Family Worship
Andy Beard
Luke 5:1-11 Family Worship Ideas

too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use?

This week’s service is the last one in the series looking at the life and ministry of the Holy Spirit. We’re thinking about the way in which the Spirit cultivates in us a longing for the New Creation. We become a people oriented towards the resurrection future we have in Christ. But we can feel uneasy with such a posture. It can feel like it must mean we disengage with the world here and now… Can we do one without the other? Can we focus on the future without losing touch with the present? Can we be a people eagerly awaiting the return of Christ, whilst still working hard for Him here and now?

Here’s a few thoughts:

back to normal..?

We’re back into a time of transition. For a while we had a new normal. While lock-down was in force we sort of knew what life looked like. As it is eased, we find ourselves back in times of uncertainty. What will the Government announce next? How will people react? when will lit be safe? Are we going too fast? Will there be a second peak? What will the new ‘new normal’ be like…

It’s hard to predict, but we do retain some ability to shape it. I wonder if we can remember just a few weeks ago. Lock-down wasn’t easy, but for a lot of people in MIE there was a sense that we were re-learning something of value. We were appreciative of a slower pace of life that gave us more time for rest and reflection. We were glad that our new routines gave us greater opportunity for spiritual disciplines. Our loss of much that we had taken for granted galvanised within us a determination than when it was all over we wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

Well, it isn’t all over. Not yet anyway. And we might find ourselves going back into lock-down more fully before we are finally able to put this all behind us. But even now, as the restrictions are beginning to ease, can we remember the resolutions we made in those early days? The commitments we made? Many of them were good and right, and it would be a shame to lose them in the race to get ‘back to 'normal’…

Sonya Renee Taylor, an author, poet and social justice activist offers us these profound and prophetic words:

"We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature."

It’s a fair point. There was a lot about our lives (at individual and societal level) pre-lock-down that wasn’t healthy. We might benefit from some careful thought as we are given new options and everything slowly stumbles ‘back to normal’.

This is as true for us as a Church as it is for us as individuals. We have a rare opportunity to stop and reflect on how we ‘do’ Church together. Whilst not wanting to pre-judge the issue, it would be a shame if MIE simply went ‘back to normal’. How often have we wished we had the space and time to think through what we are doing with fresh eyes..? How often have we found ourselves feeling trapped in structures of Church life that were great when they were developed years, or perhaps decades ago, but which have increasingly felt restrictive and limiting? How often have we wished we could ring the changes in an area of our mission, but have never felt the time was right?

Just as we need to pause, remember, think, and prayerfully consider what life might be like going forward at an individual level, so we have the opportunity to do so at an MIE-wide level. It might mean that things take a bit longer than we’d like to regain some of our old momentum, but it should be worth it in the long run.

…the upright give thought to their ways (Prov.21:29)

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Following on from yesterday's service...

After yesterday’s service, we watched the story of Hea Woo. You can see it here. Amongst much else, you might get a sense of the extraordinary lengths to which believers will go in order to meet with and fellowship with and worship with other Christians… for so many, Church, even in the toilets of labour camp is so precious.

Which does raise some questions for us…

an ancient heresy comes to call...

Centuries ago the Church had to do some hard theological and Biblical thinking about what it meant to say that Jesus was ‘the Word become flesh’ (Jn.1:14). For a while the idea was popular that Jesus didn’t actually become human, but that He only appeared to do so. Docetism (as the idea was known, from the ancient Greek work meaning ‘to seem’) felt there were strong reasons for holding this opinion. Among others was the idea that someone as immense as God couldn’t really be conceived of as ‘fitting into’ a human life; but also the old dualistic reservations about the superiority of the spiritual over the physical. It’s an old chestnut which you find articulated in the old Greek philosophers, and which all these years later we’ve still not quite managed to shake off.

