Phil & Mags Tyler's Blog

Sexism in the church, I've just had enough!

2012-02-05T20:19:00.005Z

I’m not sure when I first noticed the sexism in the church, perhaps being brought up a Catholic you’d think it was obvious that something was amiss in the equality for women stakes. I think it was my teenage years where I started to question how a priest could teach on a Sunday about marriage or childcare when he wasn’t married and didn’t look after any kids.

Entering the charismatic movement and hearing women introduced on the platform as someone’s wife, no name, just Pastor/Prophet So and So and his wife, caused me some consternation and a dislike for platforms. The ‘women’s ministry’ related to children, family and other women. Responsibilities in the church; run the crèche, organise Sunday school or be an intercessor and certainly no female leaders as it is unscriptural for a woman to teach men. Women were expected to take the babies out of the meetings if they were noisy because the men had to stay in to hear the word of the Lord! Being told I couldn’t do youth work unless Phil wanted to do it too, really was the nail in the coffin for being around Christians for a while.

In the last fifteen years I've been a part of Pioneer Wirral church/community and they/we have endeavoured to ensure that sexism in any form is avoided. So the rest of the blog has come from church life in general rather than specifically one church.

Archetypal roles for women are still expected in some churches, there is still an expectation to stay home and raise the kids, any career aspirations are suspicious and only really permitted until the kids come along and then only really acceptable if you could establish that it was God’s call on your life and if it is in an area of employment where you will be caring for others or maybe teaching toddlers all the better. Women who aren’t married by 25 should be missionaries abroad as nobody knows how to relate to them so pack them off and once you’ve been married for two years you should be pregnant by now.

Paul, our eldest son, went to a Christian school for a while with Accelerated Christian Education as it’s syllabus and when the colouring in at four years old included questions like, what does mummy do? Right answer- bakes the cookies and cleans the house, and what does daddy do? Right answer – carry a briefcase and a tool box we knew there were problems ahead and when his teacher started to wear a head scarf, we left. That was in the early 1990’s not the 1950’s! We are sure that twenty years later things have moved on in that particular school.

About twenty years ago I did an assertiveness training course with some friends, teaching us the difference between passive, aggressive and assertive responses to situations. I have found in the ‘church‘ context that aggressive women are definitely unacceptable, assertive women make others nervous whereas passive women are considered Godly. What is that about!!!!

Now I don’t believe I’m the only woman who has experienced more sexism in the church than in any context outside of the church structure. It’s as if the world woke up to women’s equality and the church decided to ignore it. We can blame Eve and pull out a couple of scriptures from the New Testament and oppress women believing we are being biblical, however Jesus seemed to treat women differently and certainly his annihilation of the curse on the cross speaks of a return to equality for the genders as referred to in Genesis. If you’re struggling with Eve being Adam’s helper and therefore equal I suggest you go and read it in the Hebrew or if you cannot accept that perhaps the scripture that says we are created in God’s likeness, male and female, not male and male. Paul’s teachings are thrown about depending on who’s reading them and depending on whether you want to read some of his writings about women in the context of the culture or the church issues he was writing to or even from his own understanding, (shock horror), or consider them fully applicable to today’s culture and context.

I’ve heard teaching on the existence of a hierarchy in heaven; God is at the top, then Jesus and then the Holy Spirit and therefore a hierarchy on earth is the ‘right way’ to do things too and therefore women are subject to men. It is interesting to note the hierarchy theology came into the church around the time that the clergy laity split was established. More recent thinking might ‘just’ put women who are married under the headship of their husband, subject to him and no other man and I’m not too worried about this scripture as long as the husband is laying his life down for his wife, loving her as Christ loves the church. I don’t accept this scripture as meaning that the husband is meant to control his wife, to ensure she is well behaved or to ‘wear the trousers’. I believe it means that he is to cover her with his life, that he is to protect her, watch over her and care for her. It doesn’t mean he’s the one with the intelligence and therefore the decision maker, any good marriage will share decisions and work in the best interests of each other. Christian marriages should reflect the equality of the one-ness that it represents.

Here’s a few of the phrases that have an undercurrent of sexism and should be avoided – I think!

1. ‘The time is coming for us to release the women/it’s time for them to rise up and take their place….’ – I think you’ll find we were released by Jesus, the curse is over, women hankering after men, men ruling over women, the curse is, once and for all over! We don’t need to be released by men we need to not be oppressed, patronised and generally considered the weaker sex. If you want to have a women’s conference to release women then consider having a men’s conference instead and teach the men who women are in the light of the completed work of Jesus.

2. ‘So you’re a feminist I won’t hold the door open for you or carry your bags’ – er no, you can still do all that, it’s just manners! I would hold the door open for you and help you carry your bags, unless they are too heavy. I don’t mind being called a feminist when the person calling me one understands what feminism is. Here’s a definition of feminism; the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. Unfortunately the times I have been called a feminist in a church setting there has been a sense that feminist means a person who is ‘worldly’ who should therefore be ignored and considered a troublemaker, certainly not listened to, she can’t be right as that would mean acknowledging that inequality is a bad thing!

3. The ‘Ladies meetings’ instead of women’s meetings. Words change in their meaning over time and since the gender revolution the word “ladies,” contains an inference of inferiority or condescension when used in certain contexts. In England, the main use of “ladies” and “gentlemen” is for public loos and to address groups “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen” unless you are in a church structure and then pretty much everything is referred to with ‘men’ and ‘ladies’. The word ‘ladies’ originally referred to aristocratic women and the word ‘women’ refers to the opposite of men. This is the main difference between the two words. One has the inference of status, manners and appearance whereas the other is just the opposite of men. In church structures using the word ‘ladies’ has been used to keep women in line, been told to ‘act like a lady’, has meant that your freedom is restricted because you're not allowed to act in all sorts of ways that men are allowed to act, such as having an opinion on something other than family matters, being able to hear from God for ourselves and be able to teach someone older than 16! Women are not blushing maidens, pristinely presented at all times and who faint at the slightest cross word. ‘Ladies’ has a connotation of weakness and therefore shouldn’t be used in a context where women are to be considered equally with men. Ladies are supposed to have reserved standards of behaviour that highlight their femininity. Ladies cross their legs, don't swear, burp or fart, are modest and always buttoned-up. Ladies don't play in the mud, get their dresses dirty or climb trees. You were considered a tomboy if you did these things rather than a girl who liked to wear jeans, be loud and get muddy. I understand why some women are happy, very happy to be called a lady, it gives that whole picture of well mannered, well groomed, well brought up which is great unless that is all you are and if in some contexts that is all you are considered to be that is inequality! To be referred to as a woman in the context of church meetings, in matters of theology, lateral and logical thinking, driving even, acknowledges that they are more than ladies, they are equal with men. I think 'ladies' has an implication of being essentially decorative, rather than essentially effective and I don’t think I’m alone in that.

There’s the sense that good Christian women should all the look the same; styled hair, modest but existent makeup, big shoulder pads, pearls or scarves and Laura Ashley dresses, flat shoes and no curves. They shouldn’t be too feminine in their outward appearance, single women in particular should pretty much cover up head to toe and ensure no curves are visible or she might just have a Jezebel Spirit and tempt all the husbands away!!! Such a shame God gave her those curves!

Words matter, and our language choices have consequences. If we believe that women and men deserve social and indeed spiritual equality, then we should think seriously about how to reflect that belief in our language use, especially in our humour!

So a couple of folk have rattled my cage on the sexism front again this last few weeks and whilst I’ve moved on from shouting ‘women’ when someone announces a ‘ladies’ meeting and have become a bit more understanding, I think it’s time to move from assertive response to sexism to aggressive intolerance. If we cannot have equality in the church; our daughters will grow up thinking they are less than they are, unbelieving women will look into our churches and wonder what century we are living in and maybe the most destructive effect of sexism in the church is that women will not be heard and my gosh that is tragic!

Church, Jesus and stuff.

2012-01-10T19:57:00.008Z

(As this is rather long you can download it here to read as a PDF or to print out http://bit.ly/wFoHrc)

The Gospel - Jesus has done it all for you, He has fixed you, He has placed you in right relationship with God. I think the more we believe this gospel, the one preached by Paul, the one we might call the good news of Jesus Christ, the more our house of cards starts to fall or put another way, our belief system starts to unravel until all we have left is Jesus and his incarnation, his life, his death, his resurrection and his ascension. The depth of this gospel is our reason to exist and our greatest enjoyment. The effects of the gospel – your relationship with Jesus is always good, always right, always together and always a pleasure.

We’ve believed so much in the bungee jumping relationship, either we’re jumping in and out of the relationship or He is. What if we believed that we are completely ‘in’ relationship and cannot get out, what does that belief do to our house of cards?

Here’s a few thoughts gleaned from 24 years of being ‘born again’ and attending in that time a covenant ministries congregation led by Bryn and Kerry Jones in the late 1980’s, a Vineyard church in the early 90’s, a small group completely unconnected to any larger gathering for a couple of years which we lovingly called the Cosmic Bubble, no ‘church attendance’ for a few years, a New Frontiers church in the late 90’s for a couple of months, before we moved to the Wirral, and a local church since 1997 where I was on the leadership team for over ten years, and maybe even a few insights from being brought up in the more traditional environment of the catholic church and having some very good friends who are committed to the catholic church (and probably think I should be giving catholic a Capital ‘C’ but there you go).

External DIY

We try and fix the structure because something is wrong and we’re not too sure what it is and it’s easier to start out there. So we blame the congregation, the rubbish worship, the lack of commitment, not enough study of the Word, bad leadership, poor vision, too traditional, not traditional enough….if all this was sorted out we’d have people flooding through the doors and our personal lives with Jesus would excel.

We keep looking at the structure, looking to different shapes, house church, big congregations, cell churches, new testament church, emerging/organic churches, seven step programme, twelve step program, more alpha, more discipleship, more seeker friendly, less seeker friendly, if we had more evangelism, if we knew how to do evangelism, if we had a great worship band, if we had more teaching on what worship is, if we had more healings, miracles, more dynamic leadership, more teaching on being a good Christian, more teaching on missional community, more meetings, less meetings blar blar blar blar.

We keep looking for the ‘right structure’ in accordance with scripture and what the now word of God is for us today that will ‘work’ and keep everyone, or most, happy. There’s manipulation and control to try and keep the thing going, people are upset, some are leaving, some are shouting, some are abusive and we continue to call it church despite the blood up the walls, and keep trying to make it work. But it doesn’t seem to be working though, and every few years there’s another model that works for them but not for others, it works over there but not over here, another book is written to explain and suggest different models, different keys to growth, where we’ve been going wrong. ‘Church beyond the congregation’ by Jim Thwaites seemed great at the time, explaining why the church was losing so many members, the problem lay with needing to engage with the community, we need to bring down the walls, …..’We need to get our branding right, let’s get the Jesus brand out there’!!!!! We’ll show them we’re just the same as them, we’re cool too! Then there was the purpose driven life/church, without vision the people perish, business principles in how to run churches, models with targets and measureable goals, then there was incarnational missional communities and the list goes on, the search for the non-religious community model that is the best. Maybe if we use the Greek or the Latin we must be getting closer, we need to find the ekklesia – a group of people with a common purpose, we must have the Communitas – a community with a shared vision blar blar blar blar.

The blar blar blar noise is my own as I’ve spent so much time wandering around in circles, and here I am again, thinking about this stuff and don’t even get me started with ‘we need a revival, we need a guest speaker, we need new mantles, more anointing, more angels, more visitations from Smith Wigglesworth’. Been there bought the T-Shirt and visited the graves. Should we honour those who have gone before us – absolutely, should we learn their stories, absolutely, should we try and do what they did in the way they did it as some magic formula – er NO.

So maybe it’s not the structure/the institution/the model that is wrong, maybe it’s me?

Internal DIY

We look at our callings, our ministries, our gifts; if I were more prophetic, if I heard from the prophets clearer, If I was more encouraging, more extroverted, if I prayed more, read my bible more, went to more conferences, sat on the front row more, read more books, lived a more sacrificial life, got the latest worship CD, if I created a prayer closet, if I gave more money away, if I fasted more, if I did something for 40 days or maybe 45 days just to get the extra 5 days credit, if I read the bible in Greek, I need more ministry there’s obviously something wrong with me! Maybe it’s in my past, maybe it’s my grandparents fault, maybe it’s some hidden sin I’ve not repented of, maybe I’m just not really loved that much by God, I can’t get rid of this blockage, this steel barrier between me and God. I’ve lost my mojo or I’ve lost my passion for Jesus and can’t rustle it up and I’m disappointed that the life I thought was promised has not materialised, I’m as anxious as ever, I’m as sinful as ever, I’m clearly rebellious because I don’t want to go to church, I’m lost and confused.

Then there’s the times when we’re told is us, you’re too cynical, too negative, too intense, too optimistic, too rebellious. If you want to be a member of this church you need to agree with all the leadership say or you’re in trouble with God, you’re being divisive saying these things, you must have a more united attitude. Stop rocking the boat, stop always looking for fault, stop thinking like this, who have you been talking to, what rubbish have you been reading…..manipulate, control, fear that the institution may be flawed, hold the structure together at any cost, even debt for members for over tithing for the building project and annihilated personalities,

But then, we always have the ‘get out of jail free card’ to play, I’ll leave the church. This church is not working for me, I’m off to the other one down the road. Unfortunately that one has different problems and the only way forward is to start a whole new church with better revelation and so there’s a split and a new church starts, just a group of people getting together, thrown off the shackles of the old way and heading onto the new road. The search for the authentic church, the one where I can be myself and accepted for who I am not what I bring. The one without masks and charades, where real life is shared, where we encounter God together in amazing ways and make a difference to those around us. All good, for a while.

Not long before more people want to join, not necessarily new believers, usually folk from other congregations who are fed up with their church too, and soon the need to rent a building, move the meeting to a Sunday morning because it’s easier for folk, create kids work, have a bank balance and maybe even start some community engagement programmes, a new church in the community has arrived. History repeats itself before long and you’re in a church not much different to the one you left all those years ago, or as my friend says, ‘you’re leading a church you don’t even want to go to’.

Once you build an institution together you have to protect it and its assets as good stewards. This confuses things, love gets redefined as that which protects the institution and not loving as those that don’t and turns some of the nicest people into raving maniacs, the belief that God resides here is a strong belief to combat. People become dependent on leaders and this in turn makes them passive in their own spiritual growth, we wait for others to show us how, or even just follow them in hope that they are getting it right! So we’re unhappy and we blame the church, then ourselves for being too critical and rebellious, then ourselves because we haven’t prayed enough or others because they haven’t prayed enough, ourselves because we not praying the right prayers for long enough blar blar blar blar here we are again.

The solution, the cure, the way out of the cycle of ‘it’s me, it’s them, it’s the structure’ – is the gospel.

Belief.

Different, as we know, to mental agreement, more than just agreeing that something is true, our lives sets out the truth of what we actually believe rather than what we say we believe, so let’s try some of these….

What if we believed this; Jesus builds the church. Can we then believe that any growth is his responsibility? What about if we believe the church really is people rather than buildings, structures and meetings, what if salvation really is about what Jesus did 2,000 years ago and church building then becomes encouraging people towards someone rather than to something. We preach the good news and making disciples rather than plant churches. Do we actually believe that we have to create something that people will be attracted to and if we get that right, people will come in order to get saved? Evangelism, church growth, can become about building the congregation rather than attracting people to Jesus. Do we preach the gospel of Jesus or the gospel of church/community? I think part of the changing landscape is the understanding that Paul didn’t plant churches, he preached the good news and let groups gather and guided them with letters and visits as they worked out what their salvation looked like. The New Testament doesn’t have directions for church structures; the best there is the appointing of deacons, visits by other disciples, letters for teaching, prophets popping in, there isn’t much about church planting or how to attract God into meetings better. There is liberty in believing that God does not reside in buildings or meetings and he does in reality dwell within us.

What if we believed this; when two or three are gathered there is Jesus. Can we believe then that we don’t have to attract him down from heaven, have the best worship songs, start meetings with repentance to ensure Jesus arrives in a good mood? We don’t have to work up some atmosphere with the music, we don’t even have to go through the thanksgiving gate anymore. He promised to be with us when we gather, full stop. No conditions, no special rituals, just present. Our belief in the gospel is that we can, by simple attention turn our gaze onto him. We should spend time thanking him for all he has done for us but it doesn’t get us any closer or bring him down from anywhere. He already came down and scooped us up with him.

What if we believed this, we are the temple of the Holy Ghost. Can we believe then that we can hear from God for ourselves, that we can understand the bible, that we can experience the Trinity at anytime and in any place? What if we believed this and were left to our own reasoning and had no leaders to tell us what to think, no teachers to teach us the truth, no prophets to bring the word of the Lord to us. Do we think we would then be alone, adrift and the fear of all Christians, deceived!!!

We don’t trust ourselves to hear from God clearly and yet numerous folk in the bible were on their own or in two’s. If we believe the gospel our confidence in our relationship with the Holy Spirit as our teacher, our guide, our counsellor will grow. Yes we should meet together with other believers but those relationships should not replace the Holy Spirit’s role in your personal life. Read your bible, there are enough versions around and ask the Holy Spirit to teach you, he is the author after all, other believers are there to share the life of God with you not to teach you what that life looks like for them. The Holy Spirit moves into your life and makes himself at home. He also moves in completely, he doesn’t rent a room and slowly over time serves eviction notices on the demons! If we believe the gospel then we are ‘in Christ’ and I don’t think demons hang out in there too.

What if we believed this; fruitfulness is totally reliant on vine dwelling. Can we believe then that intimacy with Jesus is the only way to see fruitfulness in our own lives and in those around us? Do we believe that if we try hard enough, dig deep enough we will fix ourselves and fix those around us? Fixing ourselves is a real multi-billion pound industry of ministries, books and TV shows. Not just fixing us spiritually but also mentally and physically. We are a broken people living in a broken world! We pretty much have that belief, I often here the phrase, ‘we live in a fallen world so it’s just the way it is’. So you can keep that theology if you like, I’m going with ‘for God so loved the world’, and the gospel truth that Jesus died for humanity in order to fix it. Not to fix God, which is what we mostly believe; God was up in heaven with his split personality, loving us one minute, turning away in wrathful anger the next and Jesus came to appease this wrathful, ‘smite me O mighty smiter’ God. What a load of rubbish! Jesus came to save the world not save us from God, he came to save us for God. Jesus came to ‘fix’ humanity. To create a new humanity, the bible describes him as the second Adam, if the curse came through one man who was just a man, how much more then does the promise come through the second Adam who was the son of God. If all of humanity was tainted with the sin of one Adam how much did the second Adam fix humanity. I am a new creation, no more in condemnation, here in the grace of God I stand!

What if we believed this; it really is all about Jesus. That’s it, everything, literally everything flows from Him and through Him. If we believe that God is for us all the time, if we trust his love and goodness towards us in every minute then true liberty, assurance and passionate love can be ours. Let’s ditch the bungee rope once and for all and believe we are constantly connected to the Trinity, the Trinity that from before the existence of the world decided to create us with a view to incorporate us into their relationship. Let’s get rid of our legalistic view of God, the legalistic view of our relationship with him and become grace conscious so we can have the life we dream of.

If we have a legalistic God then we are wrapped up in our behaviour, good for rewards and bad for punishments, God withdraws from us for bad behaviour. We become obsessed with getting things ‘right’. We get stuck in our old false self with the tree of good and evil rather than the tree of life. Stuck in the law rather than grace and we live this out in the church. Looking for the right way to do things, looking to reward those who play the game well and shun those who refuse to play. If we believe the law is dead, if we believe that we cannot work our way into God’s good books then we wouldn’t spend so much time trying to be a good Christian in a good church with good fruit. We would know that we are righteous, when we are with other believers the church is a reality and doesn’t need creating or establishing or controlling and the fruit that we bear is His.

No church model will produce God’s life. It works the other way around. Our life in God, shared together, expresses itself as the church. It is the overflow of his life in us. If we believed that little gem we wouldn’t keep trying to find better models.

Church becomes less about meeting my needs and becomes about sharing the life of Jesus with each other. The journey becomes less about getting fixed and more about enjoying and discovering the depths of our relationship. Instead of starting a new and better church, we allow God to connect us with people on the journey. We encourage one another in the journey without conforming people to the standard we think they need. Respecting the process God uses to bring people into truth by encouraging others to draw near to Jesus and not trying to fix everybody with our answers for the universe. Helping one another discover the incredible relationship God wants with us.

