The View from our Front Garden.
The Cherry Blossom is starting to come out.

I Was a Teenage Post-Millennialist!

I have previously related the story of the time I joined a church in Bradford (Yorkshire, UK) back in 1979 where this fellowship had a clearly "Post-Millenialist" ecclesiology. The "Millennium" is a term derived from a passage in Revelation 20 - the prefixes of "Pre", "A" and "Post" describe the period when the Kingdom of God, as promised by Jesus Christ, will be truly inaugurated.

"Pre-Mill" means that Jesus will return first and then establish his kingdom on earth. This is usually attributed to a re-establisment of the State of Israel which is then overtaken by "the rapture" and an apocalyptic world conflict. This is often the subject of "pop prophecy" in Christian circles and treats the Gospel era as a kind of hiatus in God's plan.

"Post-Mill" means that Jesus will return after his kingdom has been established through the agency of the Church... generally taken to mean that the Church will so predominate the life of the world community that the vast majority of people will be saved - and the rest will be notionally "Christian". Isn't it interesting that Jesus poses the question in Luke 18 v8, "Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth?"

"A-Millenniallism" is a bit of a misnomer. "A" as a prefix means "without" which implies that A-Millennialists do not believe in the Biblical Millennium. A-Millennialists actually believe that the Millennium is a real and present reality - it is what Jesus called the Kingdom of God... an entity which is here now and yet not easily nailed down. It will yet be revealed in all its fullness when Jesus returns. (Contrary to some people who ought to know better "A-Millennialism" does not mean a disbelief in the Return of Christ!).

Does any of this really matter? Well, yes. Depending on your stance regarding the Millennium you will adopt one of several attitudes towards contemporary culture. The pre-mill believer will probably tend to be rather separationist from his or her non-believing contemporaries. The post-mill believer will tend to be an active lobbyist seeking to enculturate Christianity into the contemporary scene; such lobbyists tend to be rather right-wing. An A-mill believer will see that only the gospel of Jesus Christ can reform society by changing people's hearts, neither isolationism nor moralising will change a thing. By refusing to be enculturated in any place or time the Kingdom of God transcends all human categories and by doing so demonstrates the power of God.

The Shard!


Preparations are under way for the foundations of The Shard between London Bridge Station and Guy's Hospital.

The Shard, also known as London Bridge Tower, is due for completion in May 2012. At 310m (1,017ft) it will be the tallest building in the UK and among the tallest in Europe.
It will be great to have such a signature building south of the river!

Children Die Too.



Last night I carried a two week old baby in my arms down to the mortuary. Statistically our PICU has a better than average mortality rate compared to similar units - about 4%; which isn't much of a comfort when its your child. For parents the loss is 100%.

Apologies to Ros Clarke.

One of the problems of submitting a comment on somoeone's 'blog' is that one cannot always inject the right tone into what is written - especially if the comment is a questioning one.

The thing is I realise that I was coming across as boorish and I want to apologise for any offence I might have caused. On a previous occasion we were, coincidentally, on-line at the same moment; so the exchange we had occurred in real-time; in other circumstances the conversational theology we were having might have passed off without all the defensiveness. But that is no excuse, I was being tetchy and immature and I apologise.

Church Sunday Lunch........

The Sunday School riot....

becomes a venue for 250 lunches within 45 mins!

Every month or so we have a church lunch together after the morning service. Helen & I are involved in helping organise things. Essentially that means hot-footing the short distance across to St Andrew's Church (which is effectively the church hall for St Helen's) and helping get the venue ready.

The trouble is the Sunday School are all there until their parents come to collect them. Once the coast is reasonably clear we can set up tables and serving points and by 12:30 we should be ready to start dishing up. It is quite amazing how quickly the whole place can be transformed. Then we served roast beef and yorkshire pudding followed by bakewell tart and custard.

At last month's Sunday Lunch we had 264 meals served - today was a bit quieter with some folk away on a residential weekend at a conference centre and of course it was Mothers' Day so some people had other arrangements; even so we served 209 people today..... and washed up after them! A big 'thank you' to all our helpers.

Why not join us sometime? We are quite a friendly bunch!

Leithart's Presupposition.

This evening at our regular Bible study we looked at 1 Corinthians 12 v12-31. The opening verses contain a reference to baptism which the commentator Peter J Leithart asserts should normally be taken to mean literal WATER baptism unless that makes a nonsense of the text.

If that presupposition is accepted then a number of conclusions follow which we discussed last week in the "Federal Vision" blog. For Leithart Water Baptism inducts people into the covenant people of God and fills them with the Holy Spirit; they are regenerate, 'born again' and justified: but in the final analysis not necessarily saved.

As an exercise I thought that I would examine the 'baptism texts' as they arise in the normal course of life and see how they square up against Leithart's presupposition. Tonight's Bible reading is here by reason that it is simply the next in the sequence of readings. (Actually this isn't quite true because on Sunday morning the reading included Mark 10 v35-44 which everyone takes to be a metaphor!)