You stumble across it every time physicality is undermined, or seen as in some sense less valuable, or less permanent than spiritual dimensions of life. The popular idea that life after death is less than physical (the spirit that carries on forever, freed from the body) falls into this category, as does the notion that the ‘real’ me is a spiritual reality that is ‘inside’ my body. As an aside, the immortalists’ idea that we might be able to upload ourselves into the ether and carry on living is just a technologically advanced way of making the same mistake.

All of this is miles away from the teaching of the Bible. Insofar as Christological question is concerned, the idea that Jesus wasn’t really human, but only God looking like He was human was dismissed as official heresy at the Council of Nicaea (325AD). It was considered to be at very heart of the faith to recognise the absolute integrity of Jesus’ incarnation, and the total authenticity of His humanity. The same dualism in thinking about ourselves is knocked into left-field when we consider what the Bible teaches about our physicality. Our body is an essential aspect of what we are. Our embodiment was crafted personally by the LORD (Gen.2:7), and is part of the creation that He declared to be ‘very good’ (Gen.1:31). And our future is a resolutely physical one - indeed perhaps MORE physical that this age, and this life. Our expectation is for resurrection, and the short time we are without a body (between our death in this age and our resurrection in the age to come) will be one overshadowed by a groaning and a longing for our resurrection bodies (II Cor.5:1-10).

Unfortunately, the simple fact that the catholic Church has officially declared something to be actual heresy, doesn’t stop people believing it. It probably should, but few of us are sufficiently familiar with the history of doctrine, the Bible’s teaching, or our own thinking to be as guarded as we should. Mixed with that is our cultural determination to reject ‘tradition’ and to disregard as irrelevant anything that was around before I was.

Which means that as in many arenas of life, our failure to listen to history condemns us to repeat its mistakes. And so this old heresy is knocking on the door of the Church once again, and is in danger of being welcomed in and invited to stay for tea!

To be fair, it has crept up on us, and we may well have felt that we had no choice. The Government’s guidance, drafted as it was to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, lead the Bishops to close Church buildings for worship for the first time in 8 centuries. Having lost the opportunity to gather physically for worship, we have moved online. And, we are assured, we have lost little and gained much. We are told that this is healthy, and perhaps even Spirit-led. Recent weeks have shown us how great online worship and mission can be! We’ve seen a 10-fold increase in ‘attendance’! Perhaps we don’t need to gather physically… perhaps we are on the cusp of a revolution in Church life. The Church is a ‘spiritual’ reality, and the institutional (read: physical, cultural, social) accretion is turning out to be a hindrance rather than a help.

And so the dualism that found expression in the Docetist’s teaching about Jesus all those years ago, is now finding expression in our thinking about Church and worship. Historically it has been the incarnational life of the Son that was undermined, now it is the ‘incarnational’ life of the Spirit. We cannot separate the physical and spiritual life of the Church without critically impoverishing her Spiritual experience. It is just bad theology (read: heresy) to suggest otherwise.

The notion that the Church can manage online is a fatal error. We may see that elsewhere in the world the Church has no option but to survive in this emaciated state. Persecution, open hostility, and outright violence leaves many believers isolated and Facebook-fellowship is their only choice. But even in such situations our brothers and sisters go to breathtaking lengths and take huge risks to meet with other believers in real space and time. Instinctively we know they are missing out on something precious, and the fact that others endure such an impoverished experience of Church life should break our heart, cause us to weep for them in prayer, and renew our support for them. It should not inspire us to squander our Blood-bought privilege of being part of a congregation. A Scriptural theology of Creation, Incarnation, and Redemption militates in every way against the Docetic nonsense that the Church loses nothing in going virtual.

Marginalizing Sacraments and imagining that we can reduce praise, confession, intercession and the read / preached Word, and fellowship to something that is just as effectual when digitally delivered is to fundamentally mis-understand the nature of the Body of Christ, and the life of the Spirit. If these things were even partially true, person to person contact where believers are gathered in Christ’s name would become merely and optional extra for Christians.