Church is a reality we live in every day. As we are living as his body, we will encourage one another daily and stimulate one another to love more deeply and to live more graciously as a simple overflow of our relationship with him. Seeing the church as a reality instead of an activity will allow us to celebrate the church however she expresses herself.

What if we believed the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of grace, grace with no law, grace that is an unmerited gift, grace that says we are children of God, ambassadors of heaven, seated in heavenly places in Christ. What if we lived in this grace; in the unforced rhythm and rested in the waves, trusting that all will be well because the good God is in all, packing out the universe with his goodness, faithfulness and love. As this gospel, the good news, may cause the house of cards to fall, the resulting liberation is well worth the journey. I’m very grateful for those I’ve travelled with and those I travel with now, I doubt I’d be still walking if I had not met along the way my friends and fellow travellers and my hope is that we would continue to encourage each other in the Way.

Twinned with the Trinity

2011-10-19T18:13:00.001+01:00

It is a myth that the Trinity is difficult to understand and should be left to the theologians. The arrival of Jesus as a human was the moment when the Trinity became accessible to us all. Through belief in Jesus we are told in the bible that we have full access into the Throne room, the veil has been torn. So it does not therefore add up that we cannot discover the truth about the Trinity, it also says in Colossians that we have Christ dwelling within us, in Ephesians that the Holy Spirit is given as a deposit and in John, Jesus prays that we will have full unity with the father as he has unity with him. Colossians goes on to say that all the fullness of the deity is in Christ and we too have been given the fullness. So looking at scripture our access to the Trinity can be externally, as in walking through the veil, and internally on the basis that it is within us which leads me to conclude that understanding the Trinity is not just for the professionals but for all of us.

My reading of scripture suggests that God likes the idea of us being with him, wants us to discover more about him and the same can be said for Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If we believe only the one scripture, ‘Gods ways are higher than our ways’ regarding understanding God and then settle for only the one verse and use it for justifying why we can’t understand the Trinity, how do we then align scriptures such as; ‘we have the mind of Christ’, ‘fully reconciled to God’, ‘co-heirs with Christ’ and ‘you have been given fullness in Christ’?

There is a discovery to be made, an adventure to go on where the secrets of God are revealed to his children – that is you and me. God is relational; he lives in relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and thanks to all that Jesus accomplished on the cross also with us. He is not a distant deity floating on a cloud somewhere playing chess with humanity completely out of reach and unfathomable. 1 Corinthians 2:11-16 sets out some good words to inspire us that understanding God is possible through his Spirit. No training necessary, no good report card necessary, a free gift of God’s own Spirit.

I am not saying that we will fully understand everything about God, that would make us God, but I think we have been put off learning about the Trinity on the basis that it’s just too hard for us mere mortals. One more lie from the enemy that we perpetuate through certain beliefs; some people have a better relationship with God than us, some people are more gifted to understand God than us, some people are more favoured by God, some people find it easier to understand deep theological mysteries like the Trinity, and so we miss out on the treasures available to us. The stories in the bible show person after person understanding so much without any teaching, without a mentor, or a leader/priest, even a bible! John the Baptist would have been an interesting character in Sunday school! We too can understand the Trinity, how they work together, what that kind of relationship looks like and where/how/ do we fit into their relationship.

Somewhere we lost the ability to learn about God for ourselves, to hear from God directly. Our need to send somebody else wasn’t left in the desert with Moses and the Israelites. In any other of our relationships we do not accept third hand information, imagine being married and only talking to your partner through a third party. That only tends to happen with the relationship is either brand new – ‘my mate says will you go out with him’ or when it has totally broken down ‘tell the applicant that the respondent in the divorce wants the house’. It is nonsense and yet this can be our relationship with the Trinity. People become dependent on their leaders to access God for them, read a million books about God, watch God TV to hear what others have discovered, ask the prophetic/ministry team to find out what God thinks about them, spend hours in mental distress because they believe hearing from God is so difficult and there is a need for accuracy. So in amongst our desire to send someone else we have traded our relationship and live a third party one instead. We think the bible is too difficult for us to understand and yet we have its author living inside us. We think we are so distant from God that he can’t hear us. We think we are ‘in sin’ and therefore cannot now here from God as opposed to the truth that we are ‘in Christ’ and therefore can hear directly from God anything that we want an answer to. We make comments like – ‘oh when I get to heaven I’ve got so many questions for God when I get there’, according to scripture you are seated in heavenly places, why not ask now?

The time is gone for the special man with the special ministry with the next best impartation, the cat is out of the bag or the revelation of Christ in you is being declared. The full gospel is once again being preached, the gospel that tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what Jesus did at the cross. The truth that on the cross Jesus dealt the death blow to our sinful nature and brought full reconciliation to God. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that you are now included in Him, you are in Christ and therefore you have full access to the full Trinity. Now you have been co-crucified your sinful nature has died and you are no longer subject to sin and cannot therefore become distant from God because of sin. You do not bungee jump in and out of your relationship with God and he does not find you favourable one day and difficult the next. He is not hiding from you hoping that you one day you will find him, if you pray really hard/loud/consistently/earnestly and search 24/7 for him, showing him enough passion and ensuring you don’t do anything that is naughty otherwise he will have to go and hide again. How can he hide when he is inside you? He does not fully reveal everything about himself to us in one go as we would explode but this is not to be confused with hiding from us. He does not live in a desert or send us into one because Jesus already went into the desert for us. He does not give us the silent treatment to make us love him or search for him more, he does not punish us or withhold anything from us. The full outrageous gospel is that we have been given everything, have access to everything and have been restored into a full relationship with all of the Trinity.

The truth of the gospel is that we have now been twinned with Jesus, he is our twin-brother, he is our identity, and everything we are is dependent on everything he is. We have been co-everything with Christ. Co-crucified, co-resurrected and co-heirs. Our relationship with God is fully dependant on Jesus’ relationship with God, co-linked, integrated into, he is in us and we are in him. We totally belong to him, he has purchased us, paid full price for us and adopted us into the family. The Spirit of adoption confirms it and we only need to believe it.

Even here we have been hoodwinked that some have more belief than others, more faith to believe than others and yet even our faith is a gift given to us by God. Faith is not spelt R.I.S.K., it is spelt G.I.F.T.! All we are required to do is say ‘Yes’ to what Jesus has already done for us. Our agreement is all that is needed. He gives us the faith to believe in Jesus, he gives us the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to us and to remind us of all truth and he has done everything necessary for us to be fully reconciled to him.

The gospel has the power to set us free, and not just from our sinful nature, it will also set us free to believe that we are completely in Christ and live in the midst of the Trinity.

Responsibility

2011-09-27T17:59:00.002+01:00

It’s funny how when you hear a phrase or are having a conversation and something just doesn’t seem right but at the time you can’t really explain what and why. I can find myself continuing the conversation, listening to the other person and agreeing with them but knowing that somewhere in my head I just don’t agree but can’t seem to collect the thoughts together enough in that moment to be able to express it. The other person is making good points, agreeable points, nothing wrong with points, but still I retain a feeling that I don’t agree, there’s something niggling me that means I am unsure of my agreement. The conversation ends and the other person walks away thinking I agree with them, probably because I just have, and I wander off to ponder why I just don’t like the phrase or the agreement seemingly reached.

So this blog comes from a conversation about church and this particular phrase; ‘you can’t just walk away from your responsibilities’– which I agreed with at the time but now I’m not so sure. I think whether you can or not depends on whether those responsibilities are rightly placed or based on a questionable structure in the first place. It has me thinking about what are these ‘responsibilities’ where do they come from and can you walk away from them with a clear conscience. I think some of the answers to that question lie in our understanding of what is a church and what is a community and where does being ‘responsible’ for the structure and its members come from and is it forever. Living in relationship with other people creates a sense of responsibility. Society has a collection of rules, which apply to everyone, dictating how to behave in the best interests of other members of the society. When people become linked by more than society i.e. work or club membership, the rules for behaviour intensify. These rules are usually well known, recognised, mostly agreeable and depending on how much you want to be in the specific group of people you will abide by the rules. Maybe this is where our thoughts on ‘belonging before you believe’ come from, because of people’s need to be part of a community we changed the rules of ‘church membership’ to be able to incorporate into the church community people with no belief in Jesus. We include people and whilst there is no consensus on belief there is a sense of responsibility for their welfare and their journey into belief.

The rules and responsibilities between friends and partners can be more intense, rules/obligations relating to honouring, caring, respecting, being the shoulder to cry on, being the person who will get out of bed in the night for you. It is perhaps true to say the closer the relationships, the more responsibilities there are to each other. There are some relationships that you cannot walk away from, there is a depth of love that means you don’t want to stop being responsible for each other. A parent never wants to stop being responsible for their child, the sense of being needed for something, having an input in their lives, doing what is possible to ensure their well-being. Sometimes such depth exists between friends, where regardless of distance or time there is a tie that looks covenantal.

Here’s a dictionary definition of community: - a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage / a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists. A couple of points from that definition; shared government is an interesting concept and has the implications of government of others, a sense of leadership and submissiveness, agreement and consensus to rules. When moved across to understanding church community we can see that there is governance in church structures. Based on our interpretation of biblical principles, our culture, and depending on the style of church, the government is either very clearly established, easy to identify and traditional or has the appearance of being more vague but in reality it is still strongly established. The leaders make the decisions based on their interpretation of the scripture and sometimes, but not always, with the mandate of the congregation. There perhaps lies one of the reasons for a clergy laity split, somebody has to be responsible for the governance of the church and our interpretation has led us down the path that the governance is specific men/women who have either applied for the job, been to seminary or have been seen to carry the qualities of leadership. As a leader in a church how can you walk away from this governance responsibility? I would suggest that it is possible if you also walk away from the style of church that requires a style of governance that dictates the beliefs of the group and governs from a place of platform/pedestal. Jesus’ leadership comes from a place of submission to God, servant-hood and certainty of his identity and his church leaders should come from that place also. I don’t think it is a church leader’s responsibility to lead like a king, to sit on a pedestal and dictate what God is saying to the congregation today. I believe we have one king and all believers are his priesthood. Church structures might need people who will be administrators of the finances and the schedule but not leaders in the place of Jesus. I don’t believe this is one-sided; congregations love their kings (aka strong leadership) and being consumers, (only contribute when asked specifically and usually by manipulation). It is much easier to be told what the bible means or what God is saying and much easier to lead when you do it all yourself and stop trying to equip people! What would happen if all the leaders in all the church decided they were stepping down, (an interesting phrase) and instead left the meeting open to everyone to bring what God is saying to them, perhaps a song, a good news story, a prayer, a prophecy, a teaching session, a need, would it still be church? What if only one person brought a talk to encourage others in their journey, would that still be church? What if all you did was drink tea and share lives, would that still be church? In these scenarios I don’t see the need for governance, administration and organisation perhaps but not the governance in the sense of one person/s over the others. There should be only one person over our heads and his name is Jesus.

Back to the definition, ‘distinct from the larger society’ and I think this one is a whopper for our social engagement and our understanding of responsibility - ‘in the world but not of it’.

The word 'church' in the New Testament is translated from the Greek word 'ekklesia' which comes from two words 'ek' meaning 'out' and 'kaleo' meaning to 'call.' An ekklesia or 'calling out' was not just an assembly. The word ekklesia was a political term, not a religious term. The New Testament writers could have chosen other words for church that would represent a group gathering together but they chose a political term, one that had the added element of coming out of the established system. Something about this gathering of people that was to be distinct from other gatherings.

Today our churches are set apart from the local communities and this has led to a massive call to re-engage, to re-emerge, to be seeker-friendly, make our meetings much more attractive and accessible to the unbelievers. Let’s give away prizes and make everything excellent and this will encourage people into church, once they realise we are ‘fun’ they will want to join. This is great for church numbers, it may work to get people through the doors to hear the gospel from the pulpit, it may help people belong to a community and help people once ‘in’ to journey into belief. Another shape of emerging church is to engage with the community outside of ‘church’ hours and move away from the central focus of the church meeting. We’ve done teaching relating to being Christ where you engage with community, in your sphere of influence, being outward, and kingdom focused rather than trying to attract folk into the church meeting.

Perhaps this leads to the ‘called-out’ local community being torn between their desire or vision to be good news to the community in which it resides and the distinctive nature of being a church, the called out community. The phrase ‘in it to win it’ would suggest that we stop being ‘called-out’ because we want to be seen to be the same, not too different, not too weird, to fully engage with our communities on their level. (Not to be confused with 'in it to win it' on a personal level where that is the calling for most christians on a daily basis). The shift in emphasis means there is a shift in perceived, but not necessarily agreed, responsibilities. The rules start to change, the responsibilities widen from those in the church to the whole community outside the walls. Tension arises on the basis that people are no longer fulfilling their responsibilities to the church structure. The cry of ‘what about my needs’ ‘who will be looking after me now’ starts to filter to the surface. It is now more than just sending out the evangelists on raiding parties now the rules have changed and we are all evangelists, all carrying the message of good news. It is part of who we are – go and make disciples, preach the good news, heal the sick and raise the dead. How can we walk away from this responsibility? The church is the bride of Christ, it declares the manifest wisdom of God, it is Christ’s body, and once we believe that, it will affect how we respond to our responsibilities to the church and the community. Perhaps we have misunderstood the meaning of the word ekklesia, it was not to be a closing of the doors and cultural separation, a fear of being contaminated by the world outside and perhaps not even a blending in to the community so we can’t be seen. Perhaps instead it is to be a distinct group of people who know Jesus to be their saviour, called out from darkness into the light and nothing to do with structures and meetings and everything to do with our relationship with Jesus and humanity..

So back to the reason for the blog - ‘responsibilities’, which ones can you walk away from? Certainly those that we were never meant to carry in the first place and one of the biggest in the church structure is the responsibility for other people’s relationship with God. We have confused leadership/discipleship roles with that of becoming somebody else’s priest. If I step into the role of being responsible for a person’s relationship with God I am becoming their mediator and that job is already taken. I can teach, I can disciple but the ultimate responsibility is the individuals and I do them a massive disservice if I don’t teach them to access God personally, to learn from God independently from the church and its leadership, to have a dependency on Jesus not on the leader of the church. This is a responsibility we should all be walking nay running away from!

There is the responsibility to each other that goes beyond the structure and here I think is the core responsibilities that you cannot walk away from. We are in relationship with the people in our churches and it is here that if people become responsibilities rather than relationships we’ve lost the plot. Our responsibilities flow from our relationships and this flows from our relationship with Jesus. As soon as we forget our relationship with Jesus then we forget our identity and we forget to see people. We forget that Jesus works from a place of restful relationship with his father and we too can work in complete restfulness where people are a pleasure and a privilege to be around.

The Science dictionary states a community as: - A group of organisms or populations living and interacting with one another in a particular environment. The organisms in a community affect each other's abundance, distribution, and evolutionary adaptation.

A good definition of the church perhaps; the living organism that is more than its meetings and structures, the living entity that affects people’s abundance. The place where we are responsible to each other for well-being, goodness and love. A community where the structures and the meetings are secondary to the relationships and where the responsibilities are based on loving relationships rather than historic or governmental rule keeping.

Broken Britain?

2011-09-16T12:12:00.005+01:00

Just a short rant today!

I'm heartily sick of this 'Broken Britain' nonsense! Britain isn't broken, it may be mildly sprained at worst but it sure ain't broken! Why is this? Because we don't live in Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia or any one of the many other countries or regions around the world whose society can truly be called 'broken'.

No-one is likely, on a daily basis, to blow up your car with a land-mine or grenade on your way to work, or lie on a roof top with a sniper rifle shooting at innocent passers-by.
Our government is largely honest, even if we disagree with its policies.
Our police are overwhelmingly trustworthy and honest.
Our courts are overwhelmingly honest and you're unlikely to be sent to jail for something you didn't do, nor will you be executed by the state no matter what you did.
Our schools, by and large, teach our children well and care for them.
Our hospitals are staffed by well trained & professional doctors and nurses.
Our banks and financial institutions are mostly stable and reliable, even the ones that wobbled were propped up and not allowed to fail.
We have freedom to follow any faith, even the ones that appear as mad as a bucket of frogs.
We have food, water, shelter, heat, light and entertainment all readily available.

There may be some problems with Britain but STOP calling it 'broken', call it Great again.

The church, in particular, needs to start prophesying blessing to our land when it speaks about it instead of constantly cursing it with the label 'broken'. The Gospel is good news to our land, not a wailing lament, a critical judgement or a pity-party for those who like to sit around slagging everything off or moaning about how everything used to be better in some rose-tinted 'golden age'. The golden age is now. God is good, the Gospel is true, the kingdom is at hand.

I live in 'Blessed Britain' you can too.

I quit!

2011-08-03T20:21:00.001+01:00

I read an article today on the BBC website called ‘I Quit!’ It talked about the recent, numerous high-profile resignations and the different reasons and methods people use to resign. The strapline read ‘Some hang on until the bitter end and some leave under a cloud but is there a way to go with grace?’ What a fantastic question; is there a way to go with grace?

The article pointed out that resignations have sometimes been used as a kind of protest that people will resign from their position when they feel they can no longer tolerate or be associated with the policy of those employing them. Our conscience will at times, despite the consequences of our actions, inform us that resignation is the only way to do what is right, to do the right thing. Clearly one person’s definition of right and another’s can differ which leads to calls for resignation where there is the appearance of wrong doing. The article points out ‘When some resign they leave with their heads hung in shame, for others it's a moment of defiance, and there are those who acknowledge that they have done wrong and leave quietly.’

It was the phrase ‘I quit’ that sparked a few thoughts about quitting; it reminded me of the Brother Lawrence quote – ‘I have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me.’ which has been a marker phrase in our house for a few months. It is the call to avoid going through the motions, going to the meetings because we should, it has been a call to resist the status quo, to stop doing things that we have just always done and taken time to think about what we actually believe. To stop doing those things that perpetuate myths and fallacies. Our intent is to focus our attention on practising the presence and believing more what Jesus has already done for us rather than inattentively meandering along a well-worn path. To consider prayer a continuation of our relationship with God, to simply turn our gaze towards his face and continue the on-going conversation rather than enacting something that suggests there is a separation between us and God or a separation between the sacred times and the secular times.

I have quitted using phrases that make no sense in the light of the finished work of the cross, such as; praying for an open heaven, when Jesus opened heaven and left it open for humanity to enter; praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit when he has already been poured out on all flesh; referring to the land as dry or a place as hard as we carry the springs of living water and all of the earth is the Lords. I have quitted living under the old covenant terminology when I have been rescued by the new covenant. I have quitted looking to others for impartations and anointing when God tells me I have the fullness of the deity within me and have been fully anointed. I have quitted thinking that I have to pray the right prayers in the right order at the right time in order to be heard. I have tried to quit pointless squabbles about doctrine as nobody has the whole truth and trying to change somebody else’s beliefs is not my job.

Is there a way to go with grace? Yes, Yes and Yes. To go with grace means to quit all forms of law. I can quit anything that suggests I can earn or keep my salvation or that my relationship with God is about me keeping the rules. I am blessed because he loves to bless me, it is his character not mine that leads to blessing. I am righteous and holy because he says so, I am reconciled, accepted and loved because he says so and he tells the truth. Jesus came full of grace and truth and anything more than that or mingled with that is not for me. I cannot mix in some law, just to be sure of my salvation, keep all the rules just in case it is too good to be true. Mixing law and grace is the same as saying the cross was not sufficient to fulfil the law, that sacrifice is still needed and law keeping is still necessary, something which Paul rebuked the Galatian church for believing. So I have quit law keeping and have gone the way of grace. His grace is sufficient for me.

Beauty and Hope

2011-07-05T10:37:00.005+01:00

‘He makes all things beautiful in its time’ Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV

‘The whole He hath made beautiful in its season’ (Youngs Literal Translation)

All things in harmony with the whole work of God. A verse bursting with hope.

I wonder if we can link this verse to Isaiah 61:3 – ‘to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair’, where perhaps the ashes are hopes that have turned to dust. People are full of hopes and dreams, some of which they see fulfilled and some they see crumble in their hands like dust. I wonder whether when we consider our purpose for today we could add the dimension of bringing hope back to people. Can we speak words of life to create hope again? To inform them that God always has good plans for them, that his word is true and everything God does is forever, nothing added, nothing taken away.

The bible is full of scriptures that encourage us to look up, to hope, to trust, to know that help is on the way, to know that all will be well. Where perhaps in the past the church has been concerned too much with judgement day and the consequences of sin we could shift our emphasis to redemption and hope for today.