Tonight's passage happens to be is 1 Corinthians 12 v12-31, for our purpose we will be looking at verse 13 "for we are all baptised by one Spirit into one body - whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free - we are all given the one Spirit to drink." Let's test this with Leithart's presupposition which would insist that this passage refers to the unity of all believers, across racial and social divides, on the basis of the shared experience of WATER baptism.

"All baptised by one spirit" doesn't sound like the agency of a Church minister - besides which what would constitute a 'valid' sacrament if it was? Everyone would end up bickering about how it was done and by whom... hmmm... actually could that be the issue in 1 Cor 1 v13-16?

"Given one Spirit to drink"; metaphor or literal? Certainly sounds like a metaphor. One does not drink baptismal water - at least I didn't! If that is a metaphor then it's probable the baptism reference is too, we certainly cannot dogmatise that it is literal. Surely the whole point Paul is stressing is the spiritual unity of the Corinthian church above and beyond outward show!

No? Okay. Could the passage be referring to water baptism and communion? I could be wrong but I don't recall any Bible passage linking the consumption of the Spirit with the Lord's Supper. However Leithart does link this passage with 10 v2 where God's people are said to have been baptised into Moses as they crossed the Red Sea and to have drunk from the rock that is Christ. But the problem there is that 10 v2 is set up as an example NOT to follow, the passage is making an analogy which - if anything - completely undermines confidence in sacramental assurance....hmmm... if anything perhaps that is Paul's point!?

I played "devil's advocate" in our Bible study group and pressed Leithart's presupposition. Our group are not a bunch of twenty-somethings living in an academic hot house but a fair cross section of ages, social backgrounds and, prior to conversion, a variety of religious backgrounds.... hmmmm... exactly the type of people 1 Corinthians was actually written for! (I'm sure they won't mind me saying that!)

Water baptism was politely considered but the unanimous opinion was that made absolutely no sense of the text. If Paul was appealing to a highly developed sacramental basis for the life of their church community a la Leithart and that water baptism was THE way in to new life in Christ why does Paul say "Christ did NOT send me to Baptise, but to preach the gospel...not with words of human wisdom, lest the Cross of Christ be emptied of its power"? 1 Cor 1 v17. Hmmm... good point!

Mandatory Training.

Although today is actually a day off for me I went into Guy's Hospital this morning for a lecture on "Mentorship". The Guy's site is closer to home than the other hospital where I actually work. (This picture is of the Colonnade at Guy's).

There are a variety of courses one is obliged to do over the year to keep up to date. Some of these; like 'Health & Safety' and 'Fire' are done as part of an online training programme. 'Moving & Handling' involves the practice of shifting people around. As that involves some familiarity with the gadgets we use these days we need to attend practical sessions for that. I'm up to date with my 'child protection' training. So I'm pretty much on track although later this year I have the joy of doing my "Advanced Paediatric Life Support" course again. Let me tell you about APLS.

Now that APLS is seriously scary! The last time I did it it was a three day course involving a relentless series of scenarios overseen by outside assessors. It's a bit like being on "Crystal Maze": you enter the room and someone gives you a brief synopsis of a child (in the form of a computerised manikin) about to be admitted; here's just one instance by way of example, 7 year old fallen from tree, no loss of consciousness but now deteriorating and you just enough time to calculate a few basic essentials like an estimated weight based on age and resuscitation drugs for that weight.... then Go! You have sole responsibility to guide your team; YOU make all the clinical decisions based on your own patient assessment. The assessors follow an algorithm and project details onto a monitor as your interventions alter the 'patients' vital signs. Head injury? Internal bleeding? Penetrating chest wound? I quickly worked out that it was the latter which required immediate treatment but it does not preclude any of the others on top of that does it? Broken leg can be temporised while we sort out the life threatening stuff. Oh yes, we have internal injuries too....oh joy!.....

I passed but even so I'm still traumatised from that last assessment!!!

Anyway today was a fairly gentle affair looking at the documenation and processes of mentoring student nurses who pass our way. We get students from Kings College and South Bank University and wider afield on a variety of courses. The Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) is a great learning opportunity for them and we are responsible for teaching them, helping them through this placement and assessing their competence to be registered nurses. But the bottom line is if someone isn't up to the job you have to fail them which is just as traumatic in it's own sweet way.......................

Holiday Scruff... before and after...

I've just finished having a few days annual leave I needed to use up before the end of the financial year. It has been a chance to catch up on my reading, write up my diary (which got way behind), develop my household chores avoidance tactics and work on reviving my 'blog' of course!

I gave up shaving on my holiday but it's easily past the fashionable stubble phase and into patchy grey/ginger poor-excuse-for-a-beard territory. It is a relief to be rid of it. If we are ever required by the Taliban to wear beards I have had it!

The scruff has to come off because I have decided to go in to work today for a few hours study even though it is actually a day off; I need to get some of my mandatory training requirements up to date. As Guy's Hospital is closer to my home I'll pop in there rather than go all the way to the other hospital site.

Do Not Resuscitate Me - I'm Mediocre!

