Black Sheep's Corner

2010-11-23T13:11:00.000-08:00

It's the time of year for lights!

By the time you read this the Christmas lights will be on, Santas will be installed in various grottos around the Bay, and shopkeepers will be praying for a bumper year! I do hope they get one - they have their living to earn just like the rest of us!

Meanwhile churches in the area will be holding their "Light up a Life" services, partly as fund-raisers for the truly wonderful Rowcroft Hospice (who also hold their own celebrations on-site), but also, and most importantly, a chance for those who grieve to gather together and give thanks for those who have died. Candles will be lit, prayers offered - many find this to be a great help and comfort.

Then, at last, there will be Christmas itself - celebrating the coming of God's light into the world in Jesus. Light up a life? - the light that really illuminates a life comes from the inside - it can't be bought in a shop, it can't be hung across the street, it is gift of God. It is a searching light - it lights us up with more clarity than any of us would welcome, making our limitations and failures very clear. But above all it is the light of love - God became flesh in Jesus so that we can hear the love and tenderness in his voice and see the light of love in his eyes even as he challenges us, even as we nailed him to the cross.

Christmas shows you that God is on your side, even when life seems to be working against you; that there is a future and a hope for you even at life's end, however big a mess you have made of your life. On Christmas Day in churches across Torbay we will hear the first chapter of John's
gospel, and in it these verses

In him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of men. The
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

NOTHING can extinguish the light, the clarity, the hope, the love that Jesus brings with him. Not the shadows of your past; not the gloom of an economically stricken new year. Go into that new year with him!

Big Society?

2010-10-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

The Big Society!! It's all about empowering communities, redistributing power and fostering a culture of volunteerism, says our Prime Minister. Encouraging active citizenship whereby people get involved in decisions and action in their local community and maybe beyond.

Cynics may sneer and say that it is about cost-cutting. Getting volunteers to do what the professionals did before. And of course that is partly true. We will have to wait to see if the government' actions live up to their rhetoric. But the idea, the ideal, is a good one - we, the people, taking responsibility for our community. And a quick historical survey reveals that our education system, our health care system, and many other positive aspects of our caring society, developed as active citizens, mostly active Christians in fact, took a "big society" view and got stuck in, perhaps encouraged by texts such as Galatians 6:2 "Bear one
another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." and of course Matthew 25:35 where Jesus said

"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me."

It is, though, worth stating the obvious - that the Big Society starts small! To borrow a few lines from a radical of former days - William Blake

"Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones,
And those who are in misery cannot remain so long,
If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth. . .
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer;"

It starts with your neighbour, with your street, your suburb, yes even your family. That is the only way in which the rhetoric can become reality. In these hard times it needs to become reality, NOT to prove Mr Cameron right, but to prove that we are what we claim to be - people who care!

Stop the screaming!

2010-03-17T04:16:00.000-07:00

What makes you angry? so angry you want to shout and scream and throw something - or somebody! Just to take some public issues in no particular order ...

Are you enraged by the bankers and their political friends who just don't seem to understand or be sorry for what they have done?

Are you scandalized by the (relatively few) MP's who have plundered public funds and still expect us to vote for them?

Are you appalled by young people out of control, or by the sections of the press who believe that ALL young people are a menace?

Are you miffed by the political correctness which won't allow you to speak your mind or act on your beliefs, or is it the foaming spittle-flecked ravings of Christian, Muslim or Atheist
fundamentalists. (Faith-based atheism is all the rage just now!)

Are you galled by the seemingly endless expensive wars fought while millions go hungry; or the way our troops are under-equipped?

Aaaaarrrrgh!

But Easter means we can stop the screaming! Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. That means he was right.

1. Right in saying that there is a God who loves us, and that the most important thing we have to learn is to trust him.
2. Right in saying that there is a holy God who will one day judge us. All of us! He will judge those who make us angry, and us in our anger.

So we can drop everything that is merely destructive or vengeful in our anger - one day "they", whoever they are, will answer for what they have done to a holy and just God. So will we. Justice in this life is important but never perfect. But because Jesus is right, we know that
there will be perfect justice - there is no escape - and that is good news!

We can use our anger at the world's wrongs to power the quiet thoughtful constructive working and living which is the mark of those who trust this holy and loving God. Christian faith means not moaning at or about our politicians, but steadily working with them; not running down our young people but helping them; not indulging in witch hunts, but quietly holding wrong-doers accountable. We can turn down the volume a little on outrage and complaint, and ramp up the commitment and readiness to serve others. We can do it because Jesus is alive, and he was right! He is the way, the truth and the life.

Quiet faith, steady trust and the hope of heaven - now that IS something worth shouting about!

Hallelujah!

Fasting isn't dieting!

2010-03-17T04:08:00.000-07:00

"Surely you should eat a healthy diet all the year round - so what is the point of giving up things you like for Lent?"

Lent has nothing to do with dieting! Loose weight and you will be healthier, probably, but quite possibly not happier. Dieting tends to proceed from anxiety or vanity or both, and, as George Jonas has said, is the "strange postmodern ritual of living so as to produce the most attractive possible corpse." So diet away, folks, and you will be leaner and more elegant if you persist - but not necessarily better people or happier people.

Fasting, for which Lent is the great Christian season, has positive and negative implications. Negatively, when you fast you are saying to yourbodily appetites - "You are not in charge of my life." In an age where obesity, alcoholism and thoughtless indulgence of every appetite are
epidemic amongst us, with all the wretchedness they bring in their wake, perhaps that's a statement we all need to make. Life is about more than what we eat or drink, or who we sleep with. Lent is a time for putting our appetites in their place!

