andygoodliff

Children and Church

Brodie's blog on kids @ church has got me thinking on the question on the place of children in the church. This is something I'm always wondering about and thinking how we can better relate children and church together.  I worry sometimes that there can be something almost anti-thetical about the two.

So some thoughts on children and church:
1. Children, church and integration. There needs to be greater integration. In 2003 there was a series on channel 4 called Conversations with Rowan Williams.  In 'The end of childhood?', the Archbishop of Canterbury discussed with Philip Pullman and Camila Batmanghelidjh, the topic of childhood. Philip Pullman said during the discussion 'the more intergenerational talking we have, the better we'll all be.'  This is spot on.  Church should be a place where children are integrated into the whole life of the church, not something that happens apart from it. Colin Gunton made an argument for infant baptism based on the fact that baptism is the way of entry into the church, in other words, we should regard our children as full members of the body.  Although I am a Baptist, I like this argument, because it recognises that our children are part of the body of Christ: they are integrated and incorporated into the family of God.  The church should not be a community of adults, but the whole people of God - one family - joined together by Christ in the Spirit. (As Baptists we might want to say it's a community of believers - this does not I think exclude children, alhough in my experience sometimes it does!)

2. Children are a gift.  We need to recognise and affirm that our children are a gift and not a 'right'. There can be, in some areas of our churches, the belief that children are disruptive to worship.  They make inappropriate noises, they find it hard to sit still, they have poor bladder control.  This kind of belief forgets that children are a gift from the God to the church (because the church is the first family), who should be welcomed and afforded the grace to be 'children'.  We need to ask the questions, 'what gift/s do our children give us?' - the joy of life, a model of trust, a desire to learn, hope - and 'what gift can we given them?' - patience, time, an ability to listen, to share our lives, something to learn. The gift of children from God is the sure hope that God is looking after our world.  I want to add also here that children don't have to wait until they're 18 for God to use them - scripture is full of examples of children being part of God's plan (for example, the boy who remembered his lunch at the feeding of the 5,000).

3. Children need models.  Children need to see the Christian life embodied, they need to see how it works.  They need to witness forgiveness, truthfulness, patience, courage, non-violence, gentleness, kindness, love in action.  Children need to learn how to pray, to worship, to live faithfully.  I reject the notion that there is a latent spirituality within us that just needs to be awakened.  Faith does not lie hidden within us, it is a gift from God; the practice of forgiveness is not something that only needs to be teased out of us, it is a gift from God who forgives us in Christ, which needs to be received and learned.  This is why 'children's church' is not the best place for our children; they need to see discipleship lived and breathed.  I'm not saying that children should not have special time to be together as children to learn about God and grow in faith, but to recognise that there needs to be more to the experience of faith than 'sunday school'.  Children need to see the witness of those who have followed God for many years - here is the vital role of elderly (see more thoughts on this here).

4. Church does not equal entertainment. Too often we think the way to relate children and church together is through entertainment.  Our emphasis is on entertaining our children rather than discipling them.  My concern here, is one day they will grow out of being entertained, and perhaps grow out of following Jesus.  Children and church should not be how can we fill the time and keep them occupied, but how can we teach and provide opportunities to try on this Christian identity.  What I am not saying, is children should not have fun, instead we need to ensure against church becoming the equivalent to baby-sitting.  We should encourage our children to play and experience Christianity in all its fullness and diversity.

5. Children, church and storytelling.  We need to tell children stories: stories of God - many stories, the entire breadth of scripture - and stories of the church. They need to see that the God of creation, of Israel and of Jesus is the God of the church - the same yesterday, today and forever.  They need to hear the big giant story of God and the smaller stories of Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, etc.  Our children should not be short-changed, that is, we shouldn't avoid the difficult bits of the Old Testament and the strong words of Jesus. They need to hear happy stories and sad stories - recognising that God is present in every circumstance of life.  They need to see that the church is still part of God's story; that it is God's story and not ours. He is the Narrator and principal Actor and we have walk-on parts to play.

6. Children, church and participation.  Our children, and this is related to integration, need to participate in worship - they need to be active and not passive.  Children shouldn't be onlookers, but at the heart of the church's worshipping life.  We need to think how can we see our children participate in the eucharist, in our prayers, in welcoming and blessing, in our reading of the Word.  In every ingredient of our worship, lets consider the place and participation of our children.  Here I think we can try and be more multi-sensory in our worship, engaging all the senses, not just our eyes and ears.

