

C A L L E D

Robert Paterson is Bishop of Sodor and Man and Chair of the Central Readers’ Council. 1 1 Corinthians 7.17. 2 Matthew 10. 5-15ff. 3 An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches, B.R.F., 2007.

Need to contact us…? All subscription enquiries, including change of address: Mo Cheesman, Central Readers’ Council, Church House, Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3AZ Email: [email protected]

Every Christian disciple is called to be a witness

Please send information for Gazette and In Memoriam to: Jeff Heaton, Central Readers’ Council, Church House, Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3AZ Email: [email protected]

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Introducing...

Our Reviews Editor, Kirsty Anderson

After I got married, I thought I might try to make a living as a harpist, playing for weddings and receptions. I might have managed this, had my husband not been posted to South Korea. So, with one small boy, several packing cases full of books and my harp in a crate, off we went. My adventures with a harp in Korea would take too long to relate here. We came home again after 4 years when I was expecting my daughter. Then, in 2003 I was coaxed back into work by my first employers. It was during this second round that I began to sense a call to be a Reader. Bookshops are places where people come looking for things, in more ways than one, and I became aware that I was becoming more and more likely to have a conversation with customers about their faith journeys.

C

lack thump, clack thump. The sound of more theology hitting the hall carpet tells me my post has arrived. I have been reviews editor for The Reader since spring 2013 and still get childishly excited at the sight of the parcels on the mat. I seldom know what I will have been sent. Will it be an academic commentary or a pamphlet about Messy Church? A meditation for Holy Week or yet another examination of the Science/Religion divide? Sometimes the sheer quantities of books being published threaten to overwhelm me and I’m grateful that my eldest has gone off to University so I can store books in his bedroom. Sometimes I feel completely unequal to the task: I’ve only been admitted and licensed a little over three years. What do I know about any of this stuff ? While I’m still a novice theologian, I have been involved in books one way or another all my life. I grew up in a

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house in a country village stuffed full of books but without a television. I learnt to read early for something to do and have been reading steadily ever since. After university I fell by happy accident into a job as a bookseller’s assistant in a little bookshop in central London. I also discovered I could learn to play the Celtic harp or Clarsach at night school and rapidly became obsessed with the instrument and its music.

This led me to the Reader training course run by Southwark Diocese where I met Dr Marion Gray who was teaching the Doctrine module of the course. I soon realised that if I was going to become serious about my calling as a Reader then I would be unable to continue a full time job. So, dealing my various careers yet another vicious blow, I reinvented myself as a book-designer and now sit at home making page-layouts on my iMac. I also teach people to play the harp and sometimes play at church, for weddings and the occasional funeral. Two years ago I collaborated with Roger Collis, a voice-artist and fellow parishioner, in a recording of excerpts from the Authorized Version with interludes of harp music.

After four years selling new books, I took off for a change into the world of antiquarian bookselling, working for Pickering & Chatto on Pall Mall, at that time owned by William Rees-Mogg, sometime editor of The Times. This gave me the privilege of handling some of the most famous books in English: the last copy in private hands of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; one of the very few copies of the original edition Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience; a first edition of Thomas More’s Utopia.

By the spring of 2013, Marion was looking for someone new to take over the job of being reviews editor and she remembered me and my addiction to reading. I try with each issue to give a balanced picture of all the books being published from all the different publishers, but it is very easy to overlook something. So, if you have read something recently that you think other Readers would enjoy, please do get in touch with Heather or me to recommend it for review.

Last Word

So far as CRC goes, ‘that time of the year’ turns into ‘that time of the decade’. A new General Synod will be elected this year to take the church forward for a further five years, and constitutionally, CRC re-elects its officers at the same time. So twice every decade I have to ask all Readers carefully to consider whether they might be willing to serve on one of our various national committees. Please both think and pray about this. Although a number of serving

Readers will be eligible for re-election, not all are free to stand again, so we are clearly looking for new faces on the Executive committee, and on the sub-committees that oversee the magazine, the website and our conferences. The elections will take place at the AGM at St George-the-Martyr, Southwark, in London on March 21st. All active Readers are very welcome, but you don’t have to attend to be elected, so long as you have been properly nominated. If you feel you might like to serve, but want to talk about the role before committing yourself to standing for election, please feel free to contact me by e-mail on [email protected] and I will put you in touch with someone who can advise. There is one specific vacancy that will occur a year later (in July 2016) that I ought to mention too. Carol Lidgett will be retiring then as our Treasurer, a role she has fulfilled diligently for several years. The Executive has been immensely grateful to her for all she has

Secretary, Central Readers’ Council done, and for her invariably wise advice in financial matters. We will need to replace her, and ideally it would be good to elect someone this March who could then serve alongside Carol for a year before taking over the reins fully. Is there a Reader out there who is just about to retire from a financial career, I wonder?