Positively, in fasting we say to our appetites, "You are not in control here - God is!". That is the key to the ancient story of Jesus struggling with the temptations set before him by the Satan in the wilderness. Despite the obvious attractions of food after a forty day fast, power over his own destiny and a mighty object of worship. He saw,as so many of his followers have seen, that to get out of our own way and let God do his work in our lives is the way to a life worth living.

No-one has put this better than Isaiah in chapter 58:-

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, “Here I am.”
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the LORD will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in.

Our world, our community, needs those who will fast in that spirit!

Emma

2009-10-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

Luke 6:39 He also told them a parable: "Can a blind man lead a blind
man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his
teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his
teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother s eye, but
do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to
your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,'
when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You
hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will
see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother s eye."

Emma.
Have you been watching the adaption of Emma on TV of a Sunday evening?
It has always been a favourite with me, not least because you can read it
twice and get just as much fun from it on the second or third reading.

First time, you read the whole thing as it were through Emma's eyes; and you have all the fun of being misled alongside her by her own foolish expectations. Because she persuades herself, she persuades us, that Harriet really will marry Mr Elton; because she persuades herself she persuades us that Jane Fairfax is pining for the forbidden love of Mr Dixon.

But then you can read it again and see things from the outside -
you can see just how Emma deceives herself all through the book, how
she fools herself again and again and how she has not the slightest
insight into even her own heart.

This is a book about the human heart and how hard it is to read it. It is
about love and how it makes fools of us. It is about human blindness -
only Mr Knightley is not made a fool of by love in this book. It is a
book about self-deception and blindness - each of us has some area in our
lives where we can't see ourselves clearly, truthfully.

It is the business of the church and individual Christians to play Mr
Knightley to the world's Emma; to stick with the truth and speak the truth
to those who are blind, to speak the truth not in anger or arrogance, but
in love.

But we can only do that if we have allowed Jesus to play Mr Knightley to OUR
Emma. To let him show us how much we have deceived ourselves.
Keep him very near at hand.

Remembering

2009-10-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years there have been some wonderful interviews with
Henry Allington and Harry Patch, those two grand old survivors, the last
surviving British servicemen who served in the First World War. They came
home, dusted themselves off and lived very long and, one hopes, contented
lives. Both died this summer, their battles over at last.

Today as I write this in mid-October the Prime Minister warns us, and
his fellow world leaders that we have 50 days to save the world from
global warming and break the "impasse". I don't expect to see panic in
the streets of Torbay over this, nor indeed in the corridors of the UN
summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December. Most will see this,
correctly, as simply overblown rhetoric.

But Gordon Brown has a point - there is a battle to be fought on the
issue of climate change; sacrifices are likely to be required of us
all. The struggle, at bottom, is against thoughtlessness, greed,
selfishness and apathy.

Old battles - new battles - every generation has its own battles. Almost
always those battles are not struggles against impersonal forces of
nature - far more often they spring from the darkness of the human heart,
from greed, lust, anger, hatred, envy, and pride - misplaced pride. Those
things can and do warp and wreck the lives of individuals and of nations.

November is the month for remembering and as we look back at old battles,
around at our current struggles and ahead to the fights of the future
perhaps we need to remember three things.

1. We remember, give thanks for, and take heart from, the straightforward
courage of those men and women who went to fight for something they
believed in. They still go today to Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
Most of us will not go to war, but we will need that kind of courage
at some point in our lives - the courage to stand up, speak out, to do
or say something difficult, maybe dangerous. Our soldiers sailors and
airmen show us what commitment means.

2. We remember that the root of conflict, wars and battles is sin -
forgive me a theological word! Sin is rebellion against goodness and
love and truth , which is always rebellion against God. The hardest
battle, the never-ending. weary, struggle takes place in our own
hearts and minds, as we try not to give in to the worst in us, the
worst that life's tests and temptations can bring out in us. That is
war begins, where personal and national disaster is averted or
welcomed.

3. When life's struggles are at their most demanding, we need to remember
this promise:-

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest." Matthew 11:28

He will give you rest and more than rest - he will give you victory!

Please pray for our servicemen and women.

Ditchkins dismantled.

2009-10-04T07:12:00.000-07:00

Terry Eagleton, the literary critic, has produced possibly the best
response yet to the "new" atheists. Reason, Faith and the Revolution,
Yale University Press, 2009. It is an often hilarious dismantling of the
pretensions of Messrs Dawkins and Hitchens, whom he addresses under the
joint-title of "Ditchkins", alongside a deeply sensitive and thoughtful
exposition of what it means to believe. For many this will be a
difficult read - he assumes a lot of knowledge - but there many passages
which are positively luminous. Here for example, is Eagleton on faith and
knowledge ....

We might clarify the relations between faith and knowledge here with an
analogy. If I am in love with you, I must be prepared to explain what
it is about you that I find so lovable, otherwise the word "love" here
has no more meaning than a grunt. I must be prepared to give reasons
for my affection. But I am also bound to acknowledge that someone
else might wholeheartedly endorse my reasons yet not be in love with
you at all. The evidence by itself will not decide the issue. At
some point along the line, a particular way of seeing the evidence
emerges, one which involves a peculiar kind of personal engagement with
it; and none of this is reducible to the facts themselves, in the
sense of being ineluctably motivated by a bare account of them.

Sing!!!!

2009-06-19T11:29:00.001-07:00

The Bible tells us time and again to sing! Why? Because singing is good for you!

1. Sing and save your body - lose weight! Sing more and eat less. You can't sing with your mouth full. You can't sing on a full stomach. Singing, really singing - not just mumbling but belting it out like Susan Boyle - improves your posture, your breath control, maybe even increasess your lung-power!