But we worship a God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. His Trinitarian nature has colossal implications for what we mean when we say we were created in His image… in the Image of a God who has inter-Personal relationship built into the very structure of His being. The image of God in humanity is neither individualistic, nor virtual, but finds expression in a covenantal relationship. Because God is Triune and in eternal personal relationship, the image of God is inescapably social in us. We can no more have an individualistic virtual church than we can have a virtual and individualistic marriage. We cannot be vitally connected in this way if we are in fact only virtually connected. There is simply too much in the life of the Church that is lost when it is abstracted into the ether.

As grateful as we should be for advancing technologies that assist communication, we are increasingly aware of how our spiritual isolation is taking its toll. Even after only a few months of ‘lockdown’ we are looking forward to meeting together in whatever format we can. The preached Word is not digital, the sacraments are not virtual and their faithful administration presupposes a congregated body of faithful believers. So let’s do away once and for all with this deeply ingrained dualism and its tendency to view the outer cultural world of material life and ‘flesh’ as a lesser domain in creation, whilst seeing the inner ‘spiritual’ and invisible life of the ‘soul’ as higher, or more ‘real’.   Christians should never be hoodwinked into undermining the physical, social and cultural aspects of our being, or of our discipleship.  Our ‘inner’ life is not separated from, still less does it trump, the reality of an embodied created world. This is as true for us as a Church as it is for us as individuals. When spiritual and physical are separated we are impoverished in being.

getting ready for tomorrow's service

Tomorrow we’ll be engaging the most destabilizing service in our JCL term on the life and ministry of the Spirit: The Holy Spirit and Suffering. This is a surprising omission in many textbooks on the Holy Spirit, but not those on Persecution. As one Chinese Church Leader recently told a conference of pastors:

‘The mark of the Church is the cross … if you truly live the life of Christ you will be persecuted … but you will also have resurrection power. You will have the power to suffer’.

This will be the theme of Sunday’s service. It is hugely significant aspect of His work among us, albeit one we may not have thought much about. Why does the Spirit lead us into such suffering? How does He strengthen and sustain us in our faithfulness to Jesus? And what does it mean when we are not willing to suffer for the Name of Christ or the cause of His Gospel?

In preparation for, or perhaps in response to, that service, why not visit the website of one of our mission partners, Open Doors. The service will feature Open Doors, who work to support Christians suffering persecution.

In addition to the impact of enduring such struggle, the Church in such contexts is particularly vulnerable to the impact of further disasters, such as a global pandemic. For many persecuted Christians around the world, the Covid-19 crisis has caused economic crisis on top of the vulnerabilities they already face; and these Christians are often last in the line when it comes to distributing aid.

So, why not head over to https://www.opendoorsuk.org/ and find out more about our brothers and sisters in Christ, and what we can do to support them…

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The road to re-opening is long...

For Standing Committee, the last few weeks have presented us with the unprecedented challenges of how to open our Church buildings and to resume in-person gathering.  At one level it is simply the question of logistics.   One way systems; social distancing; to sing or not to sing; how long services will last and how to clean the Church after each one… 

Far more significant than the organisational issues is the potential for division. Throughout our congregation there will be a broad assortment of strongly held convictions. Some will be eager to meet in person and impatient to wait much longer to get back to normal. Others will insist it’s unwise to meet at all until there’s a vaccine. Plenty will fall somewhere in between.

The conversation gives us an opportunity to model love that places the interests of others above the self (Phil.2:4). For example, someone might find it personally difficult, or dismiss it as a needless over-reaction, to stay six feet away from everyone at all times.  But here’s the thing: even if it turns out you’re right (and it might not), can you not sacrifice your convictions and opinions for a season, out of love for others who believe the precautions are necessary?  Even if you personally think it is silly, cowardly, or even unfaithful for someone to stay home even after the church is open again on Sundays, can you not heed Paul’s wisdom in Romans 14: “Let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother”?