CRC NEWS

Once a year, in almost every church, there comes a point when the vicar feels impelled to preach again on the need for stewardship of time and money. It is a sermon that can lead to an uncomfortable shuffling among the congregation, but there is usually also a recognition that such a re-think really is necessary. I don’t think I have ever heard a Reader preach this sermon, however. There must be at least some advantage to not having the cure of souls!

Alan Wakely

The difficulty with a ‘business’ Last Word is that talk of committees, finance and such like can seem at odds with theological concepts like salvation, the Kingdom of God or the fruits of the Spirit. ‘We have a Gospel to proclaim’ and this is our primary duty as Christian ministers. True – and CRC exists to support and to develop our particular ministry. To do that requires effective leadership in which, perhaps, the Spirit might be calling you to participate.

A prayer for our times Bless the hands, that bring wholeness, to lives blighted by sickness. Bless the saints who, in sad and desperate places, bring a sense of hopefulness. Bless the Christians, facing daily opposition, showing a faithful witness. Bless the generosity, of the rich and powerful, for the gift of thoughtfulness. Bless the peacemakers, working in conditions, that are often hazardous. Bless the politicians, whether good or bad, for decisions affecting all of us. Bless our words and actions, as we carry your light, into places shrouded in darkness. Bless your children, whoever they might be, with the warmth of your love and grace.

Written by John Birch who provides more prayers at www.faithandworship.com/prayers_peace.htm#ixzz2vxcBqz00

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Gazette

of newly admitted and licensed Readers Diocese of Bath & Wells Admitted & Licensed on 4th October 2014 Teresa Austin – t o the Benefice of Saltford with Corston & Newton St Loe Liz Clark – t o the Benefice of Glastonbury St John & St Benedict with Meare Ruth Jolly – t o the Benefice of Nailsea, Holy Trinity Miriam Jones – t o the Benefice of Aisholt, Enmore, Goathurst, Nether Stowey, Over Stowey & Spaxton with Charlynch (known as the Quantock Villages Benefice) Pippa Page – t o the Benefice of Bath Weston All Saints with North Stoke & Langridge Christine Prescott – t o the Benefice of St John, Bridgwater Wendy Rootes – t o the Benefice of Holy Trinity, Frome Janet Turp – t o the Benefice of Long Ashton with Barrow Gurney & Flax Bourton

Diocese of Bristol Admitted & Licensed on 27th September 2014 Helen Louise Clifton – t o the Benefice & Parish of Henbury Richard Leslie Clifton – t o the Benefice & Parish of Henbury Trevor Cook – t o the Benefice & Parish of Almondsbury & Olveston Judith Eckersley – t o the Benefice of St Paul’s Chippenham with Hardenhuish & Langley Burrell Juliet Beth Helme – t o the Benefice & Parish of Lawrence Weston & Avonmouth Neil Mark Hutton – t o the Benefice & Parish of St Paul’s Chippenham with Hardenhuish & Langley Burrell Regan Rory Meares – t o the Benefice & Parish of Kingswood & in the Benefice & Parish of Hanham Astrid Domingo Molyneux – t o the Benefice & Parish of Almondsbury & Olveston Julie Elizabeth Morgan – t o the Benefice & Parish of Lawrence Weston & Avonmouth Christopher Newboult – to the Benefice & Parish of Henbury Christine Mary Pope – t o the Benefice of By Brook & the Benefice of Colerne & North Wraxall Diane Marcia Simms – t o the Benefice & Parish of St Mary’s Fishponds & in the Benefice & Parish of All Saints, Fishponds Joanna Strange – t o the Benefice & Parish of Winterbourne, the Parish of Winterbourne Down in the Benefice of Frenchay & Winterbourne Down & the Benefice of Frampton Cottrell & Iron Action known collectively as the Fromeside Group

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Paul John Thurlow – t o the Benefice & Parish of Yate New Town Licensed on 27th September 2014 Julie Hinckley – t o the Benefice & Parish of Stoke Gifford

Diocese of Canterbury Admitted & Licensed on 28th September 2014: Martin Lees – to St Mary’s Great Chart & Singleton Barry Lock – to Folkestone, Trinity benefice Ann McDonald – to Maidstone, St Faith with Ringlestone Hall Gavin Netherton – to Canterbury. St Mary Bredin Licensed on 28th September 2014: Alice Bates – to St Leonard’s Deal James Beck – to St Mary’s Kennington