2. Sing and save your mind. You can't be watching brain-numbing, heart-deadening, taste-ruining pap on TV while you are singing. And you can sack your psychoanalyst - what is he/she doing but trying to get your deepest thoughts and hopes and feelings into the conscious realm where you can work with them? Sing a joyful song and release your heart's delight, pour out your grief in a sad song till the tears run down your face, sing a fighting song and find new courage. As you sing you can soak your soul in the wonderful music of Bach, Mozart, and Verdi, you can revel in Gilbert and Sullivan, you can let rip with all your Radio 1 favourites - anything but that chanteuse of despair Lily Allen! Let the roaring bass, the romantic tenor, the passionate alto, the squalling soprano within you out - sing and save your mind!

3. Sing and save money! Think of all the money you will be saving at the supermarket and on psychotherapy - see above. Singing is free - it makes you feel great and it doesn't cost a penny.

4. Sing and find true love!! Well, yes, perhaps that is overstating it a little....... but singing is a great way find friends. All across Torbay there are operatic societies, pop groups and choirs of every kind waiting to hear from you, wanting you to join them in making a wonderful sound. And this is my real point - Central Church's choir would love to hear from you, and you will receive a warm welcome! Give us a call if you want to know more.

5. Sing - because God has given you life and love in his wonderful world, and WILL give you eternal life if you trust him for it! That is worth singing about.

Psalm 96 1 Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth! 2Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. 3Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!

A word in season!

2009-06-13T12:26:00.001-07:00

A quotation from John Newton’s "A Review of Ecclesiastical History" which was published in 1769.

Whenever and wherever the doctrines of free grace and justification by faith have prevailed in the Christian Church, and according to the degree of clearness with which they have been enforced, the practical duties of Christianity have flourished in the same proportion. Wherever they have declined, or been tempered with the reasonings and expedients of men, either from a well-meant, though mistaken fear, lest they should be abused, or from a desire to accommodate the gospel, and render it more palatable to the depraved taste of the world, the consequence has always been, an equal declension in practice. So long as the gospel of Christ is maintained without adulteration, it if found sufficient for every valuable purpose; but when the wisdom of man is permitted to add to the perfect work of God, a wide door is opened for innumerable mischiefs.

Who is God?

2009-05-08T02:32:00.001-07:00

Some paragraphs from a nice review article by that much and unjustly
maligned man Rowan Williams:



   Classical theology maintains that God is indeed different from the
    universe. To say this is to suggest a radical difference between one
    agent and another in the world. God is not an object or agent over
    against the world; God is the eternal activity of unconstrained love, an
    activity that activates all that is around God is more intimate to the
    world than we can imagine, as the source of activity or energy itself;
    and God is more different than we can imagine, beyond category and kind
    and definition.
 
   Thus God is never competing for space with agencies
   in the universe. When God acts, this does not mean that a hole is torn in
   the universe by an intervention from outside, but more that the
   immeasurably diverse relations between God's act and created acts and
   processes may be more or less transparent to the presence of the
   unconstrained love that sustains them all.
 
   The doctrine of the incarnation does not claim that the 'theistic'
   God (i.e. a divine individual living outside the universe) turns
   himself into a member of the human race, but that this human
   identity, Jesus of Nazareth, is at every moment, from conception
   onwards, related in such a way to God the Word (God's eternal
   self-bestowing and self-reflecting) that his life is unreservedly and
   uniquely a medium for the unconstrained love that made all things to
   be at work in the world to remake all things. Jesus embodies God the
   Word or God the Son as totally as (more totally than) the musician in
   performance embodies the work performed.

on "doing" church.

2009-05-01T00:12:00.001-07:00

One thing that gets on your Black Sheep's goat (n.b. reference to Matthew 25 there!) is talk about "doing" church. It usuall crops in phrases like "in our society we need to find different ways of doing church".

I came across a very nice article about all that this morning ... You can find it here - the Sydney Anglicans site is well worth a visit.

But I add the bulk of the article below for those who don't like to travel ....

Archie Poulos writes:-

During the boom of the Church Growth movement in the 1980s we were called to move our churches from being “modalities” to become “sodalities”. A modality is a collection of people that exist as a mode of being. You belong by just being. Families are modalities. A nation is a modality. Membership requires no or very little commitment, you are part of it just by existing.

Modalities are about “being”.

Sodalities are like partnerships. You have to apply and work hard to join. You join to engage in a task that must be done, and it requires a high level of commitment. Sodalities are about “doing”.

There are huge advantages in being a sodality. Stagnation is overcome. Everyone is involved. All members are working and pulling in the same direction to reach a goal.

The problem in making church a sodality is that the Bible describes church as much more like a modality. The images of church are that of family, where relationships are significant. What matters most for us, as an individual in a church, is that the belong to Christ in a relationship forged by his substitutionary death for us, not what I contribute to the outcome.

I don’t want to say the existence of churches doesn’t achieve anything. Things are achieved by the good functioning of the church family.

As an example take the Chappell family. All three brothers played cricket for Australia. As children they played cricket in the back yard, which is what families do. I am certain their functioning in this way as a family also made them better cricketers. I am also sure part of their success was the athletic DNA they inherited. The modality of their family resulted in them being outstanding sportsman. But they weren’t family in order to become great sportsmen.

The challenge facing us in church is not to do more, or to do it better, but to shape our being a church family together in such a way that we all become white hot in our love and service of Jesus.

Big brother is watching .....

2009-04-18T09:56:00.001-07:00

Many years ago now a wise old Elder told me "In church life, everything is noticed, nothing can be hidden." She was exaggerating to make a point but she HAD a point! and not only about church life.

First there was "Email-gate". Email traducing opposition MP's and ministers sent by a former Prime-ministerial advisor becamse public. Don't these people realise that there is no such thing as personal email?, and that once it leaves your email program your email passes through systems accessible to strangers and that you should email nothing you wouldn't be happy to see in the newspaper the next day?