Likewise, those who think the lockdowns should continue should not pass judgment on those who question the wisdom of the government’s ongoing restrictions. Churches should strive to honour people on both sides of the spectrum. Yes, it will be costly for churches to keep offering online services for those who don’t feel comfortable attending physical gatherings. Yes, it will be a sacrifice for church members who are sick of masks, social distancing, and Zoom to continue to use these for the sake of others. But little is more Christian than a posture of sacrifice (Rom. 12:1). We should embrace it with gladness.

It is unlikely that our experience of re-gathering will be straightforward.  My guess is that no-one will be satisfied; some will think we are moving too fast, others that we are moving too slow.  I suspect we will be running MIE on a ‘mixed economy’ of on- and off-line gathering for some considerable time.  There will temptations to impatience and frustration.  We’ll need to remember to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (Jas.1:19).  My own  request is that we work together even when we  are not happy with all the details of what we’re being asked to do (and probably none of us will be).  In the midst of all our opinions, hopes, fears, expectations, let’s remember that no-one really seems to know what is going on, and that everything isn’t obvious.  We are all just trying to do the best we can to (as one commentator puts it), “build the plane in mid-air”.

It is good and right to be eager to gather again as churches. We should take Hebrews 10:25 seriously when it says we ought not neglect meeting together. We should feel the ache of what is lost when we only meet virtually.  But equally, we should be careful to not go faster than governments allow, or faster than those in our congregation can understand. We should be patient with a timeline that might be slower than we’d prefer; patient with a reopening process that will doubtless be clunky; patient with leaders feeling the pressure of this complex situation; and patient with one another as we figure out the new normal. Those who are not comfortable with physical gatherings should be patient with those who are, and vice versa. As hard as it will be to practice patience, remember that in the scheme of eternity this season—whether it’s months long or years—will be but a blip.

 

This is an abridged and edited version of an article ‘Church, Don’t Let Coronavirus Divide You’ published on the Gospel Coalition website,  150520, by Brett McCracken

just for fun....

So, I’m planning on filming today for the service on Sunday, and I’m very conscious of the large bump on the side of my head… which I got from running into a telegraph pole last Saturday… long story, but it sort of looked like this:

In the meantime, I’ll be sitting at an angle for Sunday 🤣

Why I didn't sign the Joint statement from Christian leaders in Ipswich in response to the killing of George Floyd

A Press Release has been prepared and made public, signed by many Christian leaders in Ipswich and Suffolk in response to the killing of George Floyd. If it is picked up by the press and published, you will notice that I have not added my signature. In the poignancy and power of this cultural moment, such a decision invites misunderstanding, and so in this post, I outline my reasons for taking the difficult decision i did. In case you haven’t seen it, here is the text:

 Joint Statement from Christian leaders in Ipswich in response to the killing of George Floyd

The killing of George Floyd was a tragic act of violence that has revealed the racial injustices that are still present across society. George Floyd was denied the fundamental right to life, and his killing is an insult to the God-given dignity of every human being. George Floyd’s death has provoked anger across the world and we, as church leaders in Suffolk, join with those who call for justice.

Many people in our community face racial discrimination every day. This discrimination, expressed in many forms, all too often goes unchecked. We must unite to call out racism wherever we see it and hold one another accountable for our words and actions.

We reaffirm our commitment to eradicating all forms of racism in all parts of society because every human life is precious and honoured by God.

We ask you to join us to shine as lights in the darkness, to uncover the forces of prejudice and discrimination that still divide our community.

Let me start by saying that I substantively agree with everything that is written here, although arguably it is both too brief and too tame in its language. I want to be clear and unambiguous in my own opposition to racism in all its forms and equally clear that Christians should be at the forefront of fighting injustice in all its forms and wherever it is found in our society. Likewise I fully affirm that the death of anyone in such circumstances is truly 'a tragic act of violence', and I agree that it is symptomatic of an injustice that reflects an ongoing societal discrimination that is in no way limited to the American experience. We are seeing that there is clearly resonance within the British context. The outcry against racism that has been sparked by Floyd’s death - the latest in a long line of such deaths - and which is quickly assuming global proportions must be listened to and acted upon. So much seems self-evident to any Christian. So why my reluctance to sign the Joint Statement?

