Missiologists seem to like numbers - if counting derieres on chairs or how many pledge cards were signed are out of fashion, then we'll just squeeze lots of (albeit little) numbers into our writing.  Having read a bit of the stuff I bought before Christmas I now have a list of...

6 Christian constants, 5 marks of mission, 4 marks of the Church, 3 perspectives (2 turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree).  To be fair, the stuff they have is helpful in my thinking, but if you start playing with the concepts and combining them in varied permutations you can just end up tied in knots that achieve very little.  So, in case anyone reading this wants to ponder any of these themselves here they are...

Six Christian Constants

1. Christ
2. The Church
3. Eschatology
4. Salvation
5. Anthropology
6. Culture

Five Marks of Mission

1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
2. To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
3. To respond to human need by loving service
4. To transform unjust structures of society
5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth

Four Marks of the Church

For this one, one of the books on Fresh Expressions (and fresh expressions) offers some interesting and helpful parallels for each of these which I see as 'both/and' rather than 'either/or' so what follows is very interpreted by me...

1. One (unity) and Diverse (many) -  'in' - a unity in diversity
   
2. Holy (set apart) and Charismatic (anointed) - 'up' - set apart and anointed by God
3. Catholic (universal) and Local (contextual) - 'of' -  reflecting global culture
4. Apostolic (authority) and Prophetic (sent) - 'out' - sent out in authority (Not sure I see 'prophetic' as 'sent' so much as 'speaking out' or 'apostolic' entirely as 'authority' but still...)

Three Perspectives

This one is quite complex but can be summarised by key words, early thinkers and contemporary thinkers ...

1. A - to save souls and extend the church: Law - Tertullian - John Paul II
2. B - a call to fulfil own potential, allowing Christ to be the answer: Truth - Origen - Rahner
3. C - liberation; Christ as transformer of culture: History - Irenaeus - Gutierrez

I think this is possibly the most helpful bit I've read thus far, even if what it says is hardly rocket -science: dependent on how one understands one faith, then one will understand and exercise mission accordingly.  Whilst I have an analytical mind, I am always a little wary of neat categories but from a practical perspective a few boxes can be helpful - just so long as they don't end up as a new set of labels that define themselves over against each other in the way that existing theological labels tend to.

What all this means, I think I already knew:

• That there are certain cores essential to being authentically Christian (even if people may vary over what they think those are and how they are understood!)
• That mission is diverse and complex, so that one size doesn't fit all and no one church can do everything

I also like the frequent mentions of the word 'history' and its links to liberation - freedom - within the context of mission.  But then Anglicans (who write most of this stuff) ostensibly value history and tradition more than your average Baptist

Seems the New Year is the time when people look back over the last twelve months and forward to the next.

The equivalent Saturday to this one last year I was visiting someone in Leicester General Hospital and by chance/grace was there when she received a diagnosis of cancer; eight months later I conducted her funeral.  Today I could be hospital visiting, but have elected not to - I am still on leave and the outlook is possibly marginally less bleak.  A lot has happened in the last twelve months and yet the same basic patterns of life continue unchanged.

Regular readers of this blog will have shared in the happenings of the last year, and many have had their own share of tragedy, challenge and change to contend with.  Rather than chart a list of events, I want to 'stream of consciousness' some of what I think I've learned that I will take forward into the next year.

I've never really been a procrastinator, but this year has been a keen reminder not to put off until a more suitable occasion those things that one deems important.  At the same time, there have been runs of weeks when I've worked way too hard and too long, and have paid the price in fatigue and irritability.  Someone said to me that it is good every now and then to say 'no' to something that sounds really good, really interesting - and discovering that actually you don't feel guilty or unfulfilled as a result.  It will take me a lifetime to manage that one, but maybe the awareness is a step on the right path?

Beware success criteria - especially if they are numerical.  In five years the membership of my little church has decreased quite significantly from mid-forties to low thirties.  We have closed our building, our Sunday School and our children's work.  By some criteria we (I) are (am) failures (a failure).  But I don't believe that we are (or that I am).  We have grown up a lot, bravely faced countless challenges, established many new initiatives from Lent/Advent prayer lunches to a travelling lunch club to events in a pub.  We have learned to be far more creative, long-suffering and forgiving, and now almost everyone under 80 is on a rota for some aspect of worship-life and/or mission.  My person who died from cancer said to me at one point in the year that she'd never realised how much love there was in our church until she became ill - this for me was a measure of success that no numerical method would ever identify.  As it happens, we reached the dream of 500 people-contacts in the week up to Christmas but what I treasure are the qualitative moments, often shared with very few people.

The God of small things - not a book by an Asian writer, but the glimpses I've caught of God this year.  Right there in the most insignificant moments there is God.  I have found myself pondering many times the mustard seed, the yeast, the seed that dies, the widow's mite, the one lost sheep... one small Baptist congregation doesn't even show up on the radar of the world church, but God sees, knows and is.  Five years of little things like saying 'thank you,' of refusing to put people down, of attention to detail seem to be bearing fruit, transforming the dough, whatever the metaphor might be.

2009 will bring it own numerous challenges, already they are emerging: the end (we hope!) of the process to sell our building; the challenge of convincing anyone to stand for election to the diaconate; a shortfall of several thousand against budget for last year (understood and justifiable but nonetheless real); our older congregation getting increasingly frail... but maybe what we've learned in the last year will help us to step forward in ways 'known and to be made known' as we walk with God into the future.