Then there came the filming of police action against protestors during the anti-G20 riots last month, some footage taken on professional or "official" equipment, some simply on mobile phones. It is deeply ironic that the equipment used to help the authorities maintain control should now be used to challenge the authorities about how they do so.

Meanwhile the street cameras multiply, and advertising company Phorm want to monitor individual's surfing of the internet to serve up highly specific advertisements when we go on-line. The UK government's failure to censure BT or Phorm for secret trials of this technology resulted in legal proceedings against it by the European Commission.

We are being watched! Am I alone in finding that scary?

But I've always known that I am watched, and not just in church. God *always* has his eye on us. Read the wonderful Psalm 139 to understand what that means. He sees me through and through, my thoughts and hopes and dreams are utterly transparent to God, far more so than to me at times! And that is good news. Because, while God watches, and sees with absolute clarity and truth, he also loves, supports, forgives, blesses. To be truly and utterly known and truly and utterly loved is the great gift of God to his children, and it is to be found nowhere else. That other wise elder of the church, St. Paul, summed it up so beautifully in Romans 5:8 "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He knows and yet he dies - for me! Amazing!

Multi-faith Britain

2009-03-28T05:14:00.001-07:00

This is Bishop Michael Nazir Ali:-

'The arrival of people of other faiths provided chaplains with an opportunity for Christian hospitality in making sure that such people had access to a spiritual leader from their own tradition and had their spiritual needs met. This has now mutated into the closure of chapels, the retrenchment of a distinctively Christian chaplaincy and the advent of a doctrinaire multi-faithism. Let me say immediately that this has little do with people of other faiths who have no objection to chapels andchaplains, as long as their own needs are met, and everything to do with secularist agendas which marginalise all faith but seem especially hostile to Christianity. There is no reason at all why a Christian chapel and chaplaincy cannot be retained, whilst also providing adequately, and with dignity, for the needs of others.

'The long withdrawing roar of the sea of faith seems to be getting louder: nurses cannot pray, the Creed cannot be recited at Christian services for fear of offending non-believers, Christian marriage counsellors are removed because they believe in Christian marriage and Christian adoption agencies cannot be publicly funded because they believe that children are best brought up in a family with a mother and father to look after them and provide appropriate role-models for their personal development and relationships.'

Find more here

What really counts in the crunch ....

2009-03-19T04:12:00.001-07:00

I am writing this in mid-March (late as usual!) and the news on the radio is not uplifting.

We are all used to hearing about the dismal toll of closures and job losses, news re-inforced by a stroll down Union Street with it's recently closed shops. For many of us the past few months have provided our first insight into the way our financial machinery works and it has been a shock. It is hard to get a way from the bad news when people we know have lost jobs and homes, and when the headlines scream at us every day. (Want some investment advice? - take out shares in Robert Peston!) The chaos wrought in the financial sector seems to cast a cloud over everything.

But there are things in the news for which we should be thankful.

How about the wonderful people of Northern Ireland? After the awful murders of policemen and soldiers this month they have united to condemn the perpetrators and voice their commitment to peace and stability. I'm sure you are praying and asking God to sustain them in that determination.

How about Jade Goody? Whatever you think of the publicity surrounding her last days, she has been reminding us all that somethings are much bigger and and more important than Sir Fred Goodwin's pension. She wanted to seal her relationship with her partner by getting married. She has made financial arrangements for her children but also made sure they were baptised, made a part of God's family. Today's report is of her wanting to see a last sunset over the lovely Essex countryside. Stardom can make a fool of you, but she has shown that when the ultimate crunch comes she knows what is important - and reminded us too! By the time you read this she may well have died - so think of her and her family and be thankful for all those who see what really matters and life and treasure their family, their ability to love, their relationship with God.

The credit crunch is big news - but those things are bigger and even more important. We can still love. That power is so strong in us, because God's love is the source of what we are and what we can hope for. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

You may be a fundamentalist atheist if ....

2009-03-14T23:47:00.001-07:00

Rabid atheism is seemingly everywhere at the moment. Even Radio 4 seems quite happy for belief to be attacked on an almost daily basis - well Christian belief, certainly not Islam!

Do you worry, pooor lost sheep, that you might be affected by this? How do you know if you are becoming a atheist fundi yourself? Take heart! I found a web-site the other day called

"You may be a fundamentalist atheist if...."

Give yourself a check-up!

The forgotten birthday.

2009-03-14T23:35:00.001-07:00

It grieves me, it really does. We call ourselves a "Reformed" Church and so far no cleric of the church, let alone any church member, has shown any awareness, in my admittedly feeble hearing, that this year marks the 500th birthday of John Calvin! On July 10th to be precise.

So it gladdens an old sheep's heart to learn that our Minister will be giving five summer-evening talks on the basic ideas of Calvinism, ideas which have shaped the history of Europe and therefore the world far more than most of he flock realise.

Do you know Calvin's TULIP? No, the great man never committed horticulture - TULIP is the famous acronymn for the central themes of classic Calvinism.

Keeping it simple ......

T for "total depravity". This doesn't mean people are as bad as they can be. It means that sin is in every part of one's being, including the mind and will, so that a man cannot save himself.

U for "unconditional election". God chooses to save people unconditionally; that is, they are not chosen on the basis of their own merit.

L is for "limited atonement". The sacrifice of Christ on the cross was for the purpose of saving the elect.

I for "irresistible grace". When God choses to save someone he will.

P is for "perseverence of the saints". Those people God chooses cannot lose their salvation; they will continue to believe. If they fall away, it will be only for a time.