In short my decision is based not on what the statement is saying, but in what it fails to say. And given that this is a statement which I was asked to sign specifically in my capacity as a Church leader in Ipswich, the inadequacy of it as a Christian document is simply too significant to be ignored. The statement is not wrong in what it says, but rather in what it does not say. At a juncture as significant as this, what the Church does NOT say can be more important that what it does. For us to fail in our prophetic mandate during such a key - indeed a kairos - moment would be a tragedy in its own right.

So, what does the statement not say? A lot, but let me briefly highlight 4 staggering omissions:

The statement does not acknowledge the ongoing presence of discrimination within the life of the Church. A legacy of racism is not only the preserve of the Church of England, but this oversight is astonishing given that it was only at February’s General Synod (2020) the ArchBishop of Canterbury was headlined as saying the Church of England is ‘still deeply institutionally racist’; and that Synod recommitted the CofE to "stamp out conscious or unconscious" racism. The racial inequities of the Church generally in the UK, and the CofE in particular, threatens to critically undermine a statement of this nature, and failure to acknowledge that, explicitly leaves the Church open to the charge of hypocrisy. Insofar as the statement is indicative of Christians’ own commitment to address racism in the life of the Church, as well as being involved in addressing these issues as part of society as a whole, it is to be welcomed, although how that might be done is not addressed.

The statement does not offer a specifically Christian analysis. In fact it almost deliberately shies away from doing so, settling for joining with the ‘anger’ of others, and calling for what they are already calling for. This is captured in words such as ‘justice’, while failing to acknowledge that what Christians mean by justice must go far beyond what many others envisage by such words. Perhaps we could even explain what a Christian vision for justice might look like, showing that it goes far beyond simply eradicating racism, accountability and uncovering the forces of prejudice and discrimination (important though such things are)? It is entirely right to express solidarity, but as Christians we have something more to say. Racism is not merely a sociological issue, it is a theological - even a Christological - one. Yes, the statement includes phrases such as ‘God-given dignity’, and yes it speaks of human life as honoured by God. But these are not ideas unique to Christianity, and they are phrases that will be used by those of many faith-traditions and none.

Neither is there any acknowledgement that racism is symptomatic of a sinfulness and a falleness that affects us all; and that we are all complicit in the divisions that scar human society and the structures that perpetuate precisely the kind of tragedy that we are seeing unfolding in Floyd's death and in the rioting and unrest that has followed (to which there is no explicit reference in the statement, but which I presume we also would want to see that eradicated?).

The statement offers no distinctively Christian hope for the present. There is no call for repentance. There is no offering of forgiveness; no plea for grace; no call to prayer or fasting. There is no offer of healing, or restoration. There is no commitment to a fresh preaching of Christ, in whose Cross alone is the power to break down the dividing walls of hostility, and by Whose Spirit can the Church hope to reconcile humanity, and eradicate the sinful divisions of human prejudice, racism, discrimination and injustice, creating a unity that truly reflects the image of a God who has community built into the very fabric of His being. There is no prayer or any other expression of support for the Church leaders in Minneapolis, or more widely in American communities and families that are being deeply affected by the horror of all that is unfolding.

Neither is there anything planned to follow this statement. Whilst those who have drafted this statement, and who have signed it, undoubtedly resist the notion of its being tokenistic, it is hard to see how it has ‘teeth’ when there is no actual plan to follow it up with action. The statement asks for accountability. Who will fulfill this responsibility, and on what grounds?