I wonder if we can ask God to shift the times and seasons to bring beauty today where there are ashes, to bring hope where there is despair. Yesterday we were praying for two young women, one with breast cancer, one with cervical cancer, (the two cancers that affect woman-ness, femininity, beauty, identity). Cancer brings with it a devastation of hopes, from the very moment it is diagnosed the hope to avoid it is in ashes whilst other hopes hang in the balance; the hope to have more children, the hope to avoid medical interventions, the hope to avoid hair loss, the hope to avoid sickness, the hope to live. One of the biggest hopes we have – to be healthy and the main thought throughout pregnancy – the hope for a healthy baby. So we prayed for these two women, we prayed for beauty today instead of the ashes that came with the diagnosis and medical intervention. We prayed for today because that is what we have - we hope today for beauty today. We asked God to call the time for beauty ‘today’ not in the distant future.

This is not new information; it is just a reminder that we are the hope carriers.

Here’s a good prayer. It was delivered by Mother Theresa when she addressed the United Nations in 1985 (according to Wikipedia)

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.

That where there is hatred I may bring love,

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness,

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony,

That where there is error I may bring truth,

That where there is doubt I may bring faith,

That where there is despair I may bring hope,

That where there are shadows I may bring light,

That where there is sadness I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted,

To understand than to be understood,

To love than to be loved.

For it is by forgetting self that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven,

it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Amen.

Harry Potter and the Deadly Paranoia

2011-06-24T17:49:00.006+01:00

First of all a confession… I’ve read all seven Harry Potter books. I quite liked the first two as children’s books and probably read them to/with my youngest kids. I enjoyed the third book as a novel in its own right. I disliked the fourth book, the first of the huge ‘bricks’ she then produced, and considered it self-indulgent, over-long, unfocused and lacking in plot, in fact I disliked it so much I didn’t read the fifth book until after the sixth one came out. Eventually my daughter persuaded me to give it a go and I enjoyed it so I then quickly read number six and on its eventual release the seventh and, so far, last book.

I wouldn’t call myself a huge fan. I can remember only bits of them, the films stick in my mind much more, and I can’t remember what bits happen in which book terribly well. They’re reasonably well written, or they would never have been published in the first place, but they’re not in the same class as Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ series and they’re certainly not ‘literary’ novels. They’re kids’ books that appeal to some adults who enjoy fantasy, adventure, escapism and taken in the broad sweep an epic struggle between good and evil.

So why do so many Christians hate them, loath Joanna Rowling and in extreme cases not just stop their kids from enjoying them but actually go so far as to preach against them and publically burn them? There’s a one word answer: “witchcraft”. This is just a word, a simple two syllable word – so what is it that people are really reacting against? I think it’s the kingdom of satan and the way that is most overtly expressed; that is ‘the occult’. Now I’m no expert on the occult, I was brought up in a Christian home and never strayed down that road, but surely the key thing about it is that there is a personality at the centre of it all, the devil or satan, and the occult operates as a religion. This religion, as all religions do, provides a system of practices, laws and rules that enable its practitioners to access knowledge and understanding which is derived from and leads to the personality at the centre plus the faithful gain some perceived benefit from that system. Obviously a Christian believes people involved in the occult are in fact gaining merely fleeting benefits, if any, and ultimately it will enslave and destroy them, and I would heartily agree with such a statement. (This is why true Christianity isn’t a religion – there are no rules to keep that produce knowledge or understanding or access to the personality – Jesus did away with the law and gave us union with God through grace by his perfect sacrifice).

And this is why I think the Harry Potter novels do NOT deserve the hated that has been reserved for them in some quarters. In these books, and similarly in C. S. Lewis’ ‘Narnia’ novels, J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘Lord Of The Rings’ saga, Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ series and countless others, the ‘magic’ that is featured so prominently and practiced by witches, wizards, elfs, etc has NO such personality at the centre of it. The ‘magic’ is a naturally occurring phenomenon within the reality described in the books in much the same way as magnetism, electricity, gravity or radio waves are in the real world. The witches, wizards, elfs etc are simply the people who have the ability to manipulate that natural phenomenon via the tools of their trade, staff’s, wands, crystal balls and spells in much the same way that a radio engineer in our world could manipulate radio waves to send voices ‘magically’ across the world using circuits, a battery and an aerial! There is virtually NO correlation between the real world occult practices of a modern medium, psychic or spiritualist and the magical practices of Harry Potter, Gandalf the Grey, Aslan or even The White Witch or Voldemort!

The magic in these books is NOT a religion. It’s simply part of the physics of the world. If the actual substance behind the ‘magic’ is nothing to do with the real occult, if there isn’t a person (satan) behind it, then what’s the problem? It can’t be the words surely? They’re just words! It’s the meanings that are important.

If our objection really is to the words ‘wizard’, ‘witch’ and ‘magic’ and we think the meaning inextricably linked to them then how come we can change the word ‘magic’ to ‘the force’ and have no problem with that? What else is a Jedi but a space-age wizard? Why is Luke Skywalker’s use of ‘the force’, which is surely just another way of describing magic but without the literary baggage associated with the fantasy genre, allowed by the Harry Potter haters? There is NO substantive difference between Dumbledore in Harry Potter and Obi-Wan Kenobi!

If it’s the super-natural abilities that we object to then we have a problem not just with Harry Potter’s wizarding world, but with Aslan’s magic in Narnia, Gandalf’s in Lord Of The Rings and with Superman and his ability to ‘magically’ fly, to see though solid objects and be super-strong; we would end up comparing the man-of-steel with the demoniac from the Gospels who could tear his chains off and couldn’t be restrained even by many men! Is Superman possessed? I don’t think so!

I think the reason some Christians hate Harry Potter so much is they have a warped view of both satan and God. They see them as almost equal and opposite, like the Greek gods Zeus and Hades, who were brothers, playing chess with the lives of mortal men. When in fact satan's attempts to defeat God would be better compared to an amoeba attacking a supernova – it’s never going to go well for the amoeba. We have no reason to fear satan – if we are in Christ nothing can separate us from him!

Saying that reading Harry Potter would interest children in magic and therefore the real occult is as sensible as saying that letting children watch Tom & Jerry cartoons would interest them in animal cruelty and cause them to grow up to abuse animals, or that reading The Beano makes them grow up to be teenage delinquents. It’s nonsense.

Finally in the Harry Potter books good always wins. Evil is vanquished and what is it vanquished by? Better magic? Greater power? Superior spells or witchcraft? Military might? Nope. Evil is vanquished by a combination of love and self-sacrifice…. now where have I read that before?

The Lasso Walk

2011-05-17T12:31:00.003+01:00

The thought.

A couple of years ago I felt that Wirral was so heavily influenced by Liverpool that it had lost some of its connection to Wales. It was somehow being overshadowed by the city. All things seemed to tie the peninsula to the city rather than any identity of its own or connection into Wales. So whilst the prophetic words related to Wild fire coming from Wales I felt it would need an easy path across Wirral if it was to impact, something of a joining of the nations, a knitting together of North Wales to Wirral via the Dee estuary.

So Phil and I took a wander from Wirral into Wales one day. A 13 mile trek winding our way over fields and through flooded footpaths into Wales. We then organised a crisscross walk along the border, gathering a bunch of folk from different spheres and generations to amble left and right over the border between the two nations like a thread sewing the two together. It seemed significant to have a group wandering together, talking, eating and enjoying the possibility of making a difference.

Phil and I believed there was another walk due that took in more of the Wirral and in January Phil saw a fiery lasso shape and knew that was the shape of the walk. We chose a weekend that seemed the most convenient to most people and set about gathering maps, planning the route, the teams and eating times, (obviously the most important part).

A friend asked if the walk was linked to a group of people who had also chosen the same weekend to organise a more detailed border prayer walk, incorporating 24/7 prayer rooms along the whole border for two weeks starting at the top and relaying down the border, North to South. Two groups of youngsters to climb the two highest mountains in the two nations and they were kicking it off with an event on the Friday night that we were gathering the team together. It seemed God had a specific plan in mind for this particular weekend in May in 2011 to call something into being. I emailed the border prayer group just to connect with them and was encouraged by what they were doing and their enthusiasm for what we were doing as that they had not looked at the North part of the country but had covered the south with a walk across the Severn bridge, so the encouragement was mutual as they discovered that we covered the top. One of those very rare moments when you know you are in the right place doing the right thing and you haven’t just lost the plot.

The team.

It was amazing the team that gathered for the weekend. Nigel and Jean from the South of England and with Welsh blood flowing through their veins, the Luff clan from North Wales carrying the Kiss, Dyfed from Anglesey the home of royalty, Derek from London married to Joy from Wirral pulling the North and South together, Andy from Liverpool married to Sajmira from Albania pulling the nations together, Phil from Chester married to Mags the Celt, and our children one born on Wirral, one in the city, Alison from both the City and the Wirral full of promise for what can be, Jonathan from Wirral-the indigenous, Anne-Marie from the city and carrying the catholic heritage of the mystics. It was good to have the generations walking together, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren. A small part of what they carried individually and tiny no doubt in comparison to what God saw when he looked at us together walking out a fiery lasso.

The journey.

We gathered on the Friday night, ate together and drove over to West Kirby to see our starting point for Saturday morning. Following a very rainy day the view was clear and whilst cold and windy the lighthouse could be seen sticking up on the other side of the estuary. We stayed for a moment to enjoy the view and the expectation of the adventure of the next two days.

Saturday morning we gathered to lush up on Jesus, to walk and wander the outline set and to release blessing, joy and togetherness onto the land. The maps had been walked on, laid on and kissed. We were on a mission from God (lol), to pull Wirral back into place, to pull off that which had covered heaven’s design. We were and are part of a chain reaction!

As we walked along the Welsh side of the estuary I felt a sense that as we walked we were releasing the land from that which had pressed it down. A picture of geysers popping with every footstep. Weni played her Celtic drum and we ambled along in the sunshine. The afternoon walk was somewhat less straightforward, a later start, a rejigging of the plans, the weather turned damp, a forgotten car and a hill to climb! It is interesting that this was the sticky point of the walk for me whilst Phil and Nigel walked the crossing of the border with no let or hindrance, noting it is an open border.

Sunday’s walk incorporated most of Wirral walking along the coastal path facing the Irish Sea, the Mersey-side Docklands where Nigel had worked in his past, Port Sunlight a village built by Lord Lever for his employees and strange in its design and feel, past the cancer hospital, into Thornton Hough, a very posh Cheshire village, and onto the end point at Parkgate, home of the ice-cream and view across the Dee estuary to Wales. We gathered in the morning at Joy and Derek’s house to focus our eyes on Jesus and I was struck by the comparison of trying to be quiet and controlled due to uncompromising neighbours and walking to pull the Wirral out from the overshadowing of a controlling city – the micro and the macro.

The walk was marked by wild wind and rain. On the coast facing the Irish Sea, Andy fully embraced the wild as he stood on the rocks and threw his arms out in abandonment to the wind and rain and Sajmira tried to fly in her waterproof poncho. We walked and talked about the shape of church, the solid and sure wild fire from the Welsh speaking community and our hopes and frustrations. We finished the walk very damp, tired and with a sense that maybe the deeper magic had been at work as we wandered.

I once was blind but now I see!

2011-04-21T17:54:00.001+01:00

‘So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ 2 Cor 4:18

‘Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.’ Hebrews 12:2

‘Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.’ 1 Peter 1:8

‘To live by faith but not by sight!’ 2 Cor 5:7

To believe what God says is true, to trust in what God has said, regardless of what our circumstances look like. I think it is during the Freedom in Christ course they make the statement that you live what you actually believe not what you say you believe. We can all say quite easily that we believe what God says, believe what it says in the bible and then spend our days living out something that says we don’t actually believe any of it. It is quite shocking to note the gap between what I say I believe and what I actually live out. Each day as we open our eyes we are met with the reality of the world around us and we respond accordingly. The verses above seem to exhort us to not open our eyes to this reality but to focus on the unseen, to focus on the face of Jesus and respond to him. Perhaps if we had some sort of filter over our natural eyes so that we could only see Jesus and beyond that into the world around us, how would we respond to the world around us? What if our focus was Jesus and everything else had to be seen through him first? The reality of our new creation existence is that Jesus is living in our bodies and we have full access into the presence of God, therefore being able to see Jesus is a reality that we can simply believe. The verse in Peter seems to indicate that at least one result of believing in Jesus is inexpressible and glorious joy.

There is an interesting story of Jesus healing the blind man outside the village – he spits in his eyes (nice) and then;

‘He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.’ Mark 8:24-25

I think it is an interesting story as we have used this story when we’ve prayed for people to be healed and there hasn’t been an instant healing and said something like ‘oh well even Jesus had to pray twice for the blind guy.’ It seems right and certainly helps us to understand why some folk don’t get healed first time round but do we really believe that Jesus couldn’t heal the guy with one go? He doesn’t seem to have a problem elsewhere with any of his miracles. But how about we put the story in with these scriptures and perhaps/maybe what Jesus did was he enabled the man to see things in the unseen reality first;

‘They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendour.’ Isaiah 61:3

‘But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.’ Jeremiah 17:7-8

‘Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.’ Psalm 1:1-3

I’ve been pondering a few other good verses relating to blind eyes seeing;

‘The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.’ 2 Corinthians 4:4

I wonder if we just ignore this verse on the basis that it does not apply to us, we have after all seen the light. But what if the god of this age can blind the mind of believers? What if the god of this age and certainly in the Western, very well educated world, is the dependence on the intellect, on our ability to reason, to work things out. Perhaps we insist on understanding something before we will believe it? Not knowing the answers or understand what is going on is seen as somehow unacceptable. Surely just to not know should be ok as understanding a mysterious God can be pretty tricky! Perhaps by relying on our heads rather than the Spirit to understand everything we have missed the point of the gospel? If the Spirit doesn’t reveal what is going on to you then perhaps you don’t need to know and you can just carry on trusting.

The usual rebuttal to suggesting that one may be ‘thinking too much’ is ‘God gave me a brain and I’m going to use it’, interesting in light of the scriptures regarding man’s brain power.

‘For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.’ 1 Cor 1:25

‘So that your faith might be based not on man's wisdom but on the power of God. ... so that your trust might rest not on the wisdom of man but on the power of God’ 1 Cor 2:5

Amazing verses as to where we need to get our wisdom from!! Perhaps as we have seen the light of the gospel and are therefore new creations we need to know where our mind fits in to this mysterious transformation.

‘We have the mind of Christ’ 1 Cor 2:16

‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ Romans 12:2

‘Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.’ Eph4:23 New Living

As we have been made in the likeness of God our intellect, our brain function is amazing, absolutely incredible and absolutely to be fully utilised in all the good things the mind is capable of. I’m certainly not saying that the mind is useless; I’m just not convinced it is to be used as a replacement for simply believing and I am suggesting that part of the new creation reality is to lose our own head and have it replaced by Jesus’s head. The idolisation of our intellect can be a whopper in our churches and can leave some people in our churches feeling insecure in their faith. Some feel that because they don’t understand commentaries, don’t understand theological debates, haven’t been to bible school, can’t read, struggle with thinking altogether that they are somehow inferior to others in the church. They simply believe what it says in the bible. I ‘think’ these people are the ones who should be out front on a Sunday morning telling us their faith stories. I was in a group once where a refuse collector said he believed it because God said it – simple as. What a fantastic testimony. The wonderful gospel creates a level playing field with no favourites and no experts. The Holy Spirit is our teacher, the revealer of all truth and our dependence on him will bring us all the understanding we need. I really don’t have to understand the things of God to believe in Him, I don’t have to understand the cross, the redemption, grace, the fullness of Christ living within me, my co-crucified status; I just have to believe in their reality.

‘We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began…. no mind has conceived …but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.’ 1 Cor 2:7-10

Jesus talked of becoming like children, the foolish shaming the wise and he does seem to have an aversion to those who know the words of scripture very well and understand how to work them to their advantage without understanding God at all. Jesus was surrounded by teachers of the law and yet seems to have spent his time with fishermen, tax collectors and the sick. He refers to the teachers as blind guides and accuses them of squeezing out a gnat whilst swallowing camels. Those Jews who took great pains to avoid offence in very small matters, superstitiously observing the smallest points of the law, in this case the law against eating insects, and carefully straining out the gnat larva from drinks, whilst taking no effort to avoid great sins of hypocrisy, deceit, oppression, and lust.

Here’s my final thought

‘My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.’ Acts 22:11 I wonder whether it was the religious spirit all over Paul that blinded him in the face of Jesus. He is released from it, like scales, when he is prayed for to be filled with the Spirit. I can’t find any other reference to folk going blind when faced either with the glory of God or the risen Christ other than Paul, blindness is often an analogy of spiritual blindness in the bible and spiritual sight comes with being filled with the Holy Spirit. An interesting thought.

Spiritual Hunger?

2011-04-07T17:17:00.002+01:00

Firstly an apology – it’s another fairly long one today, please stick with it and secondly the disclaimer; what follows are just my thoughts on the subject not a statement of absolute truth. It saves a lot of effort to say it once at the beginning rather than qualifying every statement I subsequently go on to make!

There’s a lot of talk about being hungry at the moment in blogs, on Facebook, in sermons, in ‘worship’ song lyrics, in prayers and in books and to be honest and blunt most of it really winds me up! I have a few issues with the concept of being ‘spiritually hungry’, ‘hungry for God’, ‘hungry for more of God’, ‘hungry for His presence’ or any one of the hundreds of similar phrases bandied about.

If you personally feel spiritually hungry, or hungry for more of God I am not criticising you, nor do I want you to feel hurt, angry, naughty, wrong, invalidated or condemned. I do, however, want to suggest that you can be satisfied, and I’d also like you to give some of the ideas here some thought.

In the NIV version of the Bible there are 102 verses using the words hunger, hungry, thirst or thirsty. The Old Testament has the most with 67 and the New Testament has just over half that with 35. Most of the references are direct descriptions of normal physical hunger or thirst, a lot are concerning God’s promises to feed the hungry and quench the thirsty. Very, very few are using the word hunger and thirst in relation to a spiritual condition (Amos 8:11 being a prime example and this in the midst of another prophetic rebuke to the Jews). The Old Testament must always be read from the perspective afforded by the New Covenant of grace. Just because someone says it in the Bible it doesn’t make it true! Now hold on, put that rock down; don’t stone me yet. In Psalm 42:9, and elsewhere, the psalmists say “Why have you forgotten me?” to God. Do we have a theology that believes that God forgets us from time to time? Is he absent minded? “He is getting on a bit – he’s older than time after all”. Nonsense! The psalmist may have thought God had forgotten him but we know from Deut 31:6, Josh 1:5, Heb 13:5 and many other scriptures and promises he can’t and won’t – so this statement isn’t ‘true’ in the sense that we can extrapolate a theology or concept of God around it.

Psalm 42 is the big one in the Old Testament to justify being ‘hungry for God’. So big in fact a very popular worship song has used it (“As the deer pants for the water”) but what we have to remember is that the psalmist, a Son Of Korah, was an Old Covenant man, he did not know Jesus, he didn’t have the indwelling Holy Spirit so his encounter with God was through animal sacrifices, visiting the tabernacle or the temple and through the Torah. As with much of the Old Testament the longing expressed by the writer of this Psalm was fulfilled by Jesus, Jesus was the drink of water that the psalmist was looking for! Is the rock back on the ground? Am I safe to continue?

Of the 35 instances in the New Testament only 11 do not relate to someone simply being physically hungry or thirsty and they are Matt 5:6, Luke 1:53, Luke 6:21+25, John 4:13+14, John 6:35, John 7:37, Rev 7:16, Rev 21:6 and Rev 22:17.

In 10 of those 11 verses in the New Testament, the hunger or thirst referred to is satisfied by Jesus! That’s it. Simple isn’t it? If you’re hungry or thirsty then go to Jesus and he will satisfy you. Matt 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” is in the Beatitudes, a passage with many layers of meaning. Each attitude of those blessed is matched up with specific blessing, the pure will see God, the meek inherit the earth, those hungering and thirsting for righteousness will be filled. There’s no sense of a repetitive loop, that those seeing God may become impure and stop seeing him and need to re-purify themselves, that the earth will be taken away from the meek if they get out of line in some way and they’ll need to become meeker than ever to re-inherit or that the hungering and thirsting for righteousness will return after it has been filled!

Let’s also briefly address Luke 6:25 and get that out of the way; it says “Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry”. The four woe’s in v24 to v26 are addressed to those who were satisfied with Israel’s state of affairs, the Pharisees, the Scribes and those adherents to a religious system that Jesus’ ministry was in direct opposition to. This verse clearly does not apply to those following Jesus or those living in the New Covenant of grace.