7. Children, church and hospitality.  Rodney Clapp writes, in Families at the Crossroads (1993), that 'children are strangers' and so in need of our hospitality.  He says there are four ways our children are strangers: (1) They comes to us as aliens and have to learn to live in our world; (2) Our children are also strangers to us because we are strangers to ourselves (that is, we don't recognise the habits children learn are learnt from us!); (3) Children exist in relation to God and not simply ourselves; and (4) In a culture afraid to admit dependence, children unashamedly confess their need for others.  In welcoming our children, we are welcoming strangers and learning the art of hospitality (see my post on hospitality  here).  Children should feel welcomed and valued in the church; they should feel listened to and encouraged; they should be cared for and challenged. Are we hospitable towards our children? 

The practice of hospitality

practice n. & v. 1 habitual action or performance 2 a habit or custom 3 repeated exercise in an activity requiring the development of skill 4 action or execution as opposed to theory

hospitality n. the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests or strangers

hospitable adj. giving or disposed to give welcome and entertainment to strangers or guests

As Christians we are hospitable because God in Christ is hospitable towards us. We welcome because God in Christ welcomes us.  God is the host who invites us to come and eat (Is 55:1-2; Lk 14:21-23); who offers us warmth from the cold; who gives us a listening ear when we are starved of conversation (Mk 10:48-49); and provides comfort when we anxious or sad (Matt 11:28-30).  This is our God.  This is our God in whose image we are made.  The Christian faith at its heart is about faithful imitation, that is, its about becoming like Jesus.  So we are hospitable because God is hospitable.

We find also that Jesus ispresent in the stranger: ‘just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me’ (Matt 25:38-40). In the face of the stranger Jesus waits for our welcome and our hospitality.  Too often we tolerate the stranger or speak pious words about being God’s family, but are not moved to give welcome or open our home to those we do not know.  Where our postmodern world lives by the maxim of toleration, the Christian gospel in the person of Christ goes beyond basic acceptance to the place of embrace and welcome.  Christ welcomed the marginalised, the sinner, the poor.  Christ breaks down the dividing walls of race, status, gender and creates a church which witnesses to the unity of God’s rainbow-coloured humanity in the Spirit.

In the church we need to learn again the practice or art of hospitality.  This does not mean the occasional Sunday lunch with friends, but hospitality that welcomes the other/the stranger/the outsider into our home.  Hospitality that invites them to eat, to stay and to share our lives.  The word ‘practice’ signifies the need to learn a skill which we need to repeat many times if we are to be any good.  ‘Practice’ also emphasises the active over the theory – to be hospitable is to be active in inviting and welcoming.  We can all agree on the theological significance and biblical foundations of ‘hospitality,’ but to become a practice the theory must be turn into activity.  In other words, let us be hospitable.  Let us give welcome the unfamiliar face.  Let us be disturbed from our place of comfort and content to move out and embrace the marginalized of our church, our workplace, our community (do we know who these people are?).

Any coments on whether this makes sense / is convincing / could be improved are welcome.

Good Notes

Jason Clark has posted his notes from Brian McLaren on worship as spiritual formation and Maggi Dawn on scripture and hermeneutics.  Both are excellent and they are worth reading and digesting.

Gunton (v) on Christology

After a break, I'm picking up some more on the theology of the late Colin Gunton. 

Colin Gunton wrote two major essays on Christology, as well as other shorter essays.  The first was Yesterday & Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology (1983, 2nd ed. 1997) and the second was Christ and Creation (1992).  The latter was a shorter book, based on his 1990 Didsbury Lectures, which deals with perhaps what is missing from the first book - the relation between Christ and creation and role of the Holy Spirit.