The statement offers no explicitly Christian hope for the future. You have heard me speak many times on the heavenly vision of the united Church as drawn from ‘every nation, tribe, people and language’ (Rev.7:9). When the Church has a clear vision of her future, that future ‘bleeds back’ into the life of the community of God’s people here and now. This is what lies behind Luke’s observation in Acts 13:1, ‘Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul’. The leadership of the Church in Antioch was clearly a multi-ethnic phenomenon. The same dynamic is captured by Tutu’s famous and prophetic description of the Church as ‘the rainbow people of God’. But without the vision of our future, we will not have the resources to anticipate that future in our present.

This is hardly an exhaustive list, but it is representative of some of the things the Church must be clearly heard to say, and be seen to do, in the midst of tragedies such as the one that is unfolding around us. At a personal level I found their absence troubling.

In the interests of transparency, I need to say that when I raised these concerns it was brought to my attention that this Statement was a Press Release, and thus tailored for a media that may not respond to much that is of any substantial length. On two key points I disagree. I disagree that we should be allowing ‘the media’ (or our perceptions of the media) to define the limits of what the Church is heard to say in days such as these. I also disagree that such limitations necessarily exist. They may in fact be self-imposed. In recent weeks a common complaint in the media is precisely that Christian Leaders are not offering a distinctively Christian perspective. Widely publicized comments about Bishops opting to talk like middle managers, or who act more like health workers that physicians of the soul, or who or who are quicker to offer opinions on political matters than spiritual ones all spring to mind from recent weeks’ news cycles. In principle at least, ‘the media’ wants the Church to say something different. Maybe even, something about Jesus? …who, as we’ve noted above, is conspicuously absent from the Statement.

If Church Leaders are going to say something public, please can we say something the shows the world how the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ speaks to and indeed answers the horrific tragedies of a fallen world. Please can we offer something more authentically Christian than simply joining our voices to a call for justice and the eradication of discrimination.  The Gospel calls us to higher ambition.  Please can that be reflected in any Statement that we make as Church leaders together? 

Such a sentiment might be challenged on the grounds that a statement such as this is aimed at those who are not part of the Church. My response is that this is all the more reason to be clear, transparent and explicit about all that the Gospel has to say in addressing and dealing with the ugliness and horror of human sin. But I also reject the false dichotomy. As Church Leaders we are never in a position of speaking to the Church or to society. We are always doing both - although the center of gravity shifts in different contexts. When I speak publicly, I am also speaking to the Church, and I either build up or discourage, I either bring clarity or confusion. A public statement by Church Leaders that makes no reference to Jesus, or the power of His death and resurrection alone to deal with the virulent sin of the human heart in all its expressions not only confuses and disheartens Christians, it undermines our mission, and denies hope to the very world we claim to be speaking to.

So, may I finish as I started, by reaffirming my own commitment to opposing racism in all its forms and by stating as unambiguously as I can that Christians should be at the forefront of fighting injustice in all its forms and wherever it is found in our society… and in ourselves and in our Church. I am not ‘folding my hands’, and I am most emphatically not standing against those who have written or signed this statement per se. We must fight, and fight together, but we must surely do so in the Name of Christ, offering a distinctively Christian vision of a future, and struggling not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, powers and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, and as those find expression in a fallen human society. We must offer - in Martin Luther King’s memorable phrase - a Testament of Hope.

7 dangers the Church faces in life after lockdown ... let’s pray about them!

In a transition period like this, there are so many unknowns and variables that it is difficult to anticipate how life will look for British society in the months ahead. Talk of a ‘new normal’ is unsettling when we have little idea of what it might entail. But what of the Church? What will have changed in our worship and mission as we emerge - even temporarily - from the Lockdown that has dominated recent weeks. And how ought we to be praying as we prepare to resume, or perhaps to re-invent, ‘normal’ Church-life?