I just managed to catch on camera this ambulance as it raced by the other day. I couldn't quite believe what its logo said. It is a private ambulance operated by "Carillion" a company with interests in a wide variety of sectors of which health care is one. The mission statement on the side of the vehicle might work well in other contexts but in the area of health care provision it does not translate so well!

Bringing Excellence to life.

Maybe the paramedic would say, "sorry mate, I can't help - you're crap!"

How about, "your medical insurance is invalid; you didn't declare that you're rubbish!"

Breaking bad news: "I'm really sorry... we tried everything... but your husband's mediocrity was irreversible".

Tabloid headline; "the 'average' gene discovered - hope at last for sufferers!"

Maybe there is a niche in the market for a company specialising in "bringing bog-standard to life"! The 'National Institute for Clinical Excellence' (NICE) would become the institute for clinical indifference. Think about it; instead of Intensive Care for the critically ill you could have an Average Care Unit for the moderately poorly. Rather than a hospital being described as 'a centre of excellence' it could be a 'centre of mediocrity'. It could be a winner.... well.... no, thinking about it, that would be against its ethos wouldn't it?

Happy 20th Birthday to our beautiful niece Anna!

Last year when you stayed with us you took a shine to our "Lemon Jelly" album so we've ordered you a copy from Amazon, it should be with you soon. We hope you enjoy it!

God Bless,
Pete & Helen.


ps Don't play it too loud!

Baptism Service for Harry C & Lucy G this morning.

William Taylor led a baptismal service at church this morning for two infants. The nice thing about St Helen's Bishopsgate is that although there are differing views on baptism within the church family these are not the cause of any friction between us.

Some people feel that baptism is an initiation rite into the covenant akin to the Old Testament practice of circumcision. Others see no such link. This goes back to something I wrote last Friday about continuity/ discontinuity between the Old and New Covenants. Some folk think there is a lot of continuity and others (like me) think there is less, I'm at one point on the spectrum and others are further along from me.

Just because I see more discontinuity it would be a terrible misrepresentation to imply that children are not important to me or that the children of believers are not precious to God. In 1 Corinthians 7 v14 the children of believers are described as 'holy'; but please note that they are holy already on account of having a believing parent, baptism is not to be misconstrued as adding a dash extra holiness to this. Baptism is a very public ceremony to welcome these infants into the local church family; actually when you think about it is the public aspect that makes it special otherwise if it was purely a sacramental thing then one could do it entirely privately. The reality is it is a church family, community event and not a private rite.

St Helen's also has believers' baptism by full immersion. This practice is treated with scepticism by some churches. The important thing is that here at St Helen's we can come together in peace and unity despite differences on secondary matters because we aim to keep the Gospel of Jesus Christ central in our church life.

William was very careful to point out that baptising these infants does not make them Christian - that is something that only God can do. Faith is a gift from God, so the sign of baptism cannot, somehow, bring about the thing signified. That is God's prerogative.

"Federal Vision" (aka Auburn Avenue Theology).

Until last Summer I had never even heard of "Federal Vision" and since then I have done a bit of a crash course to get up to speed as it has become a hot topic within some churches and organisations I know of. (St Helen's is not directly affected I hasten to add!). Trawling the internet is a bit of a minefield - you find skilful proponents of "Fed Vis" and passionate critics, along with 'the good, the bad and the ugly' voices in between. In a nutshell "Federal Vision" seeks to reaffirm the importance of the sacraments within the life of the church and indeed to reform our view of the Church itself. In support of these ideas they look to the Westminster Confession and Book 4 of John Calvin's "Institutes of Christian Religion" among other worthy sources, so at first glance it would be unfair to say that these people are outside the Reformed faith or that they are heretics. The most visible practice of the movement is a passionate belief in infant baptism for reasons which will become clear below.

Reading "The Baptized Body", by Peter J Leithart, has shaken me and caused me to review what it is I believe. I thought that we, the Reformed church, were all singing from the same hymn sheet. Have I so badly read the Bible that I have imposed on it my own pre-suppositions? An issue for me is, have I misidentified myself as a 'Reformed' christian? To be a 5 point Calvinist seemingly isn't enough. Can I still at least say I'm reformed with a small 'r'? But then again John Calvin didn't actually write 'The 5 Points'; they were written by his successors and dedicated to him. Nonetheless I feel a bit of an orphan.

I am not an academic theologian but I consider myself to be a reasonably well read layman who has a clear idea about what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about; and even if I do not know how to winkle out every nuance hidden within the curlicues of academic vocabulary I am sufficiently concerned to make this modest attempt. It may be that in writing on this topic I am making a right charlie of myself and merely displaying my ignorance for all of blog world to see - but I would far rather run that risk than say nothing.

Not knowing where to start - or frankly which source to trust - I figured the best place to begin was with some of the literature written by Peter J Leithart who is a leading proponent of "Fed Vis". This movement arose within reformed circles in the Presbyterian Church of the USA but has made significant inroads into the reformed scene in the UK. And when I say significant this is not mere hyperbole.

Peter Leithart's seminal book is "The Baptized Body". He asserts that when the word baptism is used in the New Testament it normally means the sacