After The Bomb

This week the place where I live was violated.  Children from our city and our region, were cruelly killed and maimed.  As you are no doubt aware, Manchester is living through one of the most difficult weeks in its proud history.  And in the heart of this city my colleagues and I at Northern Baptist College have been getting on with the job that we believe God has given us, the same job that the college has been doing for over 150 years, preparing people for servant leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ.  It hasn’t been easy. 

On Tuesday, our staff team travelled out of our shaken city for an away day.  We spent most of our time naming, discussing and praying for each of our students.  Today, back at Luther King House, our home base on Manchester’s famous curry mile, we have been interviewing four people who believe that God is calling them into Christian ministry, calling them in other words to devote their lives to helping people to follow Jesus, helping people to love, to serve, to pursue peace and to work for justice. To be involved in such a process is always a profound privilege. This week it seems a particularly fitting way to be spending our time.

Why? 

Well, because the slaughter on our doorstep has reminded us just how much our city needs communities of people committed to living the Jesus way.  When some might be tempted to let anger turn into hatred, Manchester needs people who will remember that each of its citizens, whether red or blue, whether African, Asian or European, whether Sikh or Christian, Jewish or Muslim, whether northern-born or less fortunate, every last one of us is first and foremost a human being, created by God, bearing the image of God (however distorted) and precious in the sight of God.

As one of those charged by my denomination to form the next generation of church leaders I have to make sure that all our students remember what churches are for. No one can be allowed to leave our college in any doubt whatsoever that our churches must never become self-interested, seeking only their own wellbeing, neglecting the communities that God has called them to serve.  They must never be allowed to think that mission is only about growing bigger and bigger churches. They must never be allowed to devote themselves to growing disciples simply for the sake of growing disciples without asking what disciples are for, what difference disciples are supposed to make in the wider world.

We need leaders who will help churches become what they were always meant to be: communities of the prince peace, the healer, the lover of outcasts, the one who would eat with anyone whether he was supposed to or not, the one who wept for Jerusalem.  Any church that does not seek the welfare of its city is a contradiction in terms. Any church that forgets to build bridges of reconciliation forgets whose church it is.  Any church that is content to let outsiders stay out has lost its way and lost sight of its Lord.  Any church that thinks that this kind of stuff is none of its business is plain wrong.

That’s what I have to remember.  That’s what this difficult week has reminded me.  I pray to God that I will never forget.  I pray that you will never forget either, even if you are not fortunate enough live in Manchester. 

One of the things that people often say, when they are touched by tragedies such as the one that happened on our doorstep, is, “I wanted to do something but I felt helpless.”  If that’s you then thank God you’re are not helpless. If like me you name Jesus as your saviour, there’s lots you can do.  Here’s six suggestions for starters.

1.    You can resolve to remind yourself each morning that every person who lives in your village, town or city is a child of Adam and Eve and therefore your brother or sister in God.

2.    You can commit yourself to helping your church to become the kind of church that behaves a bit more like Jesus.

3.    You can identify someone in your community from another background, another race, another religion and simply get to know them. If that sounds scary, start by smiling and saying, “Hello.”

4.    You can find a group that is working to build bridges in your community and join them, whether they carry a Christian label or not.

5.    You can go on praying the prayer that Jesus taught us pray, “… your will be done in my part of your earth as it is in heaven” and then act like you mean it.

6.    And you can, if you would be so kind, pray for my colleagues and me in the heart of our hurting city, that we might be able to grow leaders who know how to grow churches who know how to grow the kind of communities that will gladden the heart of God.

This first appeared on Christian Today

Kitsch Jesus in the Smelly City

Back in the day I posted a blog about meeting God on Market Street in Manchester. That encounter prompted me to develop some material on Urban Spirituality for our MA course on Spirituality in Contemporary Culture.  This in turn spawned a framework for a half-day city centre retreat which has been taken up by friends and students for use in Prague, Stockholm and Birmingham.

This week here at Luther King House we've been teaching the Spirituality module on our MA Summer School.  We ran the city centre retreat again.  It got lots of positive feedback from the students.  It also gifted me with another unexpected encounter with Jesus.

I wasn't actually doing the retreat myself this time but I was in the city, buying bread and wine for the communion on the street that would round off the day.  I was making my way through the Northern Quarter on my way to Methodist Central Hall for our retreat debrief when God's Spirit beckoned me into a seedy night club back entrance.  I like to use back streets whenever I can.  It makes walking more of an adventure.  I'm not sure what The Spirit used to grab my attention, in fact I haven't a clue, but I found myself walking over to take a peek.

And there, in a stinking, piss-soaked door-well was Jesus.  (Apologies if the word piss upsets you, I don't mean to offend, it's just that neither wee nor urine are quite up to the job.)

I realise this is a rather kitsch Jesus, but I was in the Northern Quarter where they do kitsch rather well.  So it sort of fit.  It also fit because it seems to me it's just the kind of place you'd expect to see Jesus.  Or at least the kind of place where you ought to expect him.   How fitting too that he'd been defaced.  They'd scrubbed out the word love.  Or at least they'd tried to.  True the letters had been erased but the word's still there don't you think?  Again, it's the only word that really fits.

... he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.
Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

Lord, we pray for all who use that door-way.  And we pray for ourselves. Please beckon us into uninviting places.  Meet us there and open our eyes.  And if need be our nostrils.  Amen

Urban Expression (Manchester) Open Day

Interested in urban mission?  Curious about church planting?  Book in for this then.  Go on.

Manchester City Centre Spirit Walk

Those who've been following my stuff on City Centre retreating might be interested in this from Ben Edson.

Urban Expression - Manchester Open Day

If you are interested in urban church planting in particular and urban mission/ministry in general it would be great to see at the Urban Experssion Open Day - we kick off in the Asda staff canteen, how can you resist?

Piccadilly Gardens and Christ the Windhover

While I'm going on about urban retreats I thought I'd share this with you.  The week before our little experiment I was chatting with my daughter about the idea of seeking the presence of God in the City.  She got a bit excited.  She reached into her bag and pulled out her sketch book to show me the picture that accompanies this post.

It's a quick sketch she'd done a few weeks earlier while she was in Piccadilly Gardens in the heart of Manchester when everything went "quiet".  A police helicopter was hovering right over the gardens.  Everything stopped.  Everyone looked up.  Including her.  She noticed that the helicopter was kind of cruciform, so, as she is wont to do, she scribbled down a quick sketch to catch the image.

What my daughter didn't know was that there's a Christian tradition of seeing the Kestrel as an image of Christ.  Another cruciform hoverer on high.  To accompany the sketch here's Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem The Windhover.

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

City Centre Retreat

I posted recently about an encounter with God in the heart of Manchester city centre.  The experience prompted me to suggest that it would be good if we put a bit of effort into encouraging organising and resourcing urban retreats.  For once instead of just shooting off my mouth I did something about it.  Last week as part of our Summer School at Luther King House I taught a session on Urban Spirituality and I organised an afternoon's city centre retreat.  Not much I know but hopefully a beginning.  Here's an extract from the introductory hand-out.

This afternoon’s field trip is an experiment in urban spirituality.  You will spend  a couple of hours in Manchester city centre following a particular spiritual exercise.  The aim is to see if and how the urban setting might become a doorway to spiritual insight.

At the heart of each of the exercises is the need to attend, in other words to became aware by giving yourself to a particular aspect of life in the city.  The art of attending is a core element of classic spirituality.  This applies whether we are thinking of one of the Christian spiritual traditions, the traditions of other faiths, or more broadly spirituality by way of aesthetic experience.

To discern we must attend, give ourselves to the object of our attention.  The question that you will each be asked to carry with you at all times throughout the experiment is, “What am I experiencing?”

In other words the retreat was essentially an exercise in meditation.  We sought to attend to various aspects of city-centre life - the artefacts, the built environment, the people.  Judging by the feedback most of the participants appreciated it.

I'm blogging about this as a way of offering the resources that I developed for the retreat to any who might be interested.  If you happen to live in the Manchester area they will provide you with all you need for a semi-structured afternoon of urban meditation.  If you are not fortunate enough to live round here they might provide a template for doing something similar in your own neck of the woods.  Just drop me a line.

Others offering urban retreats include The Church Urban Fund and their Retreat on the Street.  Sounds well worth checking out.

Refreshing Church

Good time at Connect last night.  Connect is sort of an alternative church type thing that meets up every two or three weeks.  Not sure if it's sponsored by Levenshulme Baptist Church or Urban Expression Manchester, bit of both I guess - these things tend to be a bit messy round here.  The format last night was: gather and chat, watch a short video, natter, pray, meditate.  Despite all my best intentions over the past couple of years this was my first time.  Thought I'd stick some observations up here just in case anyone's interested.

Good stuff:

• friendly atmosphere - got the sense that it really is as inclusive as it claims to be, can't imagine anyone not getting a welcome
• amateur in the best sense of that word - low on glitz high on  sincerity 
• permission to say what you think and what you wonder - there really was an absence of any sense of oppressive orthodoxy
• seemed to be light on structure - people arrived when they could and left when they had to; the conversation was allowed to run on as long as it needed to and to end when it seemed right
• a natural, relaxed and unembarrassed bit of praying for needs that had been shared during the discussion
• the setting - a no nonsense Caribbean cafe called The Retreat on the A6 - really liked the view from the big glass sliding doors straight out onto the busy pavement, enjoyed people having a bit of a pike as they walked past, also liked the noise leakage from laughing teenagers to wailing sirens and the background rumble of traffic all of which made it feel like a real-life happening 
• the food - well if you can call it that, midget gems, hula hoops, smokey bacon crisps and either mango juice or ginger beer, wierd is good, right?
• the Nooma vid - seemed to work as a discussion starter.  

Could have been a bit better stuff:

• would have been good to have had a Bible reading as part of the concluding meditation 
• a few more blokes perhaps (three of us out of twelve) - although maybe not, I wonder if tipping the hormone balance away from estrogen in favour testosterone might have made it a bit more difficult for some of the women to share as freely as they did.  

All in all a very encouraging couple of hours.  Proof definite of the need for the church actively to generate the kind of space that's within touching distance of regular congregational life but which is also free enough for people to stay at arm's length if they so choose.  I can't imagine the group of people who met last night sharing in the way they did at a regular church gathering

So a big thank you to Ian and Jean for making it happen.  I look forward to the next one.