The Church will inevitably have been spiritually weakened by the last three months of closure. If we believe that we need fellowship, corporate worship, sacraments, live liturgy and preaching in order to thrive and grow, then our being deprived of all of these to some measure will have had a hugely detrimental effect on the Body of Christ. Among other things, this means we will need to remember that we are the people of the Spirit, and to very consciously allow His fruit to mature in our character and dealings with each other (love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, patience…) as we stumble back to strength. Praying that these aspects of our fellowship find themselves front and centre stage, for love, patience, gentleness, humility, patience, servant-heartedness and so forth to characterize the people of God, has rarely been more urgent.

We also face renewed potential for division. In a few weeks we will be thinking about the importance of unity to the Holy Spirit. The timing of such a service could hardly be better as we find our together-ness under siege. In part this will be because of a variety of responses to the easing of Lockdown. Some will be eager to meet together, others more reticent. It is likely there will be limits imposed on the size of congregations. There will be tensions about what our services should be like and the role of technology during the transition period (which could last for several months). There is an important lesson we can learn as many schools prepare to open, with parents and schools being vilified on social media for the decisions they are making (feel they have to make) about re-opening and children being sent to school. We will need to guard against such temptations in our own midst as our buildings re-open and people make different decisions about whether and when they will come. Let us pray and work for unity amongst God’s people.

Thirdly - and still looking simply within the life of the Church - the credibility of the Church’s leadership has been massively damaged in the eyes of society, and indeed many Anglicans. Institutional self-interest and protectionism has seemingly prevailed over self-sacrifice and costly, cross-bearing service, and it has been humorously suggested that our Bishops should have been furloughed! NHS staff have been expected to care for the sick, whilst clergy have been banned from visiting even the dying. The closure of Churches even for private prayer in the name of good citizenship feels ominously like a capitulation to the idea that a Government can bestow on its citizens the right to worship, or not. You’ll be aware of my own feelings on this from previous emails, but whatever our own views of decisions made in the past, let us pray for our Bishops as they seek now to lead the Church out of Lockdown, and to re-establish the Churches mission and worship across the country.

This feeds into our fourth area for prayer - the witness of the Church to the nation and the community. It is widely felt (by secular press as well as Church commentators) that the Church’s response during the pandemic has critically undermined our mission, and place within the life of the nation. That a secular body-politic should see the Church as a privatize-able and marginal activity, rating somewhere below DIY and non-essential shopping is regrettable, but understandable; the fact that the Church has largely acquiesced with such a judgement, simply re-enforces in the minds of many that the secular analysis of religion and its place in the public discourse of a nation is basically correct. At a local and even personal level, we might find that our witness has fared better than at a denominational level, but in spite of much self-congratulatory rhetoric to the contrary, we may find our faith increasingly relegated to the category of ‘hobby’.

Fifthly, I believe we will find evangelism harder than ever. The mood of our culture is dishearteningly triumphalist. We are more entrenched in the notions of our own sufficiency and goodness than ever. Previous generations may have resorted to national days of prayer, but we know better. We’ll turn a blind eye to several disturbing indicators that all is not well with our society, such as the rise in domestic violence, or the concerns about children’s vulnerability in their own homes that drives much of the discourse about re-opening schools. We’ll trumpet the sacrifice of the NHS (forgetting that we sent them into battle without adequate resources); we’ll trumpet our ‘pulling together’; our charitable efforts; our self-sacrifice… all of which may be legitimate, but all of which subtly underpins the narrative that we don’t need God. Evangelism will be tough in an era saturated by the sense of ‘common good’.

A sixth area for us to pray about focuses on the potential for discouragement and disillusionment in the Church in both worship and mission. Again let me stress that it is difficult to anticipate the reality of what will unfold in the next couple of months, but if commentators are to be believed, we will see diminished congregations when the dust has settled. For many, the routine of going to Church, which has been increasingly tenuous in the midst of pressured lives, has been broken. Will it be recovered? Or will our venture into online worship convince people that they can get by without physically having to carve out time for gathering with the saints in real time and in real space for worship? This increasing fragmentation of the Body of Christ, and the decreasing commitment to the corporate life of the Church will not be without impact - for the Church of for individuals. If we come out of Lockdown, not valuing more fully our life together as a Church, we may have failed to learn the lesson our Father sought to teach us.