Later today will be my final Christmas/New Year visit to/from friends and then normality returns.  Not sure it entirely ever went away as someone had a house guest who decided to die on 28th December and needs to be buried next week and, whilst visiting a friend, I had to fight my 'vicar reflexes' when someone we both know rang to say a relative was very ill - I succeeded but always interesting to be reminded this is ' not 'what I do' it is 'who I am.'

Been a good break from routine - have eaten way too much and need to get lots of exercise (that or starve) to get the weight off again.

Lots to do in the next few weeks, so it will be a busy start to 2009.  But first, I am off to Leicester for a leisurely SFL (Skinny Fairtrade Latte) and one last calorific indulgence before I knuckle down to reading, preparing, writing, visiting and so on.

Hope you had a great Christmas and that you will find peace, fulfilment and hope in 2009.

I hadn't intended to post today but it has been a day that has made me pause and think, so it seemed good to record it before it slipped into obscurity.

Last night's Christingle service was attended by 216 people - I know this because the Anglicans head count every service that takes place on their premises.  It was amazing to see people with no church connection streaming in and enjoying themselves.  We done good!  This morning there were 66 (the Meths are into head counting too!) with a few folk we didn't know among the familiar church folk and 'oncers.'  The service went well, fitted together and seemed to connect with people.

One of the 'lighter' introductory bits was an activity where by someone placed lots of items that are associated with Christmas in front of the nativity scene - a visual expression of how the spiritual heart of the season can be obscured by activities and things.  What made it powerful was that the person doing it was in his early fifties and his wife died three months ago; one of the items he chose to use was a family photo, taken a couple of years back, of them plus their five children on holiday.  It happened - whether by design or chance - that from where I was sitting the photo obscured the manger; powerful and poignant.  A brave thing to have done - and he did amazingly well to get through it.

Brave was the word people used to describe my talk too.  I'm not so sure it was much that it was brave as that it was right!  I sensed a change in atmosphere as I spoke - in a good way I hope - as people shifted from fluffy jollity to a more honest thoughtfulness.  One person's mother was in hospital, several had been bereaved, one works for Zavvi and another for Jaguar - it was a God-given moment and I think it connected.

After the service I visited someone just released from hospital, and then taxi-ed a seventy something spinster for lunch out.  She is what once would have been termed 'a bit simple' - good-hearted, easy-going and vulnerable.  She told me how she'd worked as nursing auxiliary all her life and how she wasn't clever but she was famous.  Seemingly at an age somewhere between three and six (age and year didn't stack up) she had been the only child to survive a local outbreak of meningitis (probably the cause of her mild learning difficulties).  I was reminded of Herod and the slaughter of innocents, of the present day fear that disease brings, and of the countless children in the two-thirds world who die of dread diseases.

I visited the city hospital where one of my church folk is enduring endless tests which, so far, have failed to uncover any cause - apart from age - for his rapidly declining health and the father of another member is being treated and undergoing tests following a recent emergency admission.  Both were glad to be visited, and both were pleased to be prayed with.  As I walked out of the building to return to the car park, I heard the sound of a trolley, and turned to see the mortuary trolley making its way towards the wards: for some families Christmas Day ends only in tears.

Tonight many of my congregation - and those in other congregations locally - will be glad simply to have got through the day.  For me, I am glad to have shared in some small way in making today honest and God-aware.  In a good way, it will be the two silent figures pushing a black shrouded trolley in the still, near silent darkness of a December evening that will stay with me as reminder of Christmas 2008 - cradle and cross, life and death, time and eternity: only ever a hair's breadth apart.

When I was learning to be a minister... No that's not right, I'm always learning to be a minister...  When I was at 'vicar school' I spent a year working with an Anglican who described me as being 'liturgically sensitive' by which she meant I had an understanding of the liturgical year, knew the how and why of liturgical colours and had grasped something of the multisensory aspects of Anglican rituals.  The next year I worked with an RC priest who took dressing the church, and dressing himself, for worship very seriously.  Some of the RC rituals are visually incredibly powerful, and something obviously stuck with me, as I make quite a point of 'dressing' worship spaces and for special services think carefully about how what I wear (as well as what I say and do) relates to the occasion.

Good Friday in Dibley is a case in point - the Anglicans, of course, robe, whilst the Methodist minister and I wear our 'funeral suits,' he with a black clerical shirt, I with a violet tee shirt (Lenten/penitential colour).  On Easter Sunday he will wear a pale shirt and I usually my red suit.  The contrast is often noted by congregation members, so it presumably is effective.

Pentecost is another 'red suit day' as is Christmas day and any other great festivals we may have along the way.

Last Sunday was red suit and Santa hat - because it is a fun outreach service, and it needs to say we are inclusive not exclusive.  Today is our Christingle service for which my liturgical attire inevitably includes some tinsel, for no better reason than it's fun; probably today it will be the green suit (no, not liturgical 'ordinariness' it's Christmas tree colour!!).

All this is probably not very 'Baptist' is it?  I mean, jeans and a jumper would be more typical these days.  Also, as I struggle with the kind of incarnate iconography that accompanies some understandings of priesthood, am I just capitulating (and have clearly swallowed a dictionary this morning)?  I think not.  I think what I'm doing is saying that there are time and places when the visual speaks as much as the audible, and that attention to detail matters.  if that constitutes liturgical sensitivity, then I'm happy to embrace it.