Gripping eh? Or annoying? Did you know this is what "Reformed" means?

Truth and love.

2009-02-18T09:30:00.001-08:00

The whole balance of the Christian life in the church and in homes and fellowships of whatever kind is summed in that wonderful phrase of St.Paul in Ephesians 4.

Speaking the truth in love.

Truth and love - the balance is important - these two things need to be constantly kept in balance .

When love is more important than truth, then fellowship descends into a sentimentalism, where there are an increasing number of things that cannot be said because they are hard and therefore seen as unloving; where resentments and disappointments a re never left behind because they are never truthfully addressed; where the "friendliness" becomes increasingly fragile and more a matter of surface politeness than real sharing or mutual understanding. You, oddly, find this in fellowships who emphasise their friendliness - "we're a friendly church",( the unspoken implication being "and people who ask akward questions or who dig beneath the surface aren't all that welcome") Sometimes there is a darker side to Christian cheerfulness than is usually recognised.

When truth is more important than love then doctrinal correctness is valued more than a fellowship maintained steadily in spite of misunderstandings and different outlooks. Fellowship degenerates into a huddling together of the like minded, warmed by the thought of the unhappy fate of the unbelievers outside the sacred citadel. I need hardly say that is very rarely the way with the U.R.C.

The right to be offensive.

2009-02-15T01:44:00.001-08:00

I want to write about the right to be offensive! We had Sachsgate, when Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were (rightly) punished for obscene andhurtful phone-calls live on air. Now there is Jeremy “One Eyed” Clarkson and Carol “Look for the Golly” Thatcher, whose admittedly crass remarks were greeted with shrill protests and in Thatcher's case led to her dismissal. Most recently there was Bristol nurse who was suspended after simply offering to pray for the recovery of an elderly patient. It seems to be a crime in our caring sharing society to offend anyone.

So it is. The 1999 Macpherson report, into the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, introduced the concept of ‘unwitting racism’ - any incident could be legally defined as racist if it was seen as such by the victim ‘or any other person’. The context or intended meaning of what was said or done were irrelevant, all that mattered was that somebody somewhere felt racially offended or hurt, even if they were not involved. That concept found it's way into the statute books via laws against racially aggravated offences. (The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and the Terrorism Act 2006) The notion that it is criminal, or should be, to offend someone seems to have wider currency.

Over against all this, Jesus said “The truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

And that means we have the right to be offended - to be presented with a truth so contrary to our usual way of thinking, to our taste, to the way we perceive ourselves, that we find it offensive. The truth that jolts us and challenges us and makes us think again and really sets us free can often seem deeply offensive and yet we need to hear it. So it can be deeply dangerous to settle simply for the sanitised speech of government and official pronouncements, and outlaw what may be offensive simply because it offends. The racist, the fascist, the homophobe, need to be heard and then argued with in public.

It is right, for example, that Richard Dawkins can write (wrongly) that raising a child Catholic is worse than subjecting the child to physical abuse - and right that he should be confronted by atheists and believers alike who see this for the disgracecful smear it is. It is right for Christians to proclaim the gospel where ever they can without abusing the defenceless. If people find that offensive, let them howl! It is becoming much harder to tell the truth without being hounded and your job put in danger, much harder even to offer a prayer without that being seen as a threat. But we must persevere. The truth will set people free – but only when the truth can be heard. Where the gospel offends, Christians have a God-given duty to be offensive. Keep it up!!

21st century witch hunt.

2009-02-05T08:39:00.001-08:00

This week, the UK National Secular Society (NSS) backed the North Somerset Primary Care Trust’s decision to suspend a 45-year-old community nurse and mother-of-two, Caroline Petrie, for offering to pray for patients.

Today Christians can find themselves subjected to disciplinary hearings and even risk getting sacked and excluded for being open about their faith or promoting Christian values. For example, Christian colleges in Oxford were recently threatened with the loss of their university status because the education that they offer is not sufficiently ‘inclusive’. Several students' unions have tried to ban Christian Unions on similar grounds.

Petrie, who became a Christian 10 years ago after the death of her mother, is suspended for the crime of failing to comply with a Nursing and Midwifery Council code, which states that ‘you must demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’. How simply offering to pray with someone, without in any way pursuing the matter when the offer is rejected, constitutes a breach of this code is a mystery.

Petrie has not taken blood tests with used needles, given the wrong drugs, taken heroin on her rounds, breached patient patient confidentiality or tried to get into bed with her patients. She simply offers patients prayers for an easy recovery. If they turn down the offer the matter ends there. Yet she has been suspended, is being subjected to a disciplinary hearing and could be sacked. A witch-hunt indeed, in the name of secularist dogma.

Capitalism and hell?

2009-02-05T00:05:00.001-08:00

We sheep are communists by nature - we are both the means of production and the product, and you can't get much less alienated than that can you? And we love a good fire. So we liked this quotation from one Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute.

"Capitalism without the threat of bankruptcy is like Christianity without the threat of hell. It doesn't work very well."

Why we need a philosophy - G K Chesterton

2009-02-04T06:20:00.001-08:00

By G.K. Chesterton

From The Common Man

The best reason for a revival of philosophy is that unless a man has a philosophy certain horrible things will happen to him. He will be practical; he will be progressive; he will cultivate efficiency; he will trust in evolution; he will do the work that lies nearest; he will devote himself to deeds, not words. Thus struck down by blow after blow of blind stupidity and random fate, he will stagger on to a miserable death with no comfort but a series of catchwords; such as those which I have catalogued above. Those things are simply substitutes for thoughts. In some cases they are the tags and tail-ends of somebody else's thinking. That means that a man who refuses to have his own philosophy will not even have the advantages of a brute beast, and be left to his own instincts. He will only have the used-up scraps of somebody else's philosophy; which the beasts do not have to inherit; hence their happiness. Men have always one of two things: either a complete and conscious philosophy or the unconscious acceptance of the broken bits of some incomplete and shattered and often discredited philosophy. Such broken bits are the phrases I have quoted: efficiency and evolution and the rest.