And seventhly (seven seems like a Biblical place to stop!): Have we unwittingly succumbed to a pagan-esque dualism that will accelerate the decline of the Church in Britain? Paganism, especially where rooted in or influenced by ancient Greek philosophy, separates out the spiritual from the physical in a way that Christianity cannot countenance. In the Bible, what we do with our bodies matter. Where we are matters. As one mystic puts it: it makes a huge difference whether you see yourself as a soul in a body, or a body with a soul. Our enthusiasm in having made it online with services needs to be qualified by our recognition that God created us embodied. Our online worship services have been brilliant. They have achieved everything that could be asked of them. But what can be asked of them is less than what can be expected in the physical gathering of the people of God. If we fail to understand this, it will further weaken our life and witness in the months ahead. Pray for the people of God to grasp the critical significance of meeting together, and to have a renewed commitment to this fundamental aspect of our faith. Many seem relatively untroubled by the current circumstances and speak of thriving successfully ‘online,’ some even envisioning lasting new iterations for ‘how we do church’. This – if undermining offline ministry - betrays a surrendering of a Biblical vision for humanity, and for redemption. Whilst there may be extenuating circumstances, such as illness or persecution that means we aren’t able to meet with the Church, any vision of discipleship that marginalizes the essentially corporate nature of our faith is deeply flawed to the point of becoming sub-Christian.

…and there are others. But these are a good place to start to prayerfully prepare for life after Lockdown – not just in MIE, but for the Church nationwide, and of all denominations…

Owen's Tour of Martyrs...

In a few of weeks we’ll be thinking in our service about how the Holy Spirit sustains and strengthens us in our faith and witness particularly during times of trial, persecution and suffering. Just to get you warmed up to the idea, here is Owen taking us on a tour of Ipswich, with a particular eye on those who have suffered as Christians over the years…

getting ready for Sunday

Here’s an excerpt from a great prayer that can be found in the Valley of Vision (The Great God), that might be useful this week as we prepare ourselves for Sunday’s service. We’ll be looking at how the Spirit brings the presence of God to us, and brings us to God’s presence.

O Fountain of all good,

destroy in me every lofty thought;

break pride to pieces and scatter it to the wind.

Annihilate every clinging shred of self-righteousness …

open in me a fount of penitential tears.

Break me, then bind me up.

Thus will my heart be a prepared dwelling for my God;

then can the Father take up His abode in me;

then can the Blessed Jesus come with healing in His touch,

then can the Holy Spirit descend in sanctifying grace;

O Holy Trinity, three Persons, one God,

inhabit me, a temple consecrated to your glory.

Then Thou art present, evil cannot abide;

in Thy fellowship is fullness of joy;

beneath Thy smile is peace of conscience;

by Thy side no fears disturb…

Make me meet, through repentance, for Thine Divine indwelling.

What a great prayer! As an aside, I’d have never come up with a prayer like that! It’s one of the advantages of using a book of prayers as part of our habits of spiritual discipline. We end up praying for things, and in ways, that we’d never initiate left to our own devices.

One last thought on praying together...

This one comes from Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in the middle of fourth century. Even I had my breath taken away by his emphasis on our need to pray together. In the rather unimaginatively named ‘Epistle 97’, he writes (based on I Cor.12:14) about the unity and inter-dependence of the Church. In that context he drops this bombshell:

‘To sum up, in everything accomplished through natural action and by the human will, I see nothing done except by the joint working of powers in alliance. Even prayer itself, when it isn’t the prayer of believers united together, loses its proper effect; the Lord tells us that when two or three call upon Him in joint prayer that He will be in the midst … For these reasons, my prayer is that for however many days are left for me here below, I may spend them in harmonious fellowship with others…’

Amen ?

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