The old religious ‘do-do’ has crept into the simple understanding of Jesus satisfying all our hunger and thirst and it exhorts us to continue to be hungry for more! What more? There is no more. Jesus came as the perfect sacrifice to destroy the sinful nature, make us new creations and fully inhabit our lives by the indwelling Holy Spirit. There is no more – the cross was the finished work of God in the rescue of his creation! Our knowledge, understanding, bliss and enjoyment of that finished work should grow, expand and deepen as we live in perfect union with Jesus but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have it all right now! To talk about being ‘so hungry for more of God’ is as ridiculous as two fools sitting at a banquet trying to out-do each other with their bragging of how hungry they are and yet never satisfying their hunger by eating the feast! The gospel stories of Jesus feeding the physical hunger of the multitudes expresses the lavish Father heart of God towards us, he is an abundant God.

The call to ‘get hungry’ is a return to works rather than a reliance on the grace of God. It is in fact a heresy. (See – I’m stating things as facts rather than my opinion, just check that first paragraph again if you’ve picked that rock back up.) If our experience of the goodness of God is dependent upon us we are in the same boat as those who insisted on circumcision for the gentile believers back in the 1^st Century. When preached at a meeting it is not only dead works it is also manipulation and condemnation, the implication being that the speaker has a better or bigger experience of God than you because of something they did and that you didn’t. (They almost always promise that you can have it too, if you would only do the same thing they did.)

There is a phrase I’ve heard quite a bit in the last few years, in fact I’d written it as a note on my smartphone a few years back because I used to really like it! The phrase is “Our portion is in proportion to our hunger”. Scripturally I can find absolutely no evidence for the truth of this, well not in the Bible anyway. I think this mocks the character of God, it implies God is like a mother bird, which tries to feed all her chicks but will feed more to the ones that make the most noise! Or that God withholds good things from us because we’re not hungry enough! I’m pretty sure my Bible speaks of a God who gives the exact same amount of himself to all who believe, and that amount is: all of him. Romans 8:32 – “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all— how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things”? He pours his spirit out on all flesh. I don’t get more of God because I’m hungry for more! God doesn’t bless me more because I worked hard to make myself desire him more! The work of God is simply this: to believe in the one he has sent.

Now I’m not saying we should be complacent and just sit about never spending time with our Father, never enjoying him, never eagerly looking forward to times when we can put aside the mundane things of normal life and focus 100% on him in prayer, worship or adoration. Not at all! What I’m saying is that to call this ‘hunger’ is to do a gross disservice to Jesus as it implies lack. It implies that what God has done for you already was not enough. So I encourage you to feast yourself on what Jesus has already done. Don’t be a starving fool at a banquet, tuck in, read Romans 6 in particular and all the letters of Paul and then the whole Bible and feast on the New Creation reality and realize that you’re not hungry and you were never meant to be once you’d encountered the bridegroom and he’d swept you off your feet and taken you into the wedding feast.

Nor am I saying that I’m satisfied with the state of the world, the unsaved lives of those I love, the amount of miracles I see when I pray for healing. But to call this very specific dissatisfaction ‘hunger’ seems odd to me. It’s religious language. The Lord’s Prayer tells us to pray “Your kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven” and I’m fully on board with that! I want to the kingdom to come into the lives of those who don’t acknowledge Jesus, I want the works of the enemy to be undone by the power of the Gospel, I want heaven on earth. But the word ‘hunger’ implies lack of something rather than simply a desire for something. I am fully satisfied with my God. I am fully satisfied with what he’s done for me, and for the world, on the cross. I am convinced that the kingdom will be advanced better and quicker by a people who know the full satisfaction of their salvation and leak that over-abundance into a needy world than by Christians who are constantly frustrated and looking for more.

You may have a different perspective or opinion and if so, bless you. I am not going to fall out with you over it, and I hope you won’t fall out with me!

Livin’ in a box, livin’ in a Perspex box

2011-03-31T13:19:00.002+01:00

As you may, or may not, know I am a drummer. It’s not my profession; it’s more like a syndrome. I am constantly tapping anything that will make a sound, making drum noises with my mouth, playing ‘air-drums’ as I wander around the house and from time-to-time I do also sit on a drum stool and hit drums with sticks. I’ve played with a wide variety of people in all kinds of church settings and enjoyed some of it a lot and some of it less so. There’s a couple of worship leaders (and I’m not especially comfortable with that term but it’ll do as a readily understood short-hand for now, I may blog about that another time) who I absolutely love playing with, the first is Godfrey Birtill and the other is Rob Cresswell. I’ve played with both of them many many times over a number of years and its comfortable and exciting and fun and challenging each and every time. There’s an easy connection and a ‘flow’ that feels natural and makes it just work when we play. Some might spiritualise it and call it an anointing, some might just chalk it up to lengthy experience. I think it’s a bit of both. However there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to ruin the experience of playing together and that’s when the drummer is put into or behind a Perspex box.

Aside from making a professional quality recording there is no technical reason whatsoever for putting the drummer behind a screen. Churches are the only places where the drummer is boxed off like that! Have you ever seen a live band in any secular setting put a box around the drummer? It doesn’t matter if the band is playing the O2 Area, Madison Square Gardens, the local community centre or a tiny back room in a pub the drummer’s connection to the band, especially the bass player, is immediate and personal and vital. It’s also not a genre thing – the music can be jazz, rock, soul, funk, reggae, country, folk or anything – the drummer is still not hidden behind a screen.

The reason, or indeed often excuse, for this strange behaviour by churches is almost always ‘The drummer is too loud’. This could be because (a) he really is so much louder than the rest of the band that he’s drowning them out or it could be (b) some people just think he’s too loud because they can still hear him!

If you’re in point (a) then then most churches first and only course of action is often to buy a Perspex screen and plonk it between the drummer and the band – this is like noticing the volume on your TV set is too loud and immediately deciding the solution to this is to put the TV in a different room! You are tackling the symptom rather than addressing the problem. If your drummer is genuinely too loud then the leader of the band needs to work with the drummer to teach him to play more sensitively. It is possible to play quietly when required. I can – and I’m an extremely average drummer. Try positioning the drummer in a better place so he can see the band leader properly and ensure a good fold-back unit is used, where appropriate, so the drummer can hear properly at the right volume level so he can pitch his playing correctly. Your drummer is NEVER EVER going to develop sensitivity in their playing if you stuff him behind a screen and rely on the PA to control the sound. The PA is simply there to ensure everyone in the room can hear what’s going on – it should never be used to control the sound. The band should control the sound themselves and that requires communication, honesty and humility. If your drummer is arrogant and insists on playing too loudly despite repeated conversations about the problem then the solution is NOT a Perspex screen, the solution is that they’re not allowed to play at all until they are prepared to do it with the right attitude. If your drummer is a beginner and struggles to play sensitively then again the Perspex box is still not the answer – he needs practice, encouragement and feedback on each song.

And if the drummer is too loud occasionally, or the singers hit the odd bum note or the guitarist plays the wrong chords from time to time and they get flak for it then frankly those who have a problem with this need to get a grip and realise musical perfection is not the point in worship! Expressing joy and delight in our heavenly Father is the point. As Godfrey says “We’re all in the band” – so stop slagging off your band mates and get your focus on Jesus and not the music.

If the criticism is more point (b) then you have an easier problem to deal with. People who think the drums shouldn’t be heard at all probably don’t want anything other than a 400 year old pipe organ in church so you’re on a hiding to nothing trying to accommodate that attitude. If we’re only going to use ‘biblical’ instruments then all we can have is crashing cymbals (would they like that? I doubt it!), a few flutes, primitive trumpets, the odd harp maybe but certainly no organs, pipe or otherwise, guitars or pianos let alone the evil of the drum kit! Western European diatonic scale melodies would also be out so clearly we’d have to just sing using the ancient Hebrew musical tradition! If they just want ‘traditional’ English church music then they need to be reminded that the church persecuted those that wanted to replace the plain-song sung only by Monks with the congregational singing and the religious choral style that they now consider to be correct! So what you should do with these people is this: ignore them completely because they won’t be happy whatever you do!

So set the drummer free from the evil tyranny of the Perspex box!

This one is bad...

This one is ghastly...

But this one is PURE evil...

All of these were seen in churches where I've played. (Didn't use the bottom one - we asked for a second kit to be put out on the stage - this one was nicknamed 'the garden shed' and it was in America!).

Rob Bell

2011-03-28T09:33:00.003+01:00

Rob Bell! There I’ve said it. It seems everyone is blogging about him, tweeting about him, being interviewed about him and talking about him – well since his new book ‘Love Wins’ was announced anyway. Here’s my take on the whole ‘Is Rob Bell a Universalist?’ debate.

I don’t care.

I read a few web articles out of curiosity and some made some interesting points both pro and anti Bell’s book but I’m not going to link to them here or promote one over another because what does it matter what he believes? Nor am I going to buy or read his book or engage in the debate any more. As my, very wise, wife pointed out to me this morning it’s not like he’s altered the Bible! Is God diminished because Rob Bell believes something I believe to be heretical? No. Is God enhanced because Rob Bell has a wonderful truth to impart to me? No. Am I a part of Rob Bells congregation? No. Are you? Unlikely, if you’re reading this blog! So what does it matter to you what he says, believes, writes or teaches? If Rob Bell's ‘stuff’ brings life to you and helps you in your walk with Jesus then enjoy it, if it doesn’t float your boat then don’t engage with it. Listen to someone else’s teaching or ‘horror-of-horrors’ actually read your Bible for yourself more and ask the Holy Spirit to give you some fresh revelation!

As my friend Godfrey has noted in the past the ‘spiritual police’ are often around in our meetings – checking stuff out to see if it’s right or if it’s wrong. Sadly those ‘spiritual police’ are sometimes not the modern day Pharisees and legalists, they’re us! We have this crazy urge to judge everything and decide if it lines up with what we believe and then get all huffy if it doesn’t. We get especially wound up if the person is successful, influential and, dare I say it, American! We British often like to feel smugly superior with our, often, cynical world view and think things like ‘I would never have fallen for all that style-over-substance nonsense’ or ‘those naïve Americans will believe anything if it’s slick and flashy!’. We justify our criticism by feeling like we’re part of some low-rent Christian team of ‘X-Men’, saving the church from the heretics and deceivers. “I must quickly nip into this phone box and change into ‘Heresy Man’ – I fight untruth and dodgy-doctrine wherever it may be found”! Nonsense, our responsibility is to love one another in the same way as the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, not to nit-pick over the beliefs and teachings of someone 4,000 miles away leading a congregation we’re not even a member of!

Again as Godfrey has said “Let’s hand in our home-made ‘spiritual police’ badges - we made them, God didn’t give us them.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if in our attitudes to other parts of the church, part of the bride of Christ, it was actually true that ‘Love Wins’?

The guilt trip

2011-03-24T19:16:00.001Z

Fear, guilt and shame, the three great manipulators. I’ve been wondering about these three in the last couple of days and especially why guilt seems to be so prevalent in the church, so here are some of my thoughts.

As a Christian we are told not to fear, to be courageous, to be very courageous. If we are to fear anything or anybody it is God and even there our understanding is limited as to what that actually means. We are very familiar with fear and can experience it in relation to the future, the past and even the present. We have endless things to fear and worry about but we also know without a shadow of a doubt that fear is something to be conquered. It is something bad and not part of God’s plan for us and so we work on trying to deal with our fears. We pray to be released from them, we look for root causes and try to dig them out with various techniques and we ask for help facing our fears. It is all part of being victorious and living in more freedom. As a manipulation tool of control it is excellent. It can keep us locked down, make wrong choices and cause us to be suspicious of others, ensuring that we huddle together for safety.

So is fear always bad? Not necessarily, I think it is an emotion given partly to protect us from harm, to heighten our awareness of a real danger not a possible danger. It certainly is not there to control our decisions and it must always be subject to the spirit of God that is within us. We have not been given a spirit of fear but of sonship. If fear is being used to manipulate us we should always deal with it by using truth. My own view is that fear can only be dealt with by truth; it is not a process or a technique or about digging out something. It is slam-dunked through belief in what God says about us. He tells us to be courageous because he is with us. Can it be as simple as that? Can we deal with all our fears through simply believing the truth that God is with us? I think so, simply believe.

Shame we also recognise as something not to be tolerated. We know it is linked to the fall, at their creation Adam and Eve do not feel shame; they eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and become the first to feel this emotion. They don’t appear to be ashamed of their behaviour in disobeying God; they feel shame because of their nakedness. They rapidly sew fig leaves together to cover it. We know that God does not want us to feel shame in any form. He has rescued us from the fall and any experience in our life that causes us to feel shame needs to be looked at, prayed through, forgiveness needs to be forthcoming – either accepting it or working through forgiving others. If someone can make you feel shame about your actions or your person they can manipulate you. I think there is a key to overcoming shame shown to us in the garden. Shame needs to be covered but it is not by our own efforts, it needs to be covered, not with fig leaves but with the blood of Jesus. Allowing him to cover our shame with his blood is I believe, the only way for it to be gone forever, for it to be dead and buried and not to haunt us and used against us. Even from the beginning the shame needed to be covered by a sacrifice!! Again it is for us to believe the truth over and above our experiences.

We know that fear and shame can be used, to restrict our freedom and therefore we know and are taught to control these feelings/emotions and to keep them from causing us harm. My thoughts have wandered to whether the same applies to guilt. As Christians are we taught with the same gusto to deal with guilt? Could it be that guilt is such a good manipulator we want to keep it in the church or do we believe guilt comes hand in hand with being a Christian, as it helps us to identify our sin? Making congregations feel guilty, as a control tool, is not unheard of and I think is pretty rampant. It is can be used in most churches to make people turn up, tithe, follow the vision, contribute and behave as a good member of the church as long as we follow the set rules. As we are so familiar with the feeling of guilt, and possibly even believe that feeling guilty is ok, we can be manipulated really easily and therefore controlled really easily. If we can put somebody on a guilt trip they can be manipulated into believing they are doing a service even if it is detrimental to them and possibly their calling. How many Christians have been manipulated into doing things that they really don’t want to do, feel guilty for not wanting to do it and then out of a sense of duty will do what they have been asked or is expected of them?

If we believe that we have been given guilt as an emotion to help us identify sin we will not deal with it in the same way as we do fear and shame. We will not want to annihilate it from our lives and in fact will be suspicious of people who say they don’t feel guilt. Whilst Romans 8:1 tells us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, we still think that only applies once we have confessed our sins and only for a very short period of time until we sin again. I’m satisfied that condemnation and sin go together but I’m not convinced that we should be in a constant battle with sin and condemnation/guilt. Paul is drawing out in Romans the difference between life under the law and life in the spirit and in Romans 8 it is clearly stated that there is no condemnation for those who live in the spirit. For those believing in the gospel of grace and not under the law, that did condemn, a life without condemnation is a possibility. The gospel sets us free from the law, into a life of the new covenant where all our sins are forgiven already, where now we choose to sin rather than being controlled by a sinful nature and we can choose not to sin. We can remove guilt from our choices and whilst some of those choices may make people unhappy, we are not responsible for others reactions and this certainly cannot be considered sin and therefore warrant guilt. I don’t believe in being sin conscious which leads to guilt conscious which makes us susceptible to manipulation through guilt. I do believe in God consciousness which leads to freedom from manipulation.

From the moment that we are dead to sin we are dead to guilt. To simply believe that this is true may make us a less easy target for manipulation in any setting. I think the answer to manipulation in any form is to simply believe the truth.

What if...

2011-03-01T19:18:00.002Z

Rob Bell, John Crowder and Rick Joyner walk into a pub.....definately a good joke in there somewhere......

Rob buys everyone in the bar a drink, he’s very inclusive

John asks for an empty glass, he’s already drunk.

Rick doesn’t need to order as he met the bar tender in a dream and told him what he’d want.

The Calvinist walks into the bar and thanks God he’s got that out of the way.

The Puritans walk into the bar – don’t be silly!

Brother Lawrence walks into the bar and heads for the kitchen.

The Pope walks into the bar orders a large glass of red wine, drinks the lot and wipes the glass with his hankie.

Some Sadducees walk into the bar, have a good drink and start singing Imagine.

Some Pharisees walk into the bar and check if everybody’s hands are clean before they order a drink.

St Paul walks into the bar with a friend, they check everyone has a drink and then orders a carry out.

Jesus walks into the bar, changes all the water into wine, starts a sing a long and calls for a lock in.

Rob Bell, good communicator but not sure what he is actually saying, John Crowder, preaches Christ crucified whilst 'toking the ghost', Rick Joyner the pursuit of the supernatural and a knight of Malta, Martin Luther the great reformer - unless you're a roman catholic, Paul the great evangelist but not too good with relationships - the list of ‘spiritual’ leaders who have got some things we might consider right and some things that we think we should stone them for goes on and on. We love to debate other people’s theology, prodding it here and there to see if it lines up with scripture and even there does it line up with the NIV or the KJV.

If we lived 2000 years ago would we be any different listening to Jesus? Or if Jesus lived today and we heard a few things he said via the media, maybe looked him up on YouTube or Google, see what end times prophetic were saying about him. Is he popping up on the Elijah list? Does he have a podcast we could listen to? Would we be getting on a plane to go and see him personally? Would we even know about him even if he lived today, he seemed to avoid wanting publicity. He possibly wouldn’t be a PR guy’s favourite customer.

I like some ‘teachers’, I don’t like others. The one’s I don’t like, I try and avoid. I put it down to style mostly, sometimes the content or lack of it, will make me pull a face, get a bit wound up, but hopefully not reach for my bag of pebbles. If we are going to believe that love is the centre piece of our lives then I suppose that must include those teachers that get on our spiritual nerves. I doubt those we are trying to introduce to Jesus care about our disagreements other than to note that we don’t really love each other so how can we say we love them.....

Just a thought.

2011-02-28T10:46:00.002Z

Does the church set the standard for the world or does the world set the standard for the church. Who is influencing who?

Is it a coincidence that the church is fighting to come out of empire, remove the control, let the underdog speak, let the big man on the stage give way to the person on the fringe whilst in the East the populace is calling for an end to tyranny, an end to the big guy with the control, to allow freedom to speak, to have an opinion or a belief...an interesting thought.

So where we have feared that the world is influencing the church and hidden away from it perhaps the world has only imitated where the church has gone astray in the past....maybe.

Being Perfect?

2011-02-10T17:07:00.000Z

I’ve been thinking a lot about perfection and being a new creation recently. I heard John Crowder teach at the recent GloryFest event in Newport, Wales and have also read his book ‘Mystical Union’ which I can heartily recommend. He is preaching a gospel of the finished work of the cross that, frankly, blew my socks off. I’ve heard plenty of teaching over the last three or four years about us dying with Christ on the cross (two hands, one nail), the fact that our old self was buried in baptism and that it’s no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and I’ve been very blessed, encouraged and strengthened in my faith by it. But last year, at the last SloshFest in Barry, while John was speaking he told a story, in passing really, about his little girl arguing with the Sunday School teacher at a church they had gone to about how she’s perfect and the teacher saying she wasn’t. It was a funny story and I liked it but when I tried to think of myself as perfect I found offence bubbling up within me. How arrogant would I have to be to think I could be called perfect? I liked almost all of what John said but that had crossed a line, how could he or anyone claim to be ‘perfect’? It offended a religious mind-set, one I wasn’t even aware I had, I knew one day I would be perfect but to claim that I was already was absurd, possibly even blasphemous, wasn’t it? This year at GloryFest John spoke several times and was his usual charismatic, energetic, entertaining and outrageous self but he spoke in much more detail about the finished work of the cross and he also talked about perfection and he goes into even more detail in his book. I’m not going to try and summarise it all here, that would be futile, get the book or listen to the teaching or read Paul’s epistles over and over; but I do want to talk briefly about why I now believe I am made perfect and why I used such a pejorative term as ‘religious mind-set’.

I am perfect

Galatians 2:20 says “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Rom 6:1-3 says “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

2 Corinthians 5:17 (AMP) says “Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!”

John 19:30 says “When he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ ”

Is there any sense from any of these passages that God has simply begun something in us at our salvation? Is there any sense of a process that we now embark upon to rid ourselves of sin and make ourselves anew? If keeping the law was enough, remaining sinless by our own effort, then Christ died for nothing.