Anger.

2009-02-02T12:41:00.001-08:00

As our dear minister saw fit to preach on Ephesians 4:26-27 yesterday - "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.", I thought this snippet from "The Ladder of Divine Ascent" might be appropriate here.

As the gradual pouring of water on a fire puts out the flame completely, so the tears of genuine mourning can extinguish every flame of anger and irascibility. Hence this comes next in our sequence.

Freedom from anger is an endless wish for dishonor, whereas among the vainglorious there is a limitless thirst for praise. Freedom from anger is a triumph over one’s nature. It is the ability to be impervious to insults, and comes by hard work and the sweat of one’s brow.

Meekness is a permanent condition of that soul which remains unaffected by whether or not it is spoken well of, whether or not it is honored or praised.

The first step toward freedom from anger is to keep the lips silent when the heart is stirred; next, to keep thoughts silent when the soul is upset; the lst, to be totally calm when unclean winds are blowing.

Anger is an indication of concealed hatred, of grievance nursed. Anger is the wish to harm someone who has provoked you.

Irascibility is an untimely flaring up of the heart. Bitterness is a stirring of the soul’s capacity for displeasure. Anger is an easily changed movement of one’s disposition, a disfigurement of the soul.

Just as darkness retreats before light, so all anger and bitterness disappears before the fragrance of humility.

Some unfortunate people, who have a tendency to anger, neglect the treatment and cure of this passion and so give no thought to the saying, “The moment of his anger is his downfall” (Ecclesiasticus 1:22).

The Revd Derrick Aubrey Barber

2009-01-14T10:53:00.001-08:00

The Revd Derrick Aubrey Barber

21st September 1920 - 21st December 2008

Derrick was born in the valleys of South Wales in the village of Talywain, near Abersychan – his parents were Mary and Joseph. His mother was one of 17, and Derrick himself was the youngest of five children. All the children were gifted with remarkable singing voices, and Derrick's brother won the National Eisteddfod. Derrick toured the toured the country and sang as a lad – he was known as The Monmouthshire Nightingale - kept his marvellous voice right to the end, and singing was always a part of his ministry.

Derrick grew up in the Great Depression of the 1930's and it had a profound effect on his life, shaping his passionately-held political views and his preaching of the gospel of mercy and grace. In all his work he tried to support and encourage the underprivileged and to work for justice. He was in correspondence with Trevor Huddleston and Nelson Mandela, writing poems and raising money for the struggle against apartheidt.

When Derrick was 14 the whole family moved to Southampton in search of work. Derrick was apprenticed in the foundry of Harland and Wolfe the shipbuilders, where he learned to work with wood and iron, skills which he developed through the rest of his life -

He felt the call to the ministry as part of Bitterne Park Congregational Church – with no qualifications and little money, but determined and unstoppable, he worked at night school, passing the School Certificate exams and also learning Greek and Hebrew. He entered Western College Bristol, emerging with the Bristol B.A, and was ordained to the Ministry in Mount Pleasant Church, Hastings in 1945. He married Eileen in that Church in 1947. This was followed by ministries in Royston (1950-56), Beckenham (1955-1966), Torquay (1966-1983) and Clevedon and Nailsea(1983-1985)

Derrick was one of the founding ministers of Torquay Central Church, bringing together Belgrave Congregational Church, Union Street Methodist Church and Market Street Methodist in new premises on the site of the Belgrave building.

Ministry was multi-faceted – Church, Hospital Chaplaincy. Community Health Council, School Governor, caring for the young and old, the local Samaritans for over 35 years. He was a great friend to the smaller churches and would conduct worship in them throughout his retirement. Derrick brought his creativity, musical talent and unstoppable energy to all these tasks and many more.

In his final semi-conscious state, Derrick opened his eyes three times and exclaimed with all his usual vocal power "In all his wide dominion ..." We think he was reminding us that God is everywhere and everywhere to be served. This delightful, creative inspiring servant of the Lord is much missed, of course by Eileen, Valerie and Susan, but also by a much wider church family to whom he was a much loved guide and friend.

He gives snow like wool ....

2009-01-10T00:00:00.001-08:00

From Psalm 147

12 Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem!
Praise your God, O Zion!
13 For he strengthens the bars of your gates;
he blesses your children within you.
14 He makes peace in your borders;
he fills you with the finest of the wheat.
15 He sends out his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
16 He gives snow like wool;
he scatters hoarfrost like ashes.
17 He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
who can stand before his cold?
18 He sends out his word, and melts them;
he makes his wind blow and the waters flow.
19 He declares his word to Jacob,
his statutes and rules to Israel.
20 He has not dealt thus with any other nation;
they do not know his rules.
Praise the LORD!

A good text for a church in the middle of winter where the heating has given up the unequal struggle.

Bishop Elias Taban

2009-01-09T14:27:00.001-08:00

The Bishop visited us today (November 22nd 2008) and spoke to a small congregation about his life and work in Southern Sudan. Many of us were deeply moved. I would like to think that the church could develop this link. To be going on with, here is a brief overview of the Bishop's life.

Born 10 May 1955; the day war began, triggered by the assassination of 50 unarmed southern policemen in Yei, ordered by a new northern Police Chief. Elias was taken by his mother and hidden with her in the bush for three days, within ten minutes of his birth, to avoid the fighting. His Christian parents wanted him to be literate and when mission schools were turned into Islamic schools by the Sudanese President in the sixties, Elias was renamed Muhammad Ali Mahnsoor.