The basic argument of Yesterday and Today is that 'a Christology that which is true to the claims of the Christian gospel requires a greater degree of continuity with the past' than it is given in some 19th and 20th century theology.  The reaction to the Enlightenment was either to try and do 'christology from below' or 'christology from above.'  In a modern era we are more preoccupied with temporal interests - how can this historical Jesus be eternal?  Gunton argues that all the New Testament writers 'see [Jesus] as in some way or the presence of the eternal God in time' (125) and we cannot separate the historical from the theological - 'if we do not interpret him within his theological context, we do not see him at all' (125).  Therefore, we find, 'the New Testament interweaves the temporal and eternal, seeing the one to be the locus of the other' (125) - 'that this life is both fully temporal and yet is the place where the eternal is present' (127).  Gunton claims that 'Jesus of Nazareth is the logic of divine love, logic in the sense of spelling out and making present in earthly actuality its eternal reality' (133).  He writes, 'Jesus of Nazareth is not simply an unprecendented irruption or intervention of God upon the stage of history. The love of God which becomes actual in this truly human and historical life is continuous with the love that operates throughout it ... The love of God which made the world is the same love as that which comes to it in person, albeit for now a different person.' (133). And a little later:

'[God] becomes flesh. This means the eternal love of God locates itself in time and space, and so become datable. The love of God has the shape and form - the logic - of what happened in the life of Jesus' (134)

There is much more to be said in terms of the content of this book, but space permits me.  In Christ and Creation Gunton develops his emphasis on the humanity of Jesus - 'Christ the creature' is the title of lecture two - through an emphasis on pneumatology - 'if we are to understand the nature of the humanity of Jesus, it will be by attention to the part the Holy Spirit plays in his  life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension'  (46).  He argues 'the function of the Spirit in relation to Jesus is, accordingly, as the perfecter of his humanity' (50).  In the baptism of Jesus 'the Spirit directs the life of Jesus in one way rather than another' (53).  In The Christian Faith he says, 'The Spirit is the one who makes Jesus of Nazareth to be the particular human being that he is' (102).  So when we claim 'he was without sin,' Gunton wants to suggest, this means Jesus was enabled not to sin by the Spirit. 

This is only a small part of what Colin wrote on the subject of christology, but I think it presents some of the distinctiveness of his thought.

Further Reading

Yesterday and Today (1983)
Christ and Creation (1992)
'Two Dogmas Revisited - Edward Irving's christology', Theology Through the Theologians (1996)
The Christian Faith (chapters 5 and 6, 2002)
'And in one Lord Jesus Christ ... Begotten not Made'; 'Martin Kahler Revisited. Variations on Hebrews 4.15'; 'One Mediator ... the Man Jesus Christ,'  Father, Son & Holy Spirit (2003)

In My Country

This looks like a good film which is coming soon.  It's about the  Truth and Reconciliation Commission which investigated human right abuses in South Africa during apartheid. I'm glad films like this still get made.  We've already had Hotel Rwanda this year - which I"ve not yet had a chance to see. You can download the trailer here and the website can be found here. I've not been able to discover the UK release date.

The story of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a fantastic testament to the grace of God that despite all beliefs to the contrary South Africa was able to tell the truth of its horrific history and was able to forgive one another.  Instead of retribution for the crimes comitted, South Africa practised restoration - a different kind of justice, perhaps a more costly justice, but definitely a Christian sense of justice.

Ask Tony...

If you go to labour.org.uk you can email Tony a question. It seems a good opportunity to ask the PM about Labour policies.  Last night I watched the last Labour political broacast, which featured Tony and Gordon having a late night chat on their achievements and their dreams.  Very clever, I thought.  But I remained unswayed.  I've had a look at the different policies put out by the parties and currently the Liberal Democrats do seem have the kind of policies I would like to see initiated.

Tony and Gordon frustrate me.  I think both of them are natural gifted leaders (just compare a Blair speech with a Michael Howard speech) and I instictively warm to them, but both - Blair especially - are prone to using their gifts to twist and avoid the truth. I find their policies on childcare to suggest that professionals do a better job than parents, which may be true in some cases, but the government should support parents and allow them to be at home with their children, instead of pushing mothers (and in some cases fathers) back into the world of work. I find Blair's unwillingness to apologise annoying - I don't want an infalliable Prime Minister (if there ever could be one), so why do they act as if they are.