If it’s true there are two possibilities and they are that (a) we are sinners and under Satan’s dominion or (b) we are saved and in Christ’s kingdom then how can we be partially saved? How does a third, partially saved, version fit in with scripture? Paul is stating quite categorically that the old nature, our sinful fallen nature, is dead and gone and we now have a new nature, Christ living in us by His Holy Spirit! If I am a temple of the Holy Spirit (holy meaning separate, set apart, pure, amongst other things) how can someone who is intrinsically separate from sin by His very nature dwell within someone who is still sinful? In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit came upon people from time to time to empower them in some gifting or authority but it was always temporary. Now we are to ‘be continually filled’ with the Holy Spirit as he resides within us! We are in union, ingrafted, joined inextricably with Christ who is the very embodiment of the Father. Would he, could he even, be joined with anything less than sinless perfection? I don’t think so.

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was an event outside of the realm of time, it has to be or it doesn’t work! If Jesus’ death was contained within time’s restrictions then his sacrifice could only have been for those alive at the time he died and for those who had died earlier. How could he die for those as yet unborn? They didn’t yet exist so their sins hadn’t happened yet, let alone them hearing about Jesus and choosing to believe in Him! So the sins He took upon himself and paid for were all the sins of all the people in the world. Every sin I have ever committed and every sin I ever will commit! In fact, according to the scriptures above, he not only paid the penalty for my sin he took the cause of it onto the cross and killed it there. When we believe in Him, when the gift of Faith causes us to be able to believe in Jesus, the floodgates of God’s outrageous grace are opened and we enter in to the glorious freedom of the sons of God.

Here comes the obvious objection: “If all that’s true then how come I still sin then?” Have I sinned since I started to believe in the perfection of the finished work of the cross? Sadly, yes I have.

Now bear with me, this is where it gets tricky, and I’m not 100% certain I’ve got all this nailed down in my own head yet! Maybe what we’re doing is we are muddling up nature and actions here.

Before I knew Jesus and believed in Him and his wonderful sacrifice I was a sinner. I had a sinful nature and that nature expressed itself in my actions and thoughts and attitudes and desires. I couldn’t help it. I was a sinner – it’s who I was not what I did. The sins did not make me a sinner; I was a sinner so therefore naturally I sinned. I had no choice in the matter! See Romans 7:15-24 for Paul’s take on this issue. However now I have received this new creation life, my very nature is new. The old sinful nature isn’t tied up and gagged but still struggling to be free with me having to keep re-tying the knots and re-fitting the gag, no it’s dead, properly dead, buried under the water of baptism and I am now living only because Christ lives in me! I now have a new nature – that is who I am! I choose not to sin because of my new nature…but should I sin this does not change my nature any more than stopping sinning, by following the law, could have changed my nature from a sinner to a saint! What we do does NOT determine who we are – it’s the other way around. The times I choose to sin are despite my new nature not because that new creation reality isn’t true. That decision to sin, and let’s face it sinning by mistake is pretty rare if not impossible, was also dealt with 2,000 years ago on the cross. And that’s why Paul says what he says in Rom 6:1-2. This isn’t a licence to sin all we like; it’s a call to live in the fullness of the perfection we have already been given as a free gift.

Religious Mind-Set

The reason I used the rather pejorative term is because religion is all about our own efforts trying to close the gap between us and God. If I don’t accept the gift of a sinless perfect new nature I am going to try, by my own effort, to close a gap between me and God. Once we understand that the gap that no longer exists, our mind-set should change to a grace mind-set rather than a religious one. That’s why I called this way of thinking a ‘religious mind-set’, and surely we’re not treating the finished work of cross as insufficient are we?

Conclusion

You can agree with me or disagree with me, in the words of Catherine Tate’s ‘Lauren’ character “I ain’t bovvered!” I still love you and I hope you will still love me!

Pressed

2011-01-27T18:03:00.004Z

I’ve just spent the weekend at Gloryfest with some of our truly fantastic friends. I had time to sit and listen to some of our favourite preachers and teachers; John Crowder, Ben Dunn, Kathy Garda, Karen Lowe and Jo Gravell. I danced at the party whilst Godfrey hammered out the Truth and I made silly noises along to Ben Dunn, such fun. I heard the sound of freedom. We spent time with good friends eating and drinking and sharing our stories. I made some new friends and saw some Big Brother 11 housemates turn up to support Dave.
We stayed with a family who had opened their house up to ten people and created an atmosphere where we all felt like we had come home. We didn’t feel like guests, we felt like a family. We shared meal times around a large table, with kids, dogs and nationalities blending together to make the sound of fellowship. We have found the hospitality and generosity of the Welsh humbling, abundant and overwhelming.
I thought I might share some of the gems I brought home from the weekend.
On arriving on Wednesday night I was chatting with my friend about health issues, particularly linked to digestion and we encouraged each other with the verse from 1 Timothy 5:23 ‘Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.’ So we headed for the bar where I had a lovely glass of Merlot. This glass of wine was my first in five years, an interesting number as it represents Grace and represented the end of my alcohol fast. Now with hindsight I think breaking that fast was the pre-cursor to the weekend, the end of law and embracing the fullness and complete work of Grace.
In the summer of 2005, having read a very good book called ‘Fear of the Lord’ by John Bevere, I asked God how I could move my relationship with Him into something more intense, more passionate, and more obsessive. I was prompted to fast alcohol from September until Christmas and following a rather lovely glass or two over Christmas, I decided to continue with the fast for however long it felt right. From that time I became more obsessive, more passionate and more frustrated. I did not want to waste time going through the motions, I couldn’t bear doing anything I perceived to be religious. I would try and express my desire for more - more worship, more passion, more focus, more holiness, more truth, more prayer, more experience, but I was not very successful as the frustration was heard more often than the desire. As the years have passed I have learned that frustration with myself, with others or with structures does not achieve anything and probably has a detrimental effect on relationships which can’t be a good thing. So I try to keep my focus where it belongs, on him.
The reasons for my decision to continue with the fast as they developed over the five years - to help me get closer to God, to help me to hear him clearer, to help break some ancestors alcoholism curse that has blighted my family,(not too sure of this one but it sounded good in the right circles), God helping me to avoid becoming an alcoholic because I have a weakness towards alcohol caused by my sinful nature,(a hidden fear), to help me focus, to set me apart like a Nazarite. So whilst last Wednesday night was no different to other nights it was the beginning of a weekend where those reasons were well and truly shattered through the teaching on the cross and what actually happened there. Teaching I had listened to before but perhaps like the seed sown in the field some had drifted away for different reasons. My friend told me once that a God anointed teacher does not teach you anything you don’t already know, they just remind you of the truth. I think that is something to note when the church is full of good communicators and in need of some anointed teachers.
The reasons for the fast were well reasoned, I do think a lot, I do ponder a lot, however I am moving away from fasting as a way to achieve any of the desired goals for the fast and in fact any action on my part to achieve them as I believe I already been given them, as a gift. I also need to remember that a good reason for doing something does not always mean it is a life bringer after all we were not meant to know the difference between good and bad we were to leave that distinction to God. So now I will try and decide whether something will bring life or death rather than whether it is a good or bad decision. Here’s what happened to my good reasons for fasting alcohol:-
To get closer to God - I can get no closer to God than I am today as according to the bible he has moved in – I am a temple of the Holy Spirit, part of his body, all the fullness of the deity living in bodily form in Jesus and I have been given fullness in Christ. So how can I get closer, there is no distance between us, I have been fully reconciled to God. My knowledge/revelation of God may increase as he reveals more of himself to me by his Spirit whilst I rest in his presence but we are not getting closer. My love for him may deepen over time which leads to feeling like I am closer to him than before but the reality is I am in Christ whether I feel like it or not and my actions certainly do not bring him or me closer together.
To hear him clearer - If I believe that Christ lives in me, that he is my head, (not to be confused with in my head), that we are close all the time and that he speaks into my spirit then fasting should make absolutely no difference whatsoever. If I believe that he is God of the Universe and he wants to be heard he will find a way, which may include donkeys and writing on the wall, flowers and sunsets.
Ancestors – What do they have to do with me? I am a new creation, I have been born from above, my Dad is God and my brother is Jesus.
Sinful nature – Mine has been crucified with Christ, no longer attached, no longer in control, it has been taken from me. I am a Romans 6 true believer. I have nothing to struggle with, nothing to drag me down, nothing to cause me to sin, and nothing to separate me from God. I can live a sin free life because he calls me perfect and holy. Whilst I have sinned and fallen short I have now been rescued and am free to live in the Spirit. Galatians 5:24 “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires”. The cross effected a complete work, it did not do half a job, leaving me with a struggle on my hands, to be wrestling with myself every day, to have a split personality, an inward fight of good and bad. The cross totally crucified my sinful nature and if I believe that how can I live in its control any longer, it would be like dragging a skeleton around with me all day discussing my plans with it. I would rather believe the truth and carry the Holy Spirit around with me so he can tell me his plans.
To help me focus – My attention, my gaze, can be turned at any moment. It is my choice where to look.
To be set apart as a Nazarite for God – My belief in Jesus, who he was and is, what he did and accomplished on the cross sets me apart. I am fundamentally different from the world; I am a child of God, a citizen of heaven. I have been delivered and chosen, purchased at a price, ransom paid in full and therefore set apart. This has all been done for me, whilst I was still in my sin he died for me, I cannot assist in my salvation.
If it has all been done for me then why should I press in or pray more or with more intensity, more seeking, more chasing, pursuing, going deeper? I think once I believe the truth of the cross, the fullness of grace, the true Gospel of reconciliation and am fully satisfied with all that he has done for me, these words only now apply when talking about me and God in our unity. Wanting to sink deeper into the revelation of who he is, discover more secrets that he has hidden for me to find, to press in to be suffocated in his embrace, to pray more intensely as in to practise his presence continually. As for contending - only for the gospel not for myself I have been contended for.

So here’s to drinking the mixed wine as spoken of in Proverbs 9:1-6.

Daisy’s Afternoon Tea with the over 60’s.

2010-11-12T10:44:00.004Z

Yesterday I spent two hours with a group of over 60’s drinking tea and eating cake and hearing them share part of their stories. They had been asked to bring something from home that would tell us something about them and the stories that flowed were a joy and a privilege to hear.

One lady now in her early seventies talked about her 20 years as captain of a darts team and brought her darts to show. She talked of teaching her team in the early days about the dart board and how it didn’t go round numerically and the different kinds of darts. I see the glimmer in the eye and her smile as she tells us something of her history, a part of her life that has been hidden in her memories until shared with us.

Another lady produces two photographs. One a school class photo from 1945 taken when she was 12 and the other, a recent photo with five of the women from the class photo, they are still friends after 65 years. She keeps repeating how different they all look after 65 years. The photos are passed around and everyone takes delight in trying to spot her. She points herself out as the one in the pullover on the front row as she had a cold that day and her mum wouldn’t let her wear her pinafore. She can remember the names of all her classmates. Precious photos and memories.

The conversation moves to first jobs and they tell of mums and dads taking daughters to get a job. One lady’s mum walked her into the shoe shop and asked them to give her a job, not too impressed she walked her to the factory and spoke to the foreman, she was only 14 at the time. She didn’t finish school and started a week later in the ‘Sunlight’ factory. She told us how they would employ you for 11 months then get rid of you so they didn’t have to pay sick pay and she would go down to the jobcentre and get another job for a while and then go back. She had worked in various factories including cracking nuts which made us all laugh and jokes were made about being crackers and nutty.

Another lady had wanted to work in an office but her dad knew a chemist who was looking for an assistant so she went there instead as – “you did what your parents wanted in those days”. She worked there till she got married which seemed to be how it was for a lot of young women in the 40’s and 50’s. Get a job as soon as you leave school until you get married then you will be staying home with the children was the expectation. She went back 20 years later and was so happy to tell us that she was told that ‘she hadn’t lost it in all these years’ once she returned to work. It is fascinating listening to them talk and hearing what snippets of their past they remember. This lady is well into her 80’s now and remembers the nice feeling of being affirmed by her employer which must have been 30 or 40 years previously.

They all agree that their pay, in shillings, was handed to their mum when they got it. One lady didn’t open her pay packet until after she was married as it was handed unopened to her mum. One lady in the army said half of her pay went directly to her mum from the employer, so her mum wasn’t best pleased when she left the army and hit “civvy street”.

We sit around laughing at the different stories there is some teasing about parents expectations and what they would wear when going out at the weekend. They didn’t have many clothes so would wear the same thing the weekend after, just turn it inside out or back to front. Absolutely hilarious, “in by 9 wearing a back to front cardigan.”

One lady is new to the afternoon tea group and as she walks in I note her tidy appearance, good sensible black shoes, dark green tights, just below the knee skirt just showing under her raincoat, hat and one of those spotted plastic rain hats that she folds up and tucks in her pocket. It isn’t actually raining outside. She is quite tall which is a rarity amongst the women, most are less than 5 foot, and one lady is so short she walks under my arm when I open the door for her. This lady is slim and has a very straight back, she sits on the sofa quite near the edge so as not to slouch.

She was asked to share what she did for her first job. She smiles and tells how one summer in her late teens she and a friend had helped out on a farm picking potatoes and despite the backbreaking work had enjoyed it so much they joined the Land Army. They were living in Liverpool at the time and the two girls signed up, committing to go together. Unfortunately they were sent to separate parts of the country. This lady was sent to Somerset to work on a cattle farm, she had never been anywhere near a cow before. She spent one month on a training farm and then she was sent away to different farm. She talked of getting up at 5 in the dark, fetching the cows in for milking in knee high mud, pulling her wellingtons up at every step so the mud didn’t go in over the top. She learnt to milk the cows by hand whilst being whipped by tails and then being put on a farm with mechanical milking machines which made the job much faster. Fresh milk being put in huge pan on the Arga and 24 hours later cream being skimmed off the top. She is asked whether she was lonely and she states quite openly that it was very lonely. Whilst the family who owned the farm were kind they were very busy. It seems she can remember the isolation. She sent half her pay home and as there was only one bus a day and half a day off a week she didn’t get much time to make any friends. When the Land Army was stopped she returned to Liverpool and got a job in an office till she got married. She smiles and carries on drinking her tea. An absolutely fabulous story.

Most of these women come every other week to our afternoon tea. Some come on the bus using their free bus pass, some still drive – one lady after a serious stroke, and some walk down the road. They struggle with aches and pains, bad hips, shaking and slurred speech, scary coughs, deafness and vision problems (one lady has a huge magnifying glass which is brought out to view anything close up, I think she doesn’t bother too much with what she can’t see at a distance). One lady is from Chile and is difficult to understand as she speaks quickly with a heavy accent, she sits in an armchair that envelops her as she is so dainty. One lady had a house fire that led to months of upheaval, in the midst of which her son died tragically. She came for a cup of tea after the funeral as she knew we would be there. They like their tea and coffee in a cup and saucer and exactly how they like it. They like millionaires shortcake and to sit and set the world to rights.

I love to sit and listen to them talk.

I love to see them.

Perspectives

2010-09-13T16:34:00.001+01:00

Many years ago, when I first decided that maybe I should try ‘church’ again, we went to a Pioneer ‘Event’ in Norfolk and Martin Scott was speaking at one of the sessions. I had only recently decided to be back on speaking terms with God and was still unconvinced by a lot of what passed for ‘church’. Some of the people seemed nice and some seemed, frankly, nuts but what bothered me most about organized Christian clubs (or churches as we like to call them) was what is sometimes called theology but I’d more readily call dogma. By dogma I mean not just a way of thinking about God and our relationship to him but one specific set of ideas becoming crystallised and solidified so that they are unchanging, worse still unchallengeable, and are given the label ‘truth’. Sadly I can remember nothing of what Martin spoke about that day but his introduction has stuck with me. Obviously I can’t remember the exact words but the gist of it was along these lines…

“What I’m going to teach today isn’t the truth. It’s what God is saying to me at the moment. There are things I believe now that I didn’t necessarily believe five years ago and in five years’ time I may not believe some of the things I talk about today. Don’t swallow what I say whole, take your Bible, and some time, to ask God what he thinks about it and then make up your own mind.”
(Now if I’ve misquoted you horribly Martin I apologize – this is only my imperfect recollection so if anyone disagrees with this statement vehemently you may direct your diatribes at me not Martin Scott!)

That to me was like someone taking all of my foundations of what it means to be part of a ‘church’ and smashing them up right before my eyes and then handing me another sledgehammer and asking me if I’d like to join in! Intentionally or otherwise the church network I’d grown up in had instilled in me the belief that revelation, absolute revelation, was not only possible but had in fact been achieved; that there was a dogma that was better than all the other churches and it was ours. We may learn a bit more and enhance our dogma a little, but there would never, ever, be anything we needed to unlearn. I liked Martin’s viewpoint so much we threw our lot in with a Pioneer church and my renewed adventure with Jesus got off to a good start.

All of this is background to the point I want to make, it’s the scenery that gives my thoughts in this blog some context.

Since 2008 my wife, Mags, and I have been going down some interesting roads on our spiritual journey. Mags really started her trek off the beaten path a few years earlier when we were on holiday in Canada in 2005, but she can tell you about that herself another time. In 2008 we met Justin Abraham and Dave Vaughan from ‘Emerge Wales’ and I felt like a door to a previously unheard of path was suddenly opened in front of me and Jesus was inviting me to come through it. Over the last two years I’ve experienced Jesus in wonderful new ways and I’ve started believing some things that have shifted my whole life. Simple stuff about how He came not just to pay the price for my sin but to actually destroy my sinful nature and to give me His nature, how the fullness of the Godhead dwells in me, that God never makes us sick to ‘teach us a lesson’ or develop our character, that good health and healing were bought for us and are our inheritance, that there’s living water bubbling up from my belly, that there’s nothing I can do to earn my salvation, that He’s done it all and I can stop trying and just be, that the good news is still ‘the Kingdom is near at hand’, that the struggle with sin is over and I’m not the man in Romans 7, that healing and deliverance and supernatural encounters are the norm for believing believers, that passion, wild abandon and fun can be the hallmarks of an encounter with God’s presence! And there’s more…so MUCH more! It’s impossible to create a dogma out of this Jesus because if you could then he’d be finite and limited to our understanding and suddenly He wouldn’t be God any more!

It’s been an interesting road because not everyone thinks the same way about some of this. Some people really don’t like this road and don’t want to travel on it or don’t feel it’s for them. Which is fine, but some people don’t want anyone else travelling on it either, which isn’t fine.

I woke up the other morning with the following thought floating round my head; “Any theology that doesn’t produce more grace and more love needs to be viewed with suspicion.” I was pondering where I’d heard it before or where I’d read it and have come to the conclusion it’s my thought, for me. It’s a reminder not to judge other people’s motives, journey with Jesus or beliefs. Just because I’m on a certain journey what makes me think everyone else has to be on it too? If I try to police another person’s faith I have stopped having my own perspective and I have instead created myself a dogma, one I feel is superior to theirs. The flip side is true too, I will not allow myself to be policed by someone else’s beliefs or dogma, their journey is theirs and not mine. When I am hurt by criticism or when I get offended by someone disagreeing with me surely it’s my pride that is hurt or offended; and really I should just get over it! That’s the herd mentality that wants everyone to be going in the same direction in all things and Jesus doesn’t treat us that way. He is capable of having a unique relationship with every one of us and I want to pursue my relationship with him into deeper realms of mystery. Some of that journey will be alone, some of it will involve a small group of close friends and some of it a larger group using the label ‘church’. However my responsibility is to be so full of grace and love that I rejoice in the things we have in common and don’t let our differences cause me to stumble and lose my way. That’s my perspective… for today anyway!

Kingdom

2010-07-24T12:52:00.007+01:00

In the last few weeks I’ve been reading the Message Old Testament and yesterday finished reading 2 Kings. For the first time I was struck by the loss of, and devastation to, the temple and Jerusalem. The last chapter setting out the removal of anything precious and burning the temple to the ground leaving only a few farmers behind. It is a shocking chapter in the history of our story.

The nation of Israel crossed the Jordan and for a time dominated the region, pushing out other cultures and setting themselves up with cities and occupying the land. I’m not sure they ever fully occupied all the land that had been promised to Abraham but they certainly arrived in the promised land and made their present felt. At its peak, the nation of Israel has Jerusalem with Solomon on the throne with a magnificent temple and palace, riches beyond measure and his wisdom influencing other nations. Biblical history sets the story out in graphic detail including where it all went wrong and why.

Their loss was enormous and not just economic but physical and most importantly they lost their identity and inheritance, but for a remnant. The ark was gone, judgement had been levied against them and exile had come upon them. All they had was gone, the land, the culture, the promise and the presence. Devastation.