He was then forcibly taken as a child soldier at the age of 12 by the southern Freedom Fighters. After a year, his father obtained his release and he completed his secondary education in a refugee camp in Uganda.

He studied as a building engineer. During the second phase of the 40 year long war, he undertook logistics planning, acquisition and implementation on behalf of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army. During this time, he was held in the Congo for several days, until his negotiated release – in exchange for 7 cows! However, he realised his primary goal in life as a church leader while helping to train chaplains for the SPLA

With the slowing of the violence, alongside his preaching he began job creation and income generating projects. With small amounts of seed funding from a British NGO, he established a building company that provides training and jobs producing timber, mud bricks and concrete blocks. Buying these products, he has built three orphanages, a multi-purpose training institute and guest house accommodation. This accommodation is of outstanding quality, such that the British Council has used it on several occasions for their training of the senior Southern Sudanese finance officers and police chiefs. This accommodation generates profits that support a women’s empowerment programme with a revolving micro enterprise fund overseen by his wife.

He officiated when the body of President John Garang was brought to Yei. He is a personal friend to the new President, Salva Kiir and an official, but unpaid, advisor to him on the country’s religious affairs.

He is the Bishop of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Sudan, an indigenous church with congregations around the country. As Bishop, he is elected by the General Assembly of his denomination for an initial term of five years. He is the inaugural President of the Evangelical Alliance of Sudan. He is married to Anne Grace. Their only child died of malaria at the age of one; they have adopted three war orphans from different

We just LOVE Richard Dawkins!

2009-01-09T14:15:00.001-08:00

We just LOVE Richard Dawkins!!

Over here at Black Sheep Towers we know a class act when we see one, and, lets face it, Richard Dawkins is "The Business" - single handed he is probably driving more people to God than anyone else in the land. God's gift to Atheism. Borrow "The God Delusion" (don't buy it - why augment his pension further?), and read it. You will find a farrago of anti-religious rant, mind-blowingly arrogant dismissals of fellow-scientists who disagree with him, special-pleading and philosophical amateurishness that it's hard to beat. If religion, and especially Christianity, can provoke this kind of intemperate malice then there must be something either very bad OR very good about it! On THIS page we will be posting some brief reviews of books which tackle the questions he raises, as a guide to the perplexed..

Testing out e-blog.el

2009-01-09T13:58:00.001-08:00

I've just discovered e-blog.el which allows you to post, edit, label and delete posts on one or more blogs on Blogger *via Emacs*!!

Lets see if it works ......

God on the brink?

2008-08-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

In a long excursus on John 3:16 and 2 Corinthians 5:19, Barth twice refers to God risking his "own existence as God" in the work of Christ on the Cross. He continues

"It is his self-revelation and self-realisation (in and for the world) as a gift, and rebus sic stantibus that can mean only the offering of that without which he cannot be God, and therefore of the greatest possible danger for himself."

I'm still trying to make sense of this!! But it seems odd that Barth, having absolutely insisted on the total freedom in which God carries out his redeeming work should now present God as driven by some inner necessity towards an act of (potential) self-destruction.

Can God cease to exist? Is he just another thing which can flash out of existence and leave everything else intact? That doesn't seem right - God is just more than one more thing in the universe. Or, if he exists at all, is his existence necessary in the manner of Anselm's ontological argument?

Love and wrath.

2008-08-18T06:25:00.000-07:00

"It is only of God that what man comes to experience in covenant with him is favour. It is not always so, not by a long way in all the supposed or actual experience of man. Even in his experience of what comes to him from God, man can be blind, or half blind, and can therefore make mistakes and can find terror and destruction in what God has allotted and given as supreme benefit. And necessarily the benefit offered him by God can in fact and objectively become terror and destruction if he flees from God and opposes him. Even the divine favour will then take on the aspect of wrath. God's Yes will then become a No and his grace judgement. The light itself will blind him and plunge him into darkness. Life will be to him death." p 41

The love of God .....

2008-08-17T06:22:00.000-07:00

"The love of God begins in fear, and the fear of God ends in love; and that love can never end, for God is love." John Donne Sermons, vol 6. No.4

Isaiah 7

2008-08-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

On page 5 of Vol 4 part 1, Barth has some interesting comments on Isaiah 7 - the whole section is headed "God with us", and of course that is the meaning of the name Emmanuel, the mysterious child of Isiaiah 7:14ff.

"What is important in the text is that when the child is born, that is in less than a year, he will be given the name Emmanuel, because God will have saved his people from the threat of Rezin and Pekah and they will be again rejoicing in his goodness. That is the one side of the sign; But the other is that before the child can distinguish between good and evil, a fgew years later, he will have to eat milk and honey, the food of the nomad..... "

THE time, THE place

2008-08-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

"The time God has for us is constituted by his becoming present for us in Jesus Christ, ie Deus praesens. If we say Jesus Christ we also assert a human and therefore a temporal presence. ........ Revelation in the sense of Holy Scripture .... is an eternal, but not therefore a timeless, reality. It is also a temporal reality.
Revelation will never be discovered by anyone who undertakes to arrive at a kind of timeless core by abstracting from all times or from specific times, or who who attempts to rise from the human to the divine. It will never be discovered by one to whom its temporality is a worry, who thinks it his duty to pass by its temporality and interrogate and grasp its nature as something transcendently timeless. Revelation has its time, and only in and along with its time is it revelation. How otherwise can it be revelation to and for us, who are ourselves temporal to the core?" C.D. 1:2 page 50

And so the battle against misplaced abstraction goes on.

Down the mine .............

