I am currently reading Mission Shaped Questions: Defining Issues for Today's Church ed. Steven Croft, London, Church House Publishing, 2008, which is proving interesting and helpful as well as annoying in thought provoking ways (which I think means it's worth reading).  Part of my annoyance is the assumption of paedo-baptising fairly hierarchical traditions, and the fact that credo-baptising congregationally organised traditions aren't mentioned much and seemingly aren't writing or thinking so much in this area.  I am finding little links with my interest in denominational history and church health (woo hoo, or words to that effect) and enjoying their making - but then based on one of the quotes below, that makes me the right kind of person for this kind of emergent/fresh expression/practical theology type of thinking, so maybe it's inevitable.

Anyway, here are my fave four so far...

John Drane, p 96

Frustrated clergy find themselves running a spiritual hospice while all the time God is moving the waters in the birthing pool

John Drane, citing Daniel Pink, p 99

what we need today are 'creators and empathisers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers... artists, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers'

[I'd like to think I'm a 'pattern recognizer' and one who endeavours to be a 'meaning maker']

John Drane (again!) on history, p 95

As part of his discussion on maturity (now there's a good sign of a 'healthy church'):

From a purist historical perspective, I can sympathize with those scholars who argue that what we know about such ancient times [Celtic] is too insubstantial to bear the weighty reconstructions of Christian spirituality that are now being placed upon it.  But from a missiological point of view, these arguments entirely miss the point.  For when a culture finds that the meta-narrative that it one took for granted is either untrue, or merely unserviceable in changed circumstances, it is natural that we look back into our own story in the effort to find new paradigms that might inspire us for the future.  Faced with the diminishing prospects of the people of God, the Hebrew prophets repeatedly looked back to more ancient times and reinterpreted an old story (usually the exodus narrative) for new circumstances. The historical knowledge of the exodus available to Isaiah or Jeremiah must have been just as flimsy as our certain knowledge of the Celtic era, but that never stopped them reshaping the story.  In a different way, and on the basis of more certain historical knowledge, the New Testament evangelists did something similar with the stories of Jesus.  When the emerging Church looks to ancient times for patterns of organic spirituality and then remodels them in the light of new circumstances, this is just the latest phase in a very old story.

(Emphasis mine)

Angela Tilby, p 79

Also on history and adding a note of caution

I want to argue against the idea that history exists for us as a kind of simultaneous present from which we can construct whatever patterns we like or find meaningful.  My key point is that the identity of the Church is constituted by the fact that it lives in time.  In a very real sense the Church is its history.

(Emphasis original)

I think that maybe there's a kind of both/and here - the Church is its history (a bit like that mobile phone advertisement that says 'I am...' all the people I've encountered) but it can and, I'd argue, should also reinterpret its history for new circumstances and new, Godly, purposes.  Simply knowing our past does not give us maturity any more than knowing Bible stories; only by making connections, engaging creatively and seeing patterns with the bigger picture can we grow and mature.  Or so ends my sermon to myself for today!

Here's a nice little theological joke.  HT Geoff Colmer

This coming Sunday I am preaching on God's call - lectionary (I think!) gives the call of Samuel and in the C of E strand the calls of Philip and Nathanael.  I'm not overly fussed if I've got that wrong, it's a good theme for the start of the year anyway.

As part of the warm-up bit I am using a few of the 20th century martyrs as per Westminster Abbey to see what we know about them and their sense of call (probably not a lot really!) and am then adding on Mother Theresa as someone well known who died of natural causes!  A quick internet search on Mother Theresa was quite enlightening, revealing a faith that struggled and questioned as well as a profound sense of call.  It was from her story that I came across the idea of the 'call within the call' - not simply to be a nun, but to be the nun she was, working with the poorest of the poor in India.  Her own 'dark night' experiences never led her to deny or abandon the call which was worked out over a long life.

So, now I'm thinking about calls within calls, and various ideas are wafting through my mind.  One (rather cringe-laden) phrase is that of 'reason, season and lifetime' often applied to friendship in those gloopy emails that circulate from time to time.  Is there, within the life-long call to discipleship the potential for timebound calls - for reasons or seasons?  I am sure the answer is 'yes' - otherwise why do people move on from time to time, sensing God leading them to new things?

Another idea owes its origins more to computer programming  in the days when you had to be able to speak FORTRAN or COBOL, and the idea of 'nested do loops' (Remember them?  No?  Never mind). The outer 'do loop' would be the call to Christian disicpleship inside which other loops would be, for example 'to this role' 'in this place' 'at this time' 'for this purpose.'  How many levels of nesting, and how many nests within the outer loop may vary.  If this is as clear as mud, well either (a) you're too young to have learned to programme properly (b) you are too old to have learned to programme at all (c) you avoided computers before the advent of Windows (d) I'm talking gibberish [(e) a combination of the above!!].  Visually a series of concentric circles almost expresses this idea - at least in its simplest form.

At various times I, like many others, have had people say my (current) 'calling within a calling' is 'for such a time as this' and maybe that's true.  But I am left wondering now, as I look around the world (or at least my bit of it) what might be the voice of God 'for such a time as this' and that, I think is where I want our sermon exploration to go on Sunday.  Not the naff and predictable 'how do we hear God's voice?' or 'How many times constitutes God's call?' (where does that ridiculous notion of three come from?  Samuel was called four times!) or 'the call is to follow Jesus.'  Rather, what is the 'call within the call to follow Jesus for such a time as this, with credit crunches, rising unemployment and wars and violence across the globe?'  I can't neatly 'exposit' that from Samuel, Philip or Nathanael, but I do feel that is what the "divine niggle" is prompting me to say.

Yeserday's sermon at D+1 got me thinking - and that's a good thing!  The preacher was focussing on the theme of reconciliation as the heart of the gospel, and using 2 Corinthians 5:17 as a central text which is, in Greek, ὥστε εἴ τις ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ κτίσις· τὰ ἀρχαῖα παρῆλθεν, ἰδοὺ γέγονεν καινά·

This is important, because the dear old NIV, like any Bible, uses interpretation alongside translation, in its rendering of these words.  The NIV version says 'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!'  The NIVi says 'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!'  This is a more precise translation of the Greek and has a very different meaning - which I was pondering long before the preacher got there!  This morning I was reminded that καινὴ κτίσις is actually feminine language but I won't pursue that one!!

So, a very literal translation would probably be 'if anyone (or anything) is in Christ, there is a new creation...' which is pretty mind blowing stuff.  It is as if each time someone comes to faith (by event or process) creation (all of it) is renewed and not just that person's immortal soul.  Wow!  That will keep me thinking for a very long time.

The sermon spoke of reconciliation in three directions - personal with God, corporate within the faith community, global/universal with the whole of creation.  That's worth a lot of pondering too.

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