The bible tells us of the return and the start of the rebuild of the temple. This would be at odds with our thinking perhaps. Surely the place is an absolute tip and homes and infrastructure are needed first but they start rebuilding the temple. Even when they start to rebuild houses at the expense of the temple they are told by Haggai that the reason they are not being successful is because they have stopped the rebuilding of the temple.”You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home I blew away. Why? Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house” Haggai 1:9

I think it is no wonder that when Jesus arrives a few hundred years later the nation of Israel was a confused place. Over the years they had been allowed to return but to an area that no longer had the influence or affluence of earlier days. They knew the stories of old, they were taught the law, letter by letter they did not want to forget again and be forced again into exile. They would now obey every word and hold onto what they had, remember their identity - they were the children of Abraham and they added regulation after regulations and waited for the rescue that had been promised by the prophets. They appear to have become seriously legalistic and controlling and missing the biggest commandment of all - to love. Hoping that one day their empire would return. And then Jesus arrives.

The Jewish nation were waiting for a ‘Messiah’, but in their history the restorers meant kings with a mighty sword who pushed back the enemy and restored their former glory in the area. They were looking for another King David who would win in battle and force back the enemy, put them back on the map. Perhaps they forgot that he also had a heart after God and an intense life of worship. Interesting that Jesus did arrive as a king with a mighty sword but he came to defeat the enemy once and for all and to bring a glory to the house greater than the former. But they could not see it because they were looking for a different kind of kingdom, they were looking for an empire. Jesus came to preach the good news and to announce that the kingdom of God was at hand. God’s kingdom looks so different to the kingdoms of this world it is difficult to recognise.

This kingdom comes as a servant, a loving servant, a servant full of the Holy Spirit bringing good news with not just words but with power. This kingdom has one king only, high and lifted up, one counsellor, one teacher, one gate, one Father. The rules of this kingdom are love and grace, freedom and reconciliation. This kingdom looks to restore to its original design all of creation, so it revives and it restores. It brings life to all who encounter it and it has arms open wide to all. This kingdom is advancing every day since the days of John the Baptist. Isaiah prophesied that his kingdom rule would increase. So every day that rule is increasing and the enemy’s dominion is decreasing. Hallelujah!

Once again this kingdom is to be laid hold of by violence but this is a different kind of violence it is a passion for the things of God, being prepared to kill anything that would stand in the way of that passion, to kill daily all those things that hinder.

At the centre of this kingdom is also a temple where God wants to dwell. It too has to be built up first, where worship is the bricks and mortar, where intimacy with the King is the treasure that fills it. This temple has Jesus as it’s cornerstone, the Holy Spirit as the decorator and gardener and the Father as the architect and master builder. The influence and wisdom of this temple can impact nations one advancing step at a time. This is the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed and it is at hand. How close is your hand?

Shot glasses

2010-07-03T10:44:00.004+01:00

Shot glass 1.

Healing, the truth that God intends good for me, that I am a new creation, that my body is a temple for the Holy Spirit to reside, that I have the fullness of the deity within me. That on the cross all my sins and sicknesses were dealt with, that I am no longer subject to the world or the fall, I am a child of the Kingdom and it is kingdom rules that apply to me. The glass contains all this truth and a leaf from the tree in heaven whose leaves are for the healing of the nations which includes me. So I drink this glass as God’s medicine to cure me of any sicknesses or illnesses and that my body will work in line with heaven’s order today.

Shot glass 2.

The armour of God. The belt of truth round my waist, the truth – Jesus in my centre. The helmet fitted perfectly with iPod to play me heaven’s music, God singing over me, angels worshipping in the throne room, words of life, strong on the outside to protect me, earmuffs to keep out lies, son glasses so I can see as He sees, muzzle on my tongue to speak only good, chin strap to keep my head up, help is always on the way. Breastplate of rightness with God, full access into the presence of God, holiness, oneness. The sword to use when necessary and only as the author of the book specifies, two edged, powerful and effective. My shield perfectly handled to be held up to keep back any fiery arrows regardless of where they came from. My feet fitted with readiness that comes from knowing the gospel and the peace it brings me.

Shot glass 3.

The anointing cup, my cup overflows, full of the Holy Spirit to fill me full to overflowing today, all of him in all of me. He has anointed me to preach good news, he has en –powered me, he is the living water flowing from the One, he is my wine, my Eden’s spring water, he is my strength, my wisdom, my counsellor, my teacher, my revealer, fruitfulness and gifting. This shot glass never empties to be drunk from constantly.

Shot glass 4.

Communion wine. Representing his precious blood poured out for me, redemption, rescue, love, hope, heaven’s best, he becomes my DNA, the unforced rhythm of walking with him, he is my song and my dance, he is my beloved and I am his. Here I have forgiveness and all sufficient grace. Here is unity with Jesus, full communion, true vine dwelling, and completeness.

Today I remember to drink.

the little thread

2010-06-14T14:49:00.001+01:00

Once upon a time there was a little thread. It wasn’t sure when it was created or where it came from but it knew it existed and whilst sitting on a spool waiting to be added to the other threads in the box and made use of, it began to dream of what it was to be. Maybe the thread on a unique pair of trousers bought by an executive then it would be able to be cleaned professionally and taken on trips abroad. Maybe weaved into a cuddly toy for a new born baby to be cherished for many years to come, snuggled into at night and loved. Maybe into a cushion that could be sold to royalty and it would spend its life being adored. Deep down though its secret heart’s desire was to work with young people, it wasn’t sure how or when but each night as it went to sleep it would hope that tomorrow would be the day.
The day comes and the little thread is chosen, picked up and woven in with other threads into a piece of cloth with a pattern with lines going up and down and sideways. It seems to the thread that it is just a piece of cloth and maybe it is to be sewed onto something else but when a label is attached it realises that it is to be a tea towel, used for drying dishes. Not quite what it had hoped for but ever optimistic it knew it would be used daily, washed often and would have the opportunity to handle precious objects. It was happy with its creators choice and would work hard and be pleasing to its new owner.
It is purchased for use in a community centre and it is excited that it will be used even more often than in a household and it hoped that its secret desire to be used in youth work would come to pass. Days and weeks go by and the thread, as part of the tea towel, is taken out regularly and used to dry dishes and glasses, sometimes sample bottles and sometimes to mop up spills. It is complimented for being a good tea towel, very absorbent and holding its colours well. It becomes apparent to the thread however that young people are not interested in all the thread has to offer. Weeks pass and it is nearly a year since the thread had arrived at the centre full of hopes and dreams and whilst some of the dreams had been fulfilled it’s deepest desire was yet to be realised.
And so if you have read this and you would consider yourself ‘a young person’ why don’t you take the opportunity to realise the little threads dream and pick up a tea towel, dry a few dishes, take it home give it a wash, bring it back to the centre and place it back in the drawer. Please don’t forget it, don’t leave it getting dusty in the drawer, lonely and unfulfilled. You can be that person, you have what it takes, go on take a risk, use a tea towel today and make at least one little thread’s dream come true.

On behalf of ‘support your local tea towel’ group.
For more information see www.teatowelshavedreamstoo.co.uk

Well digging and maintenance.

2010-06-09T10:32:00.004+01:00

Digging a Well, I understand, is really hard manual work and the deeper the Well, the harder the work. Digging out all the top soil and compacted earth and if the land is particularly dry, getting through the first foot is as hard as digging through the harder ground deeper down. Once the hole is dug and it is hooked up to the water supply it is necessary to ensure the Well does not collapse and general maintenance to keep it clear of rubble follows, together with ensuring the water supply does not dry up or become contaminated. A lot of hard work. But if you want clean water you probably have to put the work in.

We read in the Old Testament that wells used to be dug and protected, sometimes filled in by enemies and years later re-dug. In more recent times friends of mine dug a well in Albania in the middle of a hot summer and attached a pump and for a few years it supplied relatively useable water. Once a water supply was provided through pipes the well was pretty much disguarded and used only rarely in emergencies. I wonder if we get so used to water coming through pipes,with little effort, that we rarely go digging for fresh water. Perhaps the difference between Manna in the desert and living off the produce of the land in the Promised land...

Before Christmas I was thinking about my own spiritual Well and if it had been filled in over time, large bolders of disappointment were certainly present and Jesus did a great job of demolishing them. He is the perfect soul restorer. Hard work at maintaining a Well I believe is not striving to sort out the Well myself but to go to the originator and ask him to sort it out whilst I rest in him. It is a hard choice to accept I can do nothing and he can do everything.

Today I was pondering corporate Wells such as the local church and how we want to dig Wells. I am reminded of Bill Johnson talking about the inconvenience of having fresh water and how some of his congregation were having to park their cars a few blocks away because those coming to drink from their Well were so desperate for water, some having travelled thousands of miles, were in the parking spaces near to the church. Bill said one of the keys to them was hospitality and getting over the inconvenience. I think that’s great. I don’t like being inconvenienced and don’t think I’m alone otherwise the word wouldn’t exist but I am willing to be inconvenienced more if it is because there is fresh water and people want to drink from it.

I am also reminded of a story Godfrey tells about a place where they don’t have fences to keep the livestock in and the reason being that once you have dug a Well you don’t need a fence as the livestock will always return to the Well and he encourages us to be well diggers not fence builders.

I was talking to Phil this morning about conferences and events that we travel to or put on ourselves and wondered whether we travel to other places to get soaked up in order to return to somewhere that is a bit dry. But if there is no Well at home the water soon runs dry and nothing really changes, so off to another conference we go. So the answer would be to ensure there is a Well at home, personally and corporately. As far as putting on a conference Phil said that’s like the tanker coming in with a load of fresh water and tipping it into the Well and sometimes we want to keep all the fresh water for ourselves so consider putting up a fence.

I was thinking about Rebekah in Genesis 24 and her reaction to a stranger turning up at her town’s Well. She gets him a drink and then does the same for his camels, she didn’t seem to resent any of the extra work and displayed wonderful hospitality. Her story would have been completely different if she had dismissed the steward. I have no doubt that God’s story would have continued but with another wife for Isaac.

So I will try to display hospitality rather than annoyance over inconvenience and be very thankful that there is a Well that people want to come and drink from.

Time for the ‘New’

2010-05-06T11:53:00.002+01:00

Time for a new season. We make statements like ‘it is time for a new season’ and ‘it is time for a change’ but what is it we are actually looking for and is it actually ‘new’. A new season in government, church, banking, education, media.... I think that sometimes wanting the new is just about having had enough of the old. It can be quite a negative view trying to look like a positive one. When thinking what ‘new’ looks like I struggle to find structure to my thoughts because I am looking for something new which in itself indicates that it has not been seen before. A fresh season perhaps, blowing in some clear air, getting rid of the cobwebs, the staleness. This also appears negative though as it is more about getting rid of something than bringing something in.
I think perhaps it is not something new that I want, it is something very old, something ancient, something that has been lost over the centuries. I suppose I want the original purpose, the original plan, as it was laid down in the foundations of the earth by the creator. I know this will be in my future but it is also from my beginning and I want to experience this in my present. So today when I look for a new thing what I am looking for is the new thing God is doing to restore the ancient and fulfil the promise for the future. So when looking for a new thing, a new season, I am looking for God and only content when I find him, listen to him and walk with him in the unforced rhythm of grace.

Positions, Platforms & Profiles

2010-04-17T18:20:00.000+01:00

I’ve been pondering some issues of leadership recently and I want to write about just one today, that’s the issue of position. Many years ago when I was tentatively coming back to a relationship with Jesus, after a good few years being very determinedly away from him, we went along to a newish church in Manchester near where we lived and one thing that impressed me greatly was that I couldn’t tell who the leaders were. They sat with their families during the meeting, in amongst the congregation, and only when they had something to contribute did they get up and go to the front. It was several weeks before we knew who was ‘in charge’. I don’t know if they still do that or even if it was a conscious policy on their part, after a few months we moved to the Wirral and threw our lot in with our current fellowship and so we lost touch with them. Over the years I’ve been to all sorts of gatherings, meetings, churches and organizations but one thing seems fairly constant no matter how staid and formal or wild and free it is and that is the ‘reserved seating’! Often this is in the form of a row of comfy or impressive chairs facing the main congregation on a raised platform where the elders or leaders sit, sometimes it’s just some hand-made A4 ‘reserved for…’ sheets placed on the front row, but whichever it is we seem obsessed with our leaders being given or, even more sadly - them wanting, a special place to sit. Are our meetings regularly so jam-packed that if we didn’t reserve them a seat on the front row then they might end up standing at the back or sitting on the floor? Do we frown upon the Catholic & Anglican churches for their priests and vicars dressing up in outlandish costumes and being considered separate from the laity but then utterly fail to notice the plank in our own eye that ensures our leaders, guest speakers or worship-musicians dress up in their smart clothes, get their hair done, ‘look the part’ and are seated on a raised platform away from the ‘proles’! I’m not putting all the blame on those in leadership or saying they all want this kind of recognition or status, I’m sure many do not. However I think we often want them to be put up on a pedestal. We want to know who’s in charge and to believe there are some ‘special’ people controlling the meeting – for one thing it allows us to settle into the familiar role of being a ‘consumer’ rather than the much scarier and less familiar role of being a ‘contributor’ to the proceedings. Also it gives us something to aspire to, “One day I will be up there on that platform and then I’ll have made it.” I’m sure we wouldn’t put it as crudely or bluntly as that, but is that how we sometimes think; we develop a better understanding of scripture, work on our ‘ministry’, share our new revelations and it earn us status and recognition? The worldly hierarchical organizational structure is so deeply ingrained in the western mind-set perhaps we don’t even notice when the church is riddled with it.

Jesus’ one and only appearance as the centre of attention along with the recognized ‘leaders’ of his society was when he was being put on trial, brutally beaten and then crucified. The vast majority of his ministry was on the margins, in the out-of-the-way places, the villages, the countryside, the lake shore and at the sinner’s dining tables. We all know the ‘correct’ definition of a leader is that (s)he is a servant but it’s surprising how much ‘serving’ in the modern church requires a collection of smart suits, access to an exclusive ‘green room’, an executive hotel suite, first class travel and a hefty fee.

I’m regularly inspired by a man I know with an international ministry who doesn’t have a set fee that you must meet to get him to come…he carries his ministry very lightly, he isn’t precious about his status and knows that God is his provider; he gives his all for a room with ten people in it just as he does for a hall holding thousands. Maybe if more of our leaders were like this, were more anonymous and part of the crowd we wouldn’t listen to them or take note of the wisdom, revelation and teaching they have to impart, if so then I guess we’ve got the situation we deserve.

Serious Times

2010-03-30T16:31:00.003+01:00

Mags and I recently caught the end of someone’s sermon at an event we went along to, it was only the last five minutes or so but what he said set me thinking. The gentleman was, I’m sure, very sincere and well meaning and to be fair to him we did only hear the last few minutes of what he said so we missed the wider context. He was imploring those attending the conference to ‘get serious’ because we live in ‘very serious days’. He then spoke in a very earnest and measured manner about our nation being ‘bankrupt morally, spiritually and financially’ and we Christians need to take these things very seriously and respond in a serious way. The language he used, the tone of voice and the way he expected those gathered to respond was so heavy, downbeat and, frankly, depressing that I felt temped to run out onto the stage and tell a few funny stories or share some of the miraculous healings and salvations we’re got used to hearing about from our friends Aliss & Rob in Blacon.

He’s quite right about the days being serious and our nation is, by and large, as he described it; what I take issue with is his response. The lost, hurting, frightened people, our colleagues, friends and neighbours, who are trapped in moral quagmires, spiritual bondage or even financial troubles do not need earnest, serious, sober Christians nodding their heads glumly and commiserating with them on the evils of this modern age and offering a sombre prayer. They need followers of Jesus who are filled with the Joy of heaven because of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit; the same Holy Spirit that settled on Jesus like a dove, the same Holy Spirit that raised him from the dead, and the same Holy Spirit that filled Jesus with joy. They need followers of Jesus who are fully aware that they are seated with Christ in heavenly places, who know their Daddy will meet ALL their needs through his glorious riches, who understand that the old sinful nature is dead and buried through God’s gift of grace and our baptism and they are now an utterly new creation! But most of all they need followers of Jesus who understand that as C.S. Lewis wrote “Joy is the serious business of heaven” and are willing and able to share that joy, that man Jesus, with them. Misery is NOT a fruit of the spirit, but joy certainly is.

Harsh reality and future fantasy

2010-03-29T18:39:00.004+01:00

“Harsh reality beats future fantasy at the Oscars,” one of the quotes the morning after the Oscars when the Hurt locker was awarded more Oscars than Avatar, which I believe was expected to take home quite a few shiny golden statutes. It is one of those statements that jumps out at you and stays for a while, maybe having a deeper meaning than just about film awards. I’ve been thinking, probably too much as usual, whether that is true and that the human race does prefer to focus on the harsh realities of life on the planet rather than any future ‘fantasy’ or mystery.

There certainly are harsh realities going on and war zones are more than ‘harsh’, the depth of pain, misery, trauma and shock cannot be understood even by those in the midst of them. Ethics and debate aside, the reality is there are men and women risking their lives every day for motives such as honour, justice and freedom. And in the midst of the harshest of realities the human race is stuck in its paradox of showing the very best of human nature, hope, compassion, sacrifice and love and at the same time the worst, pain, misery, humiliation and hatred. The world is a messy place, it is full of harsh realities.

In the fantasy world there are happy endings, the good guys win, time travel is possible, basic laws of science and nature are bendable if not removed, there is harmony and order, happiness and fulfilment. Children’s fairy tales, clear cut stories of good vs evil, where good always wins and evil is easily identifiable, unless they are Roald Dahl’s. Fantasy films are characterized by highly imaginative and often supernatural elements. The harsh reality is swept away in favour of limitless possibilities. I enjoyed Avatar, I like films that have happy endings. I personally don’t go to the cinema to be traumatised I go to be entertained, the whole cinema experience is about entertainment and I tend to be pretty miffed if I’ve paid to be made miserable. I can stay home and watch the news about the state of the nation, everything is bankrupt apparently, the economy, morals, education....there’s all the trauma’s in the world to watch, wars, famines, disasters or even think about some of the life journeys my friends are on, there is enough harsh reality to engage in sitting in my front room without going to the cinema to see it.

So for film choices I would always choose future fantasy over harsh reality. For my every day existence I choose the time travelling mystery. I can turn my focus from harsh realities to another reality a more powerful one, full of limitless possibilities. Where the laws of science and nature are bendable, if not removed, where there is order, liberty, joy and fulfilment and where best of all the good guy always wins and so ultimately so do I. I think from this focus I can be more effective to change the harsh realities rather than getting in there with them and shift the human paradox from hatred to love.

Easter is nearly upon us and what a story of past present and future mystery. The Word made flesh and making his dwelling amongst us, dying on a cross to pay the price for us, rising from the dead!! Come on I’m choosing this story, this reality, this victory.

Sound

2010-03-20T10:01:00.003Z

I find myself standing alone on a plain, there are mountains in the distance and a vast expanse of desert in front.

I hear a rumbling sound coming from the mountains and in the distance a dust cloud is forming. Something is coming, I hear the sound of marching, I see a vast army coming over the desert. As they draw closer and closer it slowly dawns on me that this is the demonic horde, marching relentlessly over the desert ground. They form a straight line in front of me, a vast ugly army filling the space in front.

I look to my left and right and there beside me is the army of the Lord. They are bright lightening white, shimmering and ready to advance. The standard is raised and they are expectant of victory and they stand. They are holding their ground. They wait for the command to advance.

Time to make the sound, I shout, the sound comes from my belly, deep and full. “Move” and in front the demonic horde is blasted like with a sonic weapon. It is the sound that destroys them. I step forward. We advance step by step and they are destroyed by the sound.

The sound we make shifts what is in front of us. Kingdom authority spoken by the saints.

Our mandate: “Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.”

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed!

Eyes

2010-03-02T15:25:00.003Z

I have been having a ponder about the wonder of our eyes recently. In the film/book ‘Dune’ people are addicted to a chemical called Spice which makes their eyes shine so blue. The trailer for it showed a young girl with bright blue eyes and it set me off wondering about the brightness of eyes and what makes them shine brightly, other than good contact lens.

Physically our eyes are amazing beyond description, so magnificent, unique and beautiful. They are so complex in design they cannot be copied and surely point to a creator. They are so clever, gathering up information from two perspectives, sending it along the optic nerve for image processing, changing shape depending on the environment and guiding us through our world. A good diet no doubt helps keep them shiny and depending on your upbringing eating carrots help you see in the dark.... However our eyes are more than just one of the five physical senses, they seem to have a connection to our spirituality.