Diocese of Chester Admitted & Licensed on 18th October 2014 Rachel Bathurst – to St Michael, Plas Newton Philip Bishop – to St Wilfrid, Davenham Callum Boothroyd – t o St Michael, Mottram-in-Longdendale Sandi Fisher – to St Bartholomew, Wilmslow Ann Latham – t o St Michael & All Angels, Middlewich Ken London – t o St Mary the Blessed Virgin, Eastham Joanne Rodman – to Christ Church, Woodford Chantelle Tunnicliffe – to St Mark, Dukinfield Ailsa Whorton – to Holy Cross, Woodchurch Licensed – 18th October 2014 Derek O’Brien – t o St Thomas Stockport & St Alban, Offerton Stephen Cook – to St Mary, Hollingworth Duncan Goodwin – t o St Michael & All Angels, Middlewich & St John, Byley Giselle Rusted – t o St Peter, Oughtrington & St Werburgh, Warburton

Diocese of Chichester Admitted & Licenced on 23rd September Paul Abnett – to St Barnabas, Bexhill Peter Armstrong – t o St John the Evangelist, Upper St. Leonards Pam Edwards – to Ascension, Haywards Heath Priscilla Mill – to St Mary the Virgin, Ticehurst Vicky Peattie – to St Mary the Virgin, Willingdon Liz Tyrrell – to St Bartholomew, Rogate

Diocese of Leicester Admitted & Licensed on 11th October 2014 Michael Alexander – t o Ironstone Villages Family of Churches Jennifer Bickley – to Thorpe Acre with Dishley David Brunning – St James the Greater, Leicester Pamela Knowles – t o Wymeswold, Prestwold with Hoton, Barrow upon Soar with Walton on the Wolds

Sara Goodman – t o Kibworth with Smeeton Westerby & Saddington Codra Spencer – t o Emmanuel, Loughborough with St Mary Charnwood Susan Hack – t o Kegworth, Hathern, Long Whatton, Diseworth, Belton & Osgathorpe Jacqueline Rotter – t o The Good Shepherd, Loughborough

Diocese of London Admitted & Licensed on 13th September 2014 John Auton – to St Barnabas, Woodside Park Brenda Barwick – to Holy Innocents, Hornsey Miriam Rinsler – t o St Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill with St Paul Avenue Road Jonathan Thompson – t o St Aldhem, Silver Street, Edmonton Admitted & Licensed on 14th September 2014 Rosie Richardson – to Holy Trinity with St Paul & St Mary Hounslow Licensed on 5th October 2014 Anne Casson – to St Michael Highgate

Diocese of Derby Admitted & Licensed on 21st September 2014 Rhoda Blackwell – t o St Peter & St Paul, Old Brampton Louisa Wass Griffiths – to St Augustine, Derby Carol Hemmings – t o St Alkmund & St Werburgh, Derby John Spreadborough – to All Saints, Elton Anthony Till – t o St Edmund, Allenton & Shelton Lock

Diocese of Gloucester Admitted & Licensed on 27th September 2014 Victoria Braddock – to the benefice of Gloucester City & Hempsted Patricia Broadfoot – t o the benefice of Charfield & Kingswood, Wickwar, Rangeworthy & Hillesley Patricia Buckland – t o the benefice of Hardwicke & Elmore with Longney Priscilla Burris – t o the benefice of Chedworth, Yanworth & Stowell, Coln Rogers & Coln St Denys Mike Campbell – t o the benefice of Painswick, Sheepscombe, Cranham, The Edge, Pitchcombe, Harescombe & Brookthorpe Katie Etherington – t o the benefice of Tewkesbury with Walton Cardiff & Twyning Kay Hensley – to the benefice of Stonehouse David Laszlo – to the benefice of Cheltenham, Christ Church David Ratcliffe – t o the benefice of Bishop’s Cleeve & Woolstone with Gotherington & Oxenton Team Ministry with PTO

Admitted & Licensed on 15th September 2013 Mike Fluck – to St Faith’s, Havant Amber Vincent-Prior – to St Andrews, Farlington Admitted & Licensed on 5th October 2014 Sylvia Beardsmore – to Seaview & St Helens & the deanery of East Wight Katharine Price – to Portsmouth Cathedral & the deanery of Portsmouth Stephen Sutcliffe – to Brighstone, Brook with Mottistone, Shorwell & Chale & the deanery of West Wight Robert Slade – to St Mary Magdalen, Sheet & the Deanery of Petersfield