2008-07-31T00:08:00.000-07:00

Reading through Barth is to discover a mine of quotations from other writers - the man appears to have read everything. Here are two from this morning's reading.

First Augustine:

"Non mediator homo praeter deitatem, non mediator Deus praeter humanitatem. Ecce mediator: divinitas sine humanitate non est mediatrix; humanitas sine divinitate non est mediatrix; sed inter divinitatem solam et humanitatem solam mediatrix est humana divinitas et divina humanitas Christi." (Sermo 47:12 2)

and then Martin Luther:

"Christ is the light of men through his humanity .... through which his divinity shines as through a mirror or a coloured glass, or as the sun through a light cloud; for the light is ascribed to the divinity, not the
humanity; yet the humanity is not despised, since it is there as the cloud and curtain of this light." (Pred. uber Jn 1:1ff.)

Principles!

2008-07-28T02:13:00.000-07:00

"It was always a serious misinterpretation of the New Testament as well as of the Old Testament, to think of discovering its content (after the manner of all, legalism) in certain principles. It makes no difference
whether it was the principle of sonship to God, or perhaps the struggle of true religion with the church, or vice versa the principle of the Church as the place of the true transmission of salvation and adoration of God, or a definite moral principle (say that of action on conviction or that of unconditioned love) .... or the principle of this or that mystical or social theory and practice which was to be the preferred and presented as the essence of the matter ........ we would do well to realise that in the sense of the New Testament writers themselves,
literally everything they say would be but marginal and incidental and transient, if interpreted as the proclamation of a principle or idea or general truth - but that literally everything is central and fundamental
and eternal, the moment it is interpreted as the predicate in an utterance about Jesus Christ."

Church Dogmatics Vol. 1 The Doctrine of the Word of God. p.11

The current "principle" which holds us in thrall is "inclusiveness" - whenever you see an individual congregation or a denomination trying to sum up its approach, there is a very good chance that the word "inclusive" will appear somewhere. In many cases that will be code word meaning " we are very welcoming of homosexuals practicing or not". It might mean more properly, " we do not wish differences of race, age, sex, colour or social standing etc etc to prevent any one from hearing and being challenged by the gospel of Jesus Christ. " It is true that we can all come to God in Christ just as we are; but no-one is left unchallenged or unchanged by an authentic encounter with the living Christ. There are some parts of every life that God does NOT welcome.

Dairy of a black-sheep in summer!

2008-07-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

You resident black sheep has some serious reading to do over the summer! The plan is to plough through as much of Karl Barth's "Church Dogmatics" as possible. The CD is possibly one of the greatest works of Reformed theology ever written and certainly one of the longest from the pen of an individual author. It's title, in English, combines two of the (currently) dirtiest words in the English language

Church: this summer we are witnessing the Anglican communion struggling not to blow itself to bits over homosexuality, not the most edifying spectacle even for those who know enough to understand why this is a necessary debate. From the outside the church looks like a strange body of people with distinctly odd views about sex, and otherwise uninteresting.

but it gets worse

Dogmatics: nobody wants to be thought dogmatic any more - the word is associated with the arrogance of those who "know it all" in fields where such clarity is considered at best impossible and at worst, at least in the UK, impolite. Religion is just such a field! Dogmatics actually means just "teachings" - and if the Church has nothing to teach it has nothing to say (apart from "sorry", which we often need to say). Church Dogmatics is an exploration of the teachings of the church across ten thousand pages.

Should be fun - watch this space!!

Jesus was ..........

2008-03-14T12:51:00.000-07:00

Efforts by theologians and historians to plumb the mystery of Jesus continue unabated.
Summarised below for your edification and delight are some of the latest results of this research!

There are 3 good arguments that Jesus was Jewish:

1.He went into his father's business.
2. He lived at home until he was 33
3. He was sure his Mother was a virgin and his Mother was sure He was God

But then there are 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Italian:

1. He talked with His hands
2. He had wine with His meals
3. He used olive oil

But then there are 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:

1. He never cut His hair
2. He walked around barefoot all the time
3. He started a new religion

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was an American Indian:

1. He was at peace with nature
2. He ate a lot of fish
3. He talked about the Great Spirit

But then there are 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Irish:

1. He never got married.
2. He was always telling stories.
3. He loved green pastures.

There are 3 good arguments that Jesus was Black:

1. He called everyone brother
2. He liked Gospel
3 . He didn't get a fair trial

But the most compelling evidence of all - 3 proofs that Jesus was a woman:

1. He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was virtually no food
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it
3. And even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was still work to do.

2008-01-01T02:27:00.000-08:00

Someone said to me the other day "Isn't God as we find him in the Ten Commandments rather an inadequate personality? How does it go? Number 1 - You shall have no other gods but me. Number 2 No graven images. Number 3 No taking my name in vain. Doesn't that speak of a deity somewhat unsure of himself and his relationships?"

Is a wife who says to her husband "You shall have no other husband but me" inadequate? Or is she simply stating the terms of the relationship, terms not unreasonable given then nature of marriage? The Commandments are like that - the terms of a relationship between God and his people. What is more they are for our benefit and not God's. He doesn't need our worship, but we need nothing more desperately than to set our hearts on the one for whom our hearts were made. If we set our hearts on other things, worship other gods, the results are always disastrous.

Welcome to the Black Sheep's Corner

2007-11-03T01:50:00.000-07:00

Every flock has one - a black sheep, usually lost, often puzzled by what the rest are doing, frequently looked upon with not entirely unjustified suspicion by the rest of the flock. Well, as far as the church goes, I'm it! I hope to post here various musings on God, grass, life, grass, love, grass - and of course grass. Welcome to the blog of one whose "mind" swings as swiftly to the incoherent, the inconsequential and the indigestible as the needle to the Pole.