It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Can we really know something about people by looking in their eyes? Can we stare deeply into someone’s eyes and other than get increasingly itchy eyes and a sense of being uncomfortable, see something deeper? Eye contact is seen as one of the best ways to formulate trust in a relationship. Having shifty eyes is deemed to be a negative quality. Kindness, truthfulness, wisdom, laughter, sorrow, depth of love, all attributed to the eyes. Eyes, like a window, look both ways - what people see in our eyes and what we look at. Can what we look at determine the state of our soul?

Jesus said the eye is the lamp of the body, if your eyes are good you whole body will be full of light. So what does that mean, if your eyes are good, I am sure he was talking more than physical excellence. Can we train our eyes to be good and can we assist them in growing brighter. There is a story in the bible about Jonathan eating honey and his eyes grew brighter, partly because the army were tired and the sugar increased their energy but also honey was linked to the word of God and revelation and we can make the link that the word of God makes our eyes shine brighter. Psalm 19:8 says that the commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes. Proverbs teach us that bribery makes the eyes dim –turn a blind eye! Sorrow and grief make the eyes weak and dim and hopelessness makes them fail - these are the times when we really need to find a way for our eyes to be brighter.

There are stories of God opening people’s spiritual eyes in order for them to see what was right in from of them. Balaam’s being shown the angel standing in the road, which his donkey could clearly see and was reacting accordingly, Elisha and his panicking servant whose eyes were opened to see the army of the Lord on the surrounding hillside to mention a couple.

So I read my bible for revelation and I wait for God to open my eyes so they will shine brighter but I think there is more otherwise this verse wouldn’t make any sense:

‘So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ‘ 2 Corinthians 4:18

How can we see what is unseen unless we have already been given eyes to see. I think one of the benefits of being born again is being given eyes to see and the spirit within me tells me where to look. Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. So for bright shining eyes believing I already have them is definitely a good place to start and using them to look at Jesus, well it doesn’t get better.

USA Tour: Day Seventeen

2010-02-22T22:35:00.002Z

A day for homecomings…

I woke up about 4am to the sound of a terrific thunderstorm outside. The thunder was really loud and lasted for quite a long time – the room was lit up through the curtains by the lightening too. You could even hear the rain drumming on the hotel windows. Thank goodness we weren’t trying to take off in that – scary!

Godfrey wanted to skip breakfast this morning and have a lie in so I went for breakfast at a “Waffle House” – we’ve seen their old fashioned yellow and black sign all over as we’ve driven round. I had a waffle and bacon and a large glass of orange juice which cost me $6.25 (£4.16) – it was good surprisingly. I like bacon with syrup on it, some of my taste buds must be American.

We checked out of the hotel and went to a nearby mall to get the last few bits and bobs we needed but the mall was rubbish – there was a Macey’s and a Sears and the rest of the stores weren’t much good. So we headed for Graham and Linda’s, the folks we stayed with when we first arrived, and went to the mall near them as it’s much better. I got everything I needed (sweets, root beer and chocolate) from a big supermarket there and Godfrey finished off his banking.

After a cup of tea with Graham and Linda and one of their daughters we unloaded Godfrey’s guitar amp as they’re going to look after it for him until he comes back. I donated my remaining tea bags to them as there’s plenty at home and they’re not easy to find here.

We drove to Atlanta airport and followed the signs to the Rental Car Returns and dropped the car off with no problems. The overnight rain had cleaned the thick layer of salt and grit off that we’d accumulated on our 2,000 mile round trip. The check-in was a bit of a hassle as Godfrey had three items of hold luggage, his case guitar and the new kick drum, and my case was 9 lbs (4 Kgs) over-weight. However we switched the drum to my allowance and moved some of my heavier things into the drum bag and that sorted it out. Security was a lot easier leaving the USA than arriving in it and we were soon through.

I had a, very tasty, Jack Daniels Burger at the TGI Fridays in the departure lounge and Godfrey has the ribs, but he didn’t think much of them.

I’ve got to head for the boarding gate now as our flight leaves in an hour and half and it’s quite nice to get a seat while you wait for boarding.

This will be my last entry of the USA Blog and normal sporadic blogging will resume from tomorrow. It’s been a wonderful adventure and a huge blessing to travel with Godfrey for these last two weeks or so. Thank you Godfrey – you’re a star! I know I’ve changed and I have a sense of moving up a gear in several ways, spiritually and musically to name just two.

If you’ve been following our adventures on this blog then thank you for reading it and I hope it’s kept you informed and entertained!

USA Tour: Day Sixteen

2010-02-22T04:16:00.000Z

The last full day. Some early morning church, mid-morning church, lunch, a lot of driving and a Mexican meal.

We left the house this morning at about 7am to get to Belmont Church for 7:30. My body may have been moving but my mind was still tucked up in bed snoring away. I don’t think I woke up properly until we got there! We had a few PA bits and bobs to deal with at the beginning of the sound-check but the band had gelled so well together that when it was time to start we were more than ready. The meeting room was quite full by 8:30 and although it was a fairly subdued congregation they seemed to enjoy the songs. After the Pastor had done his talk we came back on to do one more song and did “Wild Bells” – it seemed to start to break something open. We saw Kim & Skylar Walker-Smith, they’d been in the meeting and Godfrey asked them to pray for him to impart the anointing that they carry and they were more than happy to do this. They prayed some really good stuff and after we’d had a break for refreshments between the two meetings we felt like the second meeting would really pop.

The second meeting really did pop! Godfrey started with his mini-preach about Paul & Silas having a ‘lovely time of worship’ as they are busted out of jail after singing and praying; and with context Godfrey asked any intercessors in the room to come to the front to help press in for what the Holy Spirit wanted to do that morning. It was brilliant – the congregation responded to the songs and the Holy Spirit really started to move in the place. The main Pastor, who’d been away in Kansas City, arrived back in time for this second meeting and he ‘got’ it and really helped Godfrey lead the congregation and we were allowed to over-run our time quite a bit. At one point a little girl who’d come to the front and sat on the edge of the stage watching Godfrey in rapt attention stood up and walked across the stage to him and whispered something to him and Godfrey nodded, she moved past him and just stood next to him, I found out later that she’d asked “Can I stand next to you?”. Godfrey felt that there was a well in the church but that it had been capped twelve years ago; the cries of “Wake Up” from the stage in “Wild Bells” during Friday night’s “Awakening” meeting (See Day 14) were significant and that the little girl coming onto the stage was a prophetic act even if she didn’t know it, as Jesus tells Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5:41 “Talitha cumi” which means “Little Girl, arise from the sleep of death” (Amp). There was a release of the prophetic call to the land to “Wake Up” and shake off the old and ring in the new. We did indeed do “Wild Bells” again – that song has a breakthrough anointing on it.

The Band

After the meeting we were taken by a group from the leadership of the Church to an Irish Pub in Nashville that does good food and they treated us to lunch. We had a great time with them and look forward to re-visiting Belmont Church in Nashville again and seeing how they’ve got on un-capping the well and ringing out the old and ringing in the new. They’ve got some great people there and I’m sure they’ll keep following the wind of the Holy Spirit and not let the old Hag of religion hold them back.

We then set off for the 255 mile drive to Atlanta. There was a real ease on the journey though – and although we were tired from the early start and two meetings it passed quickly and easily. The hotel Godfrey had found for a ridiculously cheap $47 dollars each overnight was really good; large clean rooms, TV, microwave, fridge, free wifi and a free business centre to print out anything you might need!

We went just across the car park to a Mexican restaurant that didn’t seem to be part of chain and we both had a fried pork dish with rice, refried beans, lettuce, guacamole etc. It was delicious and huge and now I’m stuffed full!

We’re going to meet for about 9am for breakfast then drop Godfrey’s guitar amp off and the few unsold CDs before doing a last bit of shopping and heading for the airport for 4pm.

USA Tour: Day Fifteen

2010-02-21T05:37:00.000Z

A day with some sightseeing, Saturday church and Chinese food!

Today was day I could have a lie in so guess what time my body decided it wanted to wake up? 6:50am. Why does that always happen? Tomorrow morning (and it’s 11pm now as I write this) I have to be up about 6:30 as we have to leave the house at 7am so we’re at the church for 7:30 as the first service starts at 8:30am! 8:30am! On a Sunday!!! 8:30am!! I keep hoping someone will say ‘Nah….we gotcha! It’s not really on at 8:30.’ But it’s not looking very likely.

I spent some of the morning catching up on the Radio 4 comedy shows I love and have missed while I’ve been away such as “Act Your Age” and “Ed Reardon’s Week” and a new one by one of my favourite comedians “Sarah Millican’s Support Group”. She’s a very talented comic. Then Joel, our host’s 18 year old son, and I sat swapping funny comedy sketches on YouTube – we watched a lot of Python and “Not The Nine O’Clock News”.

Fred took me on a tour round old Franklin town – the site of one the bloodiest battles in the American Civil War. There’s some lovely old, by American standards, buildings in the town and the main street is almost as narrow as a British town centre but the shops are all 100% American. There are signs and monuments all over the town marking where particular battles, skirmishes and deaths of Generals took place. It's strange to try to picture this pleasant peaceful area being soaked in blood and carnage as the Confederacy finally crumbled towards defeat. It’s a miracle that the USA survived that war given that it turned neighbours and families against one another let alone towns, cities and states.

Godfrey and I then went into Nashville for another quick visit to "Fork’s Drum Cabin" and the guitar shop next door. Godfrey needed a new drum batter head for his little Ludwig kick and I needed some light jazz drum sticks for my Dad. We got a 16” Aquarian Super-Kick I and then went to a “Captain D’s” seafood fast food restaurant for lunch. I had the salmon sandwich which was actually pretty good, Godfrey’s battered fish was less so and he didn’t finish it in case it made him ill.

We got to Belmont Church for about 4:30 and the PA sound was a lot better during the rehearsal. Adam, the sound engineer, brought some excellent head phones in from home for me and they gave a much clearer and, more importantly, louder sound. I put the new batter head on Godfrey's little converted floor-tom kick and tuned it up. It sounded fantastic. A really deep punchy boom and from a dinky little drum. I think Godfrey's decided to bring it home with him rather than leave it here in the states. The rehearsal was a lot of fun – the band was really getting tight and used to playing together. I've got a sound-desk mono recording of the night before - I want it just to hear my drumming and find out what mistakes I'm making so I can put them right, so don't bother asking for a copy; you won't get one!

The meeting started at 6pm and Godfrey did what he’s good at. He pushed the edges. In some places, like SloshFest, that edge is pretty far out and hard to find let alone push and in other more conventional or traditional churches pushing the edge could be just playing something that isn’t a hymn! He pitched it well tonight for the people that had come and the band sounded really good. I hope that the those attending got blessed and challenged, both together.

After the meeting Fred and Rob from Belmont took the band out for a Chinese meal at “Pei Wei Asian Diner”. It was excellent Chinese food cooked out in full view fresh for you when you order. We had a great time together laughing and telling stories to each other – there was a really good feeling of camaraderie. “The Band…Elwood….The BAND!!!”

When we got back to Fred’s I managed to call my son Paul on Skype. He is 16 hours ahead of my current time zone, in Cairns Australia. It’s quite odd to be calling him the day before his birthday, my time, but for him it’s the middle of the afternoon of his birthday! He’s a good boy and I love him lots.

Tomorrow we do our last two meetings then we drive back to Atlanta ready for our flights home on Monday night. It would be good to finish with a bang not a whimper so I hope there’s some “Wild Bells” to be rung out tomorrow and some business to be done in Nashville by this mix of English and American musicians and singers – remember we’re ALL in the band!

USA Tour: Day Fourteen

2010-02-20T06:51:00.002Z

A day for meeting some pretty cool people and busting some stuff open.

Our hosts had to leave the house at about 7:30 this morning so when we got up we were all alone apart from the little dog ‘Joy’ who is very appropriately named. Her tail never stops wagging and she always wants to play and be stroked. We left the house around 8:30 to meet top session drummer Dennis Holt who is a friend of Godfrey’s. He played on the “You’re Still God” studio album, “R U Ready?”, which was recorded live in a church here in Nashville that’s been converted into a studio, and several times at a big event in Eastbourne UK. He’s played for everyone – his MySpace page lists them and reads like a who’s who of top musicians. We met in a café called “Fido” – somewhere that isn’t a chain, at last – and I managed to get cereal for breakfast. My stomach is sick of stodgy food. It was still ridiculously sweet, everything seems to be loaded with sugar or honey or maple syrup but at least it wasn’t swimming with fat or grease! Dennis was a delight to meet, very down to earth and normal and full of good humour about the slightly crazy world of the session musician. He offered to lend me a kit if the one provided at Belmont Church tonight wasn’t up to scratch along with some top of the range Paiste cymbals and a Ludwig Black Beauty snare drum! He’d only just met me and was willing to loan me the best snare drum ever made, the make and model my drumming hero John Bonham used live! We spent a very pleasant hour or more with him and he said he may come tomorrow night – I told him to sneak in at the back as I didn’t want to know he was there or I might freeze in terror. I think that used to be true but I doubt it’d happen now but it would still be a bit nerve wracking.

After we left Dennis we headed of to meet Kim and Daniel who are leading the new Friday night ‘Awakening’ meetings that are kicking off tonight with Godfrey leading it. They wanted to meet us and get to know us a bit and share what the whole thing is about. We were going to eat early at a Mexican taco place just before noon. We met them and Daniel’s wife Elizabeth and they had two friends with them Kim and Skylar – I thought I recognized Kim but couldn’t quite work out where from. Then the first Kim said that she was Kim Walker-Smith the worship leader from Bethel in Redding. We saw her in Liverpool with our kids when they brought the “Jesus Culture” tour to the UK last year. We had a great time at lunch chatting then Godfrey and I went back to Fred’s house for some down-time before we went back to Belmont Church for 4pm to set up drums and do a sound check and rehearse with the band.

We’ve got the biggest band here that we’ve played with this trip; an electric guitar, a bass, a keyboard and three backing vocals. The drum kit was already set up when we arrived – it’s a very sweet looking and sounding Gretsch. It was set up nearly the same way as I have mine but there’s only one ride and only one floor tom. I needed to tune the snare resonant head up a lot and the floor tom batter head up a bit to get the sound I like and swap a couple of the cymbal stands over so I could get the ride into my preferred position. The Gibraltar cymbal hardware looked fancy but really isn’t very flexible in allowing positioning how you want it…I wouldn’t swap my “DrumWorld UK” stuff for it that’s for sure. The kit was a bit far back on the stage but at least it was out of the ridiculous ‘garden shed’ that the regular drum kit is stuck in. The cymbals weren’t all that hot. The Zildjian AA thin crash is particularly nasty – my lower spec Sabian ProSonix one is much better. The ride was OK but there was only one and I do like two rides, one dark and one bright. Still we’re not cutting a CD so it doesn’t really matter and I’ve certainly played much worse cymbals in my time. I put a dampening ring on each tom and that made things sound better too. The whole kit was mic’d up including a bottom and top mike for the snare!!

Look at the garden shed the regular kit is in at the extreme left of the stage. Wow! I'm glad I'm not in there with the ol' hag!

We had some real issues with the PA fold-back at the beginning – they don’t have standard monitor wedges but little tiny speakers up on a stand at waist height for some of the musicians and the rest have ear-pieces!! I had to wear some “wrap-round the ear” ear buds and although they were quite comfy and the wire went down my back so it wasn’t in the way the mini-mixer I had to control what I wanted to hear was far, far too quiet. I simply couldn’t hear Godfrey’s kick drum at all and even at full volume there was barely enough vocal and guitar to enable me to follow him properly. I switched to standard headphones before we started with one headphone can on my right ear and the other partly on the left ear so I could hear some front-of-house through it. They still weren’t loud enough and when playing “Wild Bell” they fell off during rehearsal – so for that song I had to remember to put them on both ears properly for the fast loud parts so they stayed on and unhook my left ear partially for the quiet sections! What a palaver! The rehearsal went well once we actually moved on from the PA shenanigans.

At 7pm the meeting started and after the pastor welcomed everyone Kim and Daniel explained what the “Awakening” nights were all about and then they turned the evening over to Godfrey. He brought his Paul & Silas ‘lovely time of worship’ word so people knew where the evening would be going and then we started. It went really well and “Wild Bells” really broke something and Daniel asked people to line up and come and declare stuff out from the stage to ring out the old and ring in the new. At least that's what I think he said as I couldn’t hear him at all through my headphones but the song went on much longer than usual with people coming up and declaring things and us doing the “Ring, ring. Ring ring. Ring ring” part after each person spoke out. We finished with “Beep Beep” and it went really well especially as we hadn’t had time to rehearse that one. There was some business done tonight against the old hag of religion and the spirits of control and manipulation. At about 8:45 we finished and people had a chance to get some prayer and ministry and buy some of Godfrey’s CDs. The keyboard player stayed on the stage and had an acoustic guitar join her and another vocalist and they did some other worship songs for during the ministry time. I prayed with about five people and had some prophetic words and insights into their situations and prayed into them. They seemed to really do some business with God. One person I prayed with was a nine year old boy called Kyle - he was a little fire-starter - the Holy Spirit was on him all right. When I'd prayed for him he laid hands on me and I got totally whacked.

Three of the people had spoken to Godfrey before I prayed with them and he told me in the car on the way back to Fred’s house that they’d driven eight hours from Minnesota to be there tonight, that’s how hungry there were! They asked if he’d come to them on his next visit to the ‘states.

We had a light meal at “Ruby Tuesdays” on the way to Fred’s as it was pretty much the only place open at 10:30 then it was off to blogging and bed.

Tomorrow we’ve got a restful day, time for some last chance shopping, then we’re back for another rehearsal at 4:30 then they have a “Sunday morning” meeting on the Saturday night, starting at 6pm. So we’re doing that! They have two “Sunday morning” meetings on the Sunday morning too! Busy, busy, busy

USA Tour: Day Thirteen

2010-02-19T05:45:00.001Z

A day in the capitol of American music…

We’ve had a good day in Nashville, despite a poor start with a phone call from a client in England at 3:50am USA time! I didn’t answer it and then used Skype to call back and no-one knew who’d called me. I had emailed them all saying not to call while I am away and to consider the 5 or 6 hour time difference but there you go! I managed to get back to sleep quite quickly.

We had our first visit to McDonalds of this visit to America. The hotel rate didn’t include breakfast, which was a rip-off as they neglected to mention this when we booked in, so when we got downstairs we found it was another $9 and some cents for breakfast, so we nipped out to Whacky Macky’s for a selection from their breakfast menu for considerably less. The morning was cold but the sky was utterly devoid of cloud – it looked like being a beautiful day. When we got back to the hotel I managed to Skype my lovely wife even though the hotel’s WiFi was a bit ropey then I went for a 40 minute walk to “Forks Drum Closet” which is probably the best drum shop I’ve ever seen. They have everything and I mean everything. I managed to crack my medium weight Vic Firth 5A’s the other night but I forgot to take them with me to the shop and ended up getting some 5B’s by mistake – I doubt it’ll make much difference though. They also had the excellent Sonor quick-release cymbal tops that I’ve been looking for for ages. I also got a replacement snare batter head as I dented my current one quite badly recently and it’ll be cheaper in the USA than at home. The whole lot cost me £30! The shop was an amazing Aladdin’s cave. The 40 minute walk back was good. I like to walk when I pray – I’m always pacing up and down at church and in meetings so it was great to have a good walk and a chat with Daddy.

When I got back I caught up with some email and had another chat with Mags via Facebook then had a bit of nap before we checked out of the hotel and headed out back to the drum shop in the car this time as Godfrey needed some stuff for himself and some for his son Jacob. There was a good guitar and general music store next door so we had a good look around there too before we headed out to “The Cheesecake Factory” for lunch – I’ve never eaten such a huge burger I still felt full several hours later.

We then drove out of the city a short way to go to Fred’s house, who is hosting us for the rest of the stay here in Nashville. Fred had lived in England in the past and so had picked up a taste for tea and I had the first decent cup of tea since we were with Graham and Linda in Atlanta what seems like months ago! We unloaded our stuff and chatted for a while until we needed to head back into Nashville for Godfrey to speak to a monthly meeting of a songwriters group. This was their first meeting this year. Godfrey spoke excellently about several aspects of songwriting and worship including the need for the amateur rather than the professional (meaning the amateur does it for love and with passion whereas the professional is motivated by making money) and the need for a toolkit of song types and styles, including laments, warcries, prophetic declarations, intercessory and love songs. You could see many of the people in the room were really getting some revelation. We then nipped over the road to the main meeting hall (or sanctuary as they call it here in the ‘states!) and discussed the layout we’d like for the instruments. The drum kit there really is in a shed! A sound-proofed booth with windows to see out of and head-set fold-back! Fortunately someone’s loaning another drum kit so I can be out on the stage with Godfrey as neither of us wants me in a box! It’s time for the drum sound to break out of the box and be released into the Church. No more drummers in the chicken coop!