Well that's some of my thoughts on Labour, but as I said above, policy wise the Lib Dems have got my vote.  On education they would give an 'equal emphasis on vocational learning' and to 'reform inspection system'.  On tax they would 'introduce a 50% rate on tax on incomes over £100,000 a year' - a bigger tax on the very rich - something Labour fail to do.  On pensions they would 'introduce a citizen's pension guaranterring £105 per week for single pensioners and £160 for couples.' On the environment they would 'cut tax on vehicles that pollute the least, funded by increased tax on those that pollute more.'  On the same issue Labour say they would 'enable at least 25% of household waste to be recycled or composted by 2006, with further improvements by 2008' - this I think is extremely important.

The Practice of Reading Scriputure

The odyssey blog is a great blog.  Chris Erdman and Alan Roxburgh are the authors and they have been blogging some great posts on cultivating practices for missional churches.  Today's blog Cultivating the Practices in a Ordinary Congregation: Toward Immsersing Ourselves in Scripture is brilliant.  Chris writes:

At UPC we continue to deepen our practice of immersing ourselves in Holy Scripture. Complementing our intention several years ago to more fully enter the Christian life by engaging the practices of faith--spending a year growing first in the practices of prayer (2003) and second in hospitality (2004)-- this year’s practice, reading Scripture, deepens and enriches the others.

Many Christians find themselves overwhelmed with Scripture. How do I enter into the big book? Where do I start? What do I do with parts I simply can’t understand and others I really don’t like? Some feel compelled to read it as they would a novel; starting in Genesis they do alright until they get to Leviticus. And then . . . well, not many can read Leviticus and stay motivated. The history of Bible-reading is strewn with well intentions.

I think it is very important for Christians to know the broad sweep of the Story. And it’s good to have read the whole Bible. But for those who find that a daunting task, let me suggest something that could set you free to read the Bible and not only enjoy it but be nourished.

I love the idea of spending a year learning the practice of reading scripture, the practice of hospitality and the practice of prayer.  This demonstrates that to cultivate a practice or a habit takes time.  We can't become good readers of scripture in one week, there is no fast-food, easy route to the art of reading scripture.  Secondly, Chris highlights the importance of having a grasp of the 'broad sweep of the Story'.  This is so important.  We need to know the whole story, not our favourite bite-size chunks.  When we know the whole story, as Wells points out, we know where we fit in the story (see post below).

I've quoted this paragraph from John Webster before, but its so important: ‘we do not read well; and we do not read well, not only because of technical incompetence, cultural distance from the substance of the text or lack of readerly sophistication, but also and most of all because in reading Scripture we are addressed by that which runs clean counter to our will. Reading Scripture is thus a moral matter; it requires that we become certain kinds of readers, whose reading is taken up into the history of reconciliation,’ (Holy Scripture, 2003, 87)

I'd love Bunyan to become a church that dedicates itself to cultivating and learning the kinds of practices of reading scripture, hospitality and prayer. I've blogged more on reading scripture here and here.
 

Church after Christendom

Stuart Murray has written perhaps the best book currently available on the future of the church.  Why? Because it is a specifically UK perspective. It is very readable.  It is extremely helpful for churches to consider the shape of 'church on the margins.' You can read the first chapter  here. All church leaders should read this book.

This is the sequel to Post-Christendom, which describes the history of the church (with an anabaptist slant) and our situation now where Christendom is behind us. Read the first chapter of of this book here.
 
Murray lectured recently at Spurgeon's College, see Mark Greer's notes.

Improvisation

Samuel Wells has a written a very important book in Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics. It deserves to be widely read. Reading it over the last few days more carefully, there is much to be welcomed and considered ecclesiologically.

He argues that Christians are not 'called to be heroes ... they are called to be saints' (42-44, see here where I have posted previously on this). This is such an important distinction to make.  In a time and place where the church is seemingly struggling, the temptation is to look for heroes or try and be heroic as if the outcome of history all depends on us. This is to forget that 'the saint is always at the periphery of a story that is really about God' (43).