Diocese of Salisbury Admitted & Licensed on 27th September 2014 Carol Hibbert – to the North Poole Ecumenical Team Janet Hall – to the parish of Weymouth, Holy Trinity Ashley Jones – to the parish of White Horse Claire Ridgeway – to the parishes of Sherborne with Castleton Lillington & Longburton Huw Ridgeway – to the parishes of Sherborne with Castleton Lillington & Longburton Michael Tonkin – to the parish of Stour Vale

Diocese of Sheffield Admitted & Licensed on 20th September 2014 Andrew Burgess – to All Saints, Woodlands Diane Etchell – to St Cuthbert, Herringthorpe Jonathan Foster – to Christ Church, Stannington Stella McHugh – to St John, Owlerton Katharine Moore – to St James, Doncaster Giles Morrison – to St Mary, Bramall Lane Benjamin Otley – to St Mary, Handsworth

Jane Roberts – to St John Penistone Peter Sandford – to St Paul Norton Lees Craig Schofield – to St Mary Rawmarsh John Tomlinson – to St Margaret Brightside

Diocese of Southwark Admitted & Licensed 6th October 2014 Carol Bates – St Mildred, Lee Glenn Bee – St Thomas w St Stephen, Telford Park Crystal Chamkhi – St Andrew the Apostle, Catford Jacqueline Dow – All Saints, Hackbridge & Beddington Corner Joanne Fox-Branch – All Saints, Carshalton Despina Francois – Holy Trinity & St Augustine, Sydenham Adrian Greenwood – St James & St Anne United Benefice, Bermondsey Jan Lynas – Battersea Fields Andrew Moncrieff – St Peter & St Augustine, South Croydon Gloria Otu-Simon – Holy Trinity & St Matthias, Tulse Hill Sonia Phippard – St Mary Magdalene, Peckham Stephen Thomas – St Francis, Selsdon Becky Whiting – Tolworth Team Ministry

Diocese of Truro Admitted & Licensed on 4th October 2014 Andrew Keast – to the Parish of Perranzabuloe Richard Cowdery – to the Benefice of Landrake with St Erney & Botus Fleming, & the Benefice of Saltash

Diocese of W Yorkshire & the Dales

Carol Stenner – to All Saints & St Philip, Osmondthorpe Anna Louise Vollans – to Leeds Riverside BMO Gerald David Wainwright – to Moor Allerton & Shadwell Team Ministry Huddersfield Area – Licensed & Admitted on 12th October 2014 Karen Atkinson – to St John, Kirkheaton Paul Brier – to The Net Nigel Codman – to St John, Kirkheaton Kathleen Haigh-Hutchinson – to St Chad, Hove Egde Lynn Lord – to All Saints, Elland Diane Nicole Komorowski – to St Saviour, Brownhill Valerie Shuttleworth – to The Upper Holme Valley Team

CRC NEWS

Diocese of Portsmouth

Diocese of Winchester Admitted & Licensed on the 11th October 2014 Margaret Bell – to the Parish of the Resurrection, Alton Robert Hughes – to Four Marks Peter Jackson – to Ringwood Ian McGill – to Dibden Andrew Maundrell – to Headbourne Worthy : King’s Worthy Charlotte Nash – to The Downs Valerie Woodward – to Winchester Cathedral Licensed on 11th October 2014 Christopher Archer – to Hedge End St John from Portsmouth Diocese Keith Atton – to Compton, Hursley & Otterbourne from Oxford Diocese

Leeds Area – Licensed & Admitted on 6th October 2014 Kay Elizabeth Brown – to Leeds Minster Sarah Louise Ann Martin – to St. Peter, High Harrogate Lisa Carey Mahoney – to St. James the Great, Manston

Please send information for Gazette and In Memoriam to: Jeff Heaton, Central Readers Council, Church House, Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3AZ Email: [email protected]

In Memoriam

The deaths of the following Readers have been notified to us Bath & Wells Dee (Doreen) Clow Joan Bealey Blackburn Tom Tasker Canterbury Denis Osborne Flora Laundon Robert Hilton Carlisle Mrs E Bennett Chester Harold Forster

Derby Richard Port Lincoln Bill Kirkwood Elizabeth Bellinger Ralph Fox Shelton Liverpool Allan P J Smart Norwich Neville Houseago Robert Linton

Oxford Bob Saunders Jeanne Lindley Rochester Leonard Lee Salisbury Lt. Col. Paddy Bartholomew Terence Landsbert Sheffield June Riches Southwark John Munns

Southwell & Nottingham Hugh Allton St Asaph Mr R Breeze West Yorkshire & The Dales Dr Jennifer Stanton Winchester Mary Chant Worcester Rob Young York Edith Turner

May they rest in peace 39