After a light meal of soup and a half sandwich we returned to Fred’s house and I spent some time chatting drums and drumming with his son Joel who is auditioning tomorrow for a place on a music course at a nearby University. He’s one of those multi-talented guys who plays drums and real musical instruments like the keyboard!

Tomorrow morning we’re having breakfast with Dennis Holt a local professional drummer who’s one of Nashville’s top session guys. He played with Godfrey on “R U Ready” and “You’re Still God” – his drumming is brilliant and I’m looking forward to meeting him. I’d like to see his home as I believe he has a dozen or so kits and hundreds of snares – now that would be an Aladdin’s cave! Perhaps he’ll give me a few pointers to improve my drumming.

USA Tour: Day Twelve

2010-02-18T04:52:00.001Z

On the road again…

Wrecked this morning when I got up at about 8:15 to shower, pack and get down for a 9am rendezvous with Godfrey, John, Dave, Paul, Woody and Brad. No sign of any of them except John. After five hours sleep I was feeling pretty rough but some cereal and a glass of milk helped. Unfortunately I missed Dave leaving as his cab arrived while I was eating breakfast and he had to go. Sorry Dave if you’re reading this. It’s been an honour and a big ol’ bundle of joy travelling with you! Godfrey turned up having sorted Dave and his cab to the airport. He’d realised that for us to pack all our luggage and the amp, guitar and kick drum and get Dave to the airport for 10am would have made the morning far too manic and could have made him late so being a generous guy he booked and paid for the cab so Dave would be on time.

We said our goodbyes to the Charleston posse (Woody, Paul & Brad) and John who was off home to England and we hit the road for our 483 mile drive to Nashville. Godfrey had got an email the night before saying that the I-40 between Asheville and Knoxville through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was completely closed due to a landslide so we had to take a detour of an extra 60 miles north on the I-26 to Johnson City from Asheville then south-west on the I-81 to Knoxville before picking up the I-40 west to Nashville. The weather was bitterly cold, there was a lot of snow on the ground and ice on the rock faces and it was overcast and tried to snow a few times. I image on a clear day in the summer this would be some of the best scenery you could drive through in America.

Once we’d got back on track we stopped at about 2:30 for a late lunch at “Cracker Barrel” – the food is always good there although it’s pretty stodgy and I doubt it’s good for your waist-line.

We hit the road and soon crossed into Tennessee and had to move our clocks back one hour to go onto Central Time. Now we were six hours behind the UK instead of five.

The journey into Nashville was pretty uneventful but as we neared the city we had a good time praying over it, praying into the church we’d be visiting and getting ourselves into a right attitude to come and bring blessing to the city and its people. There was also a stunning sunset ahead of us as we entered the city.

As we were a day early Godfrey checked us into a Marriott hotel near Broadway, the main street where all the bars and live music are. We had a quick meal at brewery cum restaurant he knows, which was delicious, and then headed in the car the 5 minutes to Broadway (it was too cold and we were too tired for a 20 minute walk).

We visited three or four bars, and we were good boys and drank root-beer and orange juice, and saw one exceptional band with a hugely talented young electric guitar player called “JD” who tore the place up with one of the best guitar solos I’ve ever seen. He was stunning - I wish Ethan (my 12 year old son) could have seen him, his jaw would have hit the floor. There was a proper old-timer couple in the western garb of dungarees and cowboy hat who got up and did a thumping two-step dance with solemn faces and without ever looking at each other to a few of the songs. It was quite surreal! Then we went next door to a bar that was virtually deserted – the band wasn’t as good but the guitarist was. He played a polka at tremendous speed switching his left hand from the usual under the neck and up onto the strings grip to over the neck down onto the string at high speed to get different sounds, then the band speeded the whole thing up a lot, twice. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to move their fingers that quickly. I've only been in Nashville a few hours and I love it already. I can see why it's one of Godfrey's favourite places.

Once back at the hotel I used $2 to wash and dry some clothes in the guest launderette as I’m running out of t-shirts. You can’t wear them twice when you’re drumming – the songs “Wild Goose” and “Wild Bells” ensure they’re too sweaty for anything but the wash bag! So on that fragrant note I bid you goodnight!

USA Tour: Day Eleven

2010-02-18T01:22:00.003Z

Another strange day….

We went out for a late breakfast at “Cracker Barrel” which does do some quality American food. Grits with your bacon and biscuits is better than it sounds! There was a whole crowd of us there and the waitress was very patient with the crazies in her nice quite establishment. She had an Easter Bunny hat on with flapping ears – Godfrey was sorely tempted to get one to use during ‘Fly to breathtaking heights’! He resisted though so Nashville will be spared blue and white flapping bunny ears (he’d look right at home at SloshFest though).

Had a very dull afternoon brightened up enormously by a good conversation with my lovely wife via the wonder that is Skype; 1p per minute to the home phone and better call quality than most phones.

Some of us didn’t bother with lunch as the breakfast was so late, however our three drunk ecstatic girls didn’t get out of bed until noon-ish so Dave, Paul and Woody took them out for lunch and they all got so drunk they ended up under the table in the restaurant! Dave was the soberest one there and they had to get a wheelchair when they got back to MorningStar to get them from the car into the building!

The evening meeting seemed a lot tougher than last night. Godfrey led us in declaring out kingdom truths into the land for this area which seems to have a spirit of confusion over it. It’s hard to find your way around by car and several times people in our group have got lost on simple journeys. Even the GPS gets very confused and stalls out with the screen frozen and showing that you driving across fields (on roads that aren’t new) and showing nearby roads that don’t exist! When he declared out that the Lord calls us to be saints not knights there was a bit of a tumbleweed moment! We did break through corporately but not to the level that we had the night before. John seemed unusually sober when he spoke too. There was a feeling of resistance to the wild, free liberty of the Holy Spirit in the place. However the “Wild Bells” song does carry quite an anointing and there was at least a measure of breakthrough – I guess it’s easy to get frustrated when you know what’s possible but not every night can fulfil all your expectations. We did some serious damage to principalities and powers I think, especially when we called for and prophesied joy over the students and the next morning at breakfast we saw a whole bunch of them and a few were clearly under the influence, laughing and shaking.

After the meeting I needed to pack up my laptop, that had been used to project the words, and the cymbals from Charleston so Paul and Trey could take them back with them.

We went out for a meal (and ended up getting all lost and disoriented again as usual) and ended up in Applebee’s. The food I had was good but it was 1:30 by the time we left. When we got back to MorningStar Godfrey realized his rental car key and the room key had fallen out of his pocket. We didn’t know if it was in the car he’d got a lift in (whose owner/driver we had no contact details for!!) or in the restaurant. We called the restaurant and they didn’t know who we were (how could they not remember 16 very joyful Christians causing mayhem in their place??) and didn’t think there were any keys on the floor anywhere. We pondered what to do and decided we’d best head for the place and check ourselves even though it was now closing and we didn’t really know the way very well. We prayed on the way that the keys would be there and the place would be open and we managed to find it with only one minor wrong turn. They had just found the keys when we got there and were about to lock up! This was a major relief. However we got horribly lost on the way back – that gnarly old confusion on the land – but made it back to bed for about 3am.

Dave saw Godfrey and me and said he’d been invited to go to L.A. with John Crowder for three days so we didn’t need to take him to Atlanta in the morning as he’d fly from Charlotte and John Crowder would sort his ticket-change for the flights back to the UK. This was great for Dave and for us as it meant we could head straight for Nashville in the morning and not go via Atlanta, which if you check on a map is NOT en route!

P.S. One thing I forgot to mention about Monday night’s meeting (Day 10) was that while Dave was praying for two girls sat next to each other I joined him and then noticed a man sat a couple of seats down just watching with a mixture of emotions on his face. He was clearly attracted to what was happening but a bit scared too. I staggered over to him and asked if he’d like some prayer but that he was free to refuse if it was all just too weird for him. He said he would so I laid my hands on him and just felt the Holy Spirit wash over us and I started laughing. After a minute or two of this I just knew the reason for the laughter was that he needed a joy infusion. I whispered in his ear “This is my best prayer” and carried on laughing and he got hit. He started shaking and laughing, gently at first and then getting stronger and stronger. I started praying some truths of the fullness of the Gospel over him and we both got thoroughly clobbered. It turns out he was married to one of the girls Dave had been praying for and they’ve been married for four months. I prayed with them some more then got a crazy buzzing noise in my ear, like electrical short circuiting inside my ear canal. I asked if either had a problem with their right ear and the girl, Janet, said she had intermittent buzzing and balance problems. I laid hands on her ears and told the buzzing and balance issues to go in Jesus’ name and called for health and healing from heaven and she then stood up shook her head all around and jiggled about and said it seemed fine. She confirmed at tonight’s meeting that she’d had 24 hours without any problems whatsoever. While I was praying for her husband, David, I’d laid my hand on his knee at one point and when he went to get the car to go out for Pizza he’d run through the building, jumped down some steps and told us when he came back with the car that he’d had serious problems with his knee for quite a while and Janet said he’d limped into the meeting in considerable pain and discomfort. He’d been healed while we were praying or during the worship without him even asking Jesus to touch his knee let alone anyone specifically praying for it! Isn’t Jesus just utterly amazing?

USA Tour: Day Eleven

2010-02-17T13:54:00.002Z

Sorry - didn't get to bed until 3:15am so no blog until later as we've got to go to Nashville!

USA Tour: Day Ten

2010-02-16T15:21:00.000Z

A strange day….

We met up for breakfast at the MorningStar Café and then headed down to the room we’re using for the meetings tonight and tomorrow night. The pixies had obviously been busy overnight as the room was trashed last night and this morning there were neat rows of chairs and the stage had been tidied up, the room is used for youth meetings and it seems young people are messy whichever side of the Atlantic you are! The tidy up was quite a blessing as it meant we could just get our stuff unloaded from the cars and start setting up the instruments and PA. Sadly the drum kit was a load of junk – the batter head on the bass drum was utterly wrecked as was the one first tom and it couldn’t be fasted tightly onto the cymbal stand it was hooked onto! The snare head was wrecked and the cymbals were bottom of the range cheap ones. Thankfully I brought cymbals from Charleston so I could use these. I found another snare behind the small stage and some broken drums parts that I cannibalized to repair the tom mounting, the tom was still a bit loose but at least it didn’t swing in the breeze! I spent some time trying to tune the kit, the tom had a batter head on the bottom so I flipped it over and will play it upside down. The single floor tom was ok after a bit of a tune up. It’ll sound OK for a live gig but you wouldn’t want to record anything with it.

Dave, Godfrey, John and I went out for lunch with some friends of John’s, Hilton and Kevin, who travelled in from Illinois and Nebraska respectively for the meetings! That’s commitment. We also had a guy called “T R” with us; he does the music on some of John’s CDs. We went to an “Olive Garden” Italian restaurant and got really really drunk on the Holy Spirit while we were there. Kevin and Hilton are lovely guys and I really connected with them – they’re passionate about Jesus and about worship. Hilton runs eight hour worship sessions in John Alexander Dowie’s (the turn of the 1900’s revivalist) old house! Kevin hosts what sound a bit like mini-sloshfests seven or eight times a year that attract people from all over Nebraska.

In the afternoon I sorted out the PowerPoint lyrics for the evenings meeting and had a bit of a rest up.

The meeting was due to start at 7pm and by then the only people there were the band and about half of the ten or so folks that were travelling up from Charleston for the meetings and about three other people! I was glad we hadn’t set out many chairs – the band outnumbered the crowd – we’d be taking and offering amongst ourselves and giving it to them!

By about 7:30 another 15 or so people had turned up and then we found out that because the MorningStar website said we were in a particular ball-room and there were no cars there and there was no meeting on, people thought it was cancelled! I quickly made a few signs with arrows on and fastened them up showing people where to go from the main entrance and I think someone else did the same from another entrance. When we got going I guess there may have been forty or so people in the room. Not a great turnout, but it’s not about the numbers. Godfrey did a fantastic job, bringing a sharp prophetic war-cry into the land to break open some of the things we’d seen spiritually over this area. Almost everyone in the room seemed to engage and run with it. Kevin, from Nebraska, brought a brilliant word about the principles of sowing into good land and not wasting your time and money sowing into dead land and asking God for his wisdom on which is which and our freedom to give as the Holy Spirit leads and not out of guilt or obligation. Then John Scotland spoke and was excellent, as usual, about the drunkenness and the reasons for it. He started talking about not waiting for the prayer line when a guy got up and walked to the front and asked John to pray for him now, as he didn’t want to wait for the prayer line. He was a translator for some Brazilian pastors visiting MorningStar and they’d all come along and loved it. They’d never seen anything like it in their lives. John got Dave up and they ‘ministered’ to the translator in their own inimitable fashion! He got pretty blasted!

After John finished speaking we started praying for those who wanted it and the heavy drunken glory of God came on most of those there. You could see the evening had been a life changing one for most of those attending. I think tomorrow night will be even better, assuming we don’t get thrown out for being drunk and disorderly; which we were when we got back in from supper at a local Pizza place. Oh boy. I was drunk, so very very drunk. I’ve never found it so hard to stand, sit, walk or talk. Three girls from Charlotte were so hammered Dave had to pick one up and carry her firemans-lift style to and from the cars and back to her room.

We’re living in interesting times. What God’s doing will offend many but bring much needed freedom and revelation to those able to accept it. Every major move of God in history has offended the established order. To quote John Scotland “The power of the prophetic is in the offense.” I don’t think Elijah and Jeremiah would have been very popular guys in most churches, do you?

USA Tour: Day Ten

2010-02-16T05:47:00.001Z

Shing.. to drunk to blog. Come back tomorrow...............

USA Tour: Day Nine

2010-02-15T05:40:00.002Z

Not your usual Sunday.

We checked out of the hotel in Charleston, South Carolina this morning after breakfast and headed to Abundant Life church for the last time on this trip for their Sunday morning meeting. However it was most certainly not about ‘business as usual’. After three evenings the people there were coming ready – there was no sense of having to help people engage. A lot of folks were turning up already drunk. Once again “Wild Bells” proved to be a song with an edge to it. It makes a powerful declaration to the land and gives a voice to feelings and passions that people might otherwise be unable to express. The room was jumping and there was so much joy in the room you could feel it. “It’s Church Jim, but not as we know it!”

John Scotland spoke about Acts 27 and Paul’s shipwreck onto Malta. I heard him speak on this at SloshFest recently – it’s a powerful and not at all comfortable word. However it is a good word. I suggest you catch the UStream video of it. At the end of his talk he asked Godfrey to revisit a golden oldie and do “Outrageous Grace”. It’s been a while since I played this one and I’m not sure I’ve ever done it with Godfrey but as there is no drumming until about ¾ of the way through it’s not too hard!

Woody asked everyone to come out to the front to pray and commit themselves to hang on to Jesus even in the face of shipwreck and whatever else may happen. Then there was the usual pile up of people getting blasted by God and doing some serious drunken carpet time.

Wow! I love these guys in Charleston. There was such a great connection there I wish I could come more often. If more churches were like this on Sundays then we wouldn’t have much to complain about.

We then went for lunch at “Ruby Tuesday” as we had a 200 mile drive to Charlotte to get to MorningStar. We also met Amy the waitress (see Blog on Day 5 for back-story on her) and Godfrey told her the CD he’d promised her had been put aside for her by another member of staff as we were told she wasn’t going to be in.

Paul, the keyboard player, offered to drive as Godfrey was pretty tired after the morning meeting so I jumped in the back and Dave went with John and a girl who’d been at the Charleston meetings but needed a lift home to Charlotte. We arrived at MorningStar at about 7pm. They had their formal “Valentines Ball” running to raise money for work in Haiti so we did feel a bit out of place checking in wearing jeans and t-shirts! We’ve got a room each, which is good. The music from the disco at the ball has just stopped (at 00:15) which is better! The MorningStar complex is HUGE. There is some serious financial commitment to run a place like this. It’s pretty weird to drive through the car park and see reserved spaces for Rick Joyner, Bob Jones and Todd Bentley. We saw Rick and Bob sitting at a table in their tuxedos when we were checking in. We’re not doing our meetings in the Grand Ballroom anymore; we’re in a smaller room off ‘Main Street’ – a fake street indoors with shops on both sides and a pretend tram-car in the middle! I presume this is a left-over from the complex being a hotel and amusement park. I’m glad we’re not in the main stage and so is Godfrey. The room is far too large and open. If it wasn’t absolutely heaving then it would feel pretty strange with a couple of hundred people rattling round in it.

I suspect it’ll be interesting tomorrow night. What we’re bringing will be quite different to anything they’ve had before; which hopefully will be a good thing. Help us Jesus.

USA Tour: Day Eight

2010-02-14T06:29:00.002Z

A day of rest, handguns, glory and chicken wings.

After not getting to sleep until 2:30 last night this morning was a bit of a slow starter. After breakfast I went back to bed for a nap and then had a long hot bath to try to relax some of my aching muscles from the crazy drumming. We went to an Arbies for lunch and John & Godfrey demonstrated their superior experience and discernment by ordering the ribs while Dave and I had steak which in my case was almost tasteless. This was the first meal in the USA I’ve ever had that was poor. I shan’t be visiting an Arbies again – well I won’t have the steak there anyway.

In the afternoon Dave and I went with Brad and Woody to a gun shop and shooting range. They had so many guns and so much ammo on show and people were just wandering about picking up the guns. The only thing stopping anyone from loading the gun was that the ammo was behind the sales counter and the guns were out front in racks. All the clerks were armed – I guess they’ve learned that running a gun shop can be risky so it’s best to deter any would-be thieves.

The guy running the range took our driving licences and entered Dave and my details into his computer then we hired a .454 revolver and an M-4 semi-automatic rifle very cheaply. However the cost of the ammo was horrific, $45 for a box of shells or between $2 and $3 per bullet depending on the calibre if you just wanted a few. We got 6 shots for the revolver and a load more for the rifle. I only wanted one shot of the rifle but three on the revolver. We had to wear eye and ear protection before we were allowed in the range. However there was no safety briefing, instruction or anything else. Here’s your gun, here’s your bullets, there’s the door to the range, enjoy! After we’d used up all the ammo we took the guns back and Woody wanted a few more bullets for the revolver as he hadn’t had a go with it. However the guy in the shop suggested we try the most powerful handgun in the world, the successor to Dirty Harry’s gun the .50 Calibre Smith & Wesson Magnum. This thing is HUGE. It weighs a ton, is powerful enough to stop a hippo and you can legally buy one after a police check lasting about ½ hour. You can even get a permit to carry it concealed about your person – although this gun would be pretty hard to conceal. We bought 10 bullets, three each for the others and just the one for me. This time the guy did give us some advice, he said hold the gun with both hands, at arm’s length and ensure your elbows are locked or the kick-back could do you some harm. My one shot was incredible – the noise, the smoke and the flash of light from the end of the barrel were nothing compared to the kick! It wasn’t a lot worse than the .454 but with the gun being so heavy it was hard to aim properly. I, however, took the centre cross out of the innermost concentric circle. By far the most accurate shot of the day; if I hadn’t been aiming at the target’s head!! Dave was a good shot and we were very grateful to Brad who knew how to load all the guns and ensured we didn’t shoot ourselves or anyone else. We headed straight for the meeting after our boys fun!

It was great tonight. Godfrey was brilliant at getting the whole room into the flow. He exhorted people not to get distracted by the manifestations but to keep focused on Jesus. The worship time was the best one yet – almost 100% of the people there were flying and no-one seemed to want to stop. The glory was heavy in the room. Very heavy. When John Scotland got up to speak the drunkenness was all over loads of people, I was hammered. He spoke about the wilderness following the glory and the reasons for it and how to react to it. It was well worth listening to so here’s a link so you can! (http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4707982). While looking after Godfrey’s CD table at the end I gave prophetic words to a few people, which was nice!

We went to “Wing Nuts” for a late meal of variously flavoured chicken wings and fries. They also had IBC Root Beer – the very best root beer I’ve tasted. Godfrey recommended it when we first arrived but we’ve struggled to find any recently. Most of us were very very drunk but the guys making the food didn’t seem too bothered. It was great to be with such warm, generous, friendly and spirit filled people. They ALL wanted us to come back ASAP and do more stuff over here. There’s a shift in the USA coming and these guys are going to be riding the cutting edge of it. The Empire is Over and the grass roots time has come.