Building on this concept of narrative or story, he claims this narrative is in fact a drama. Here he takes Tom Wright's model of a five-act play, and develops and revises it, and so it becomes: creation - Israel - Jesus - church - eschaton.  He then argues that 'there are two kind of mistakes that can be easily made' (55). The second mistake is an important one for us as we reflect upon and theologise about the future of the church: 'the second mistake is to get the wrong act' (55). If we think we're in act one, we talk as if the play begins with us - to act as creator - rather than God. Where this is the case, Wells says, 'there have been no significant events before one's appearance in the drama. There is no experience to learn from, no story to join, no drama to enter' (55). Similarly, Wells says, if we think we're in act five, we act as if we're the finishers of the story, it all depends on us to bring it to its conclusion: 'humans are not the creators, nor the finishers, of God's story' (56). The assumption in act two is to behave as if the Messiah has not yet come. While the assumption in act three is we are the Messiah and we believe '[everything we do] has decisive significance for the world - and even for God' (56) - the attempt to be the hero.  In act four, the drama has been going for a long time, 'the most important things have happened', our role therefore is to be faithful followers - we find our character 'by becoming a character in God's story' (57).

Having argued that the Christian story is drama, Wells goes on to say that 'ethics, the embodiment of that story, is appropriately regarded as ... [improvisation]' (59). Improvisation, according to Wells, is inevitable, is scriptural and is ecclesial. This of course, echoes some of what Tom Wright has said, as well as others, what is helpful about Wells is he puts some flesh on the bones. Wells describes what it means to improvise and how to improvise (which I might blog about later).

Wells takes the work of Hauerwas, (Tom) Wright, Brueggemann and others to the next level.  If Hauerwas and Brueggemann help show us and free our thinking from the 'secular' narratives in which we find ourselves, I think people like Samuel Wells (who incidently is to be new Dean of Duke University, where Hauerwas resides) and Brian Walsh will help show us how to live immersed in the Christian narrative, faithfully improvising towards Christ-like-ed-ness, by the power of the Spirit.

The Task of the Theologian

One of the books I picked up on Tuesday in Leeds (I'm back in Stevenage now) was Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World and Living in Between by Stanley Hauerwas. I've been reading Stanley Hauerwas for over a year now and I find his work to never cease to interest and challenge me. This book in particular I had been trying to get hold for nearly a year and found it for £1.49 in Wesley Owen! I love a bargain!

One essay in particular in the book grabbed me. It's called 'The Ministry of Congregation: Rethinking Christian Ethics for a Church-Centred Seminary.'  The essay is arguing in part how our training of ministers works out in practice - what does Christian theological ethics mean for the local church, say in Stevenage, or wherever.  Hauerwas tells the story of 'an administrative board meeting of a local Methodist church' as 'an example of  the kind of church that seminaries should seek to serve, enrich, an, if necessary, help create' (113).  I won't try and tell the story here, but just describe some of the conclusions Hauerwas makes from it.

He writes, 'one of the essential tasks the theologian-ethicist performs is to help congregations ... appreciate the significance of their common acts ... it is the task of those committed to the theological enterprise to develop the linguistic skills that can help congregations understand better the common but no less theologically significant activities which constitute their lives' (123).

In other words, those of us who have some theological training are there to help the congregation understand how who they are and what they do fits into God's big story. So, we help show that the being and activity of the church is a witness to the God of Jesus Christ and so more than a social club or social action. This is one way the theologian (or theologically-trained) can be of service to the church.  Where there is no theological description we don't appreciate or recognise the significance of our actions, for example, the simple act of attending Sunday morning worship is significant, sometimes perhaps miraculous. We don't go because we like the people or want to get our children into a church-school, we go to worship God.

'The task of Christian ethics, therefore, is simply the task of theology itself - namely to help churches share their stories truthfully' (125) - what I think Hauerwas means is theology  'makes little sense' if  it cannot be told in the story of the church - the story of the church should enact our theological convictions, and sometimes shaping those convictions or being shaped by them.  The role of the theologian is to narrate theologically the church's story.  That is, to show how the God's big story, demonstrated in the worship of the church - through scripture and sacrament - is being told in the life of the church, to draw out the political and public nature of our worship and the theological and ethical nature of our life.  In other words, to demonstrate the link between the two.

We need more storytellers in the church, and  theological storytellers, those  who know God's  story and  demonstrate its truthfulness in the life of the local ordinary-looking (can any church be ordinary in post-Christendom?) congregation.  I'm excited by that task.  Hauerwas says rather aptly in another paper in the same book: 'Theology and theologians do little to make the world better. Rather, our craft involves the slow and painful steps of trying to undestand better what it means to be a people formed by the story of God' (110).

Other posts I've written on, or quoted, Hauerwas can be found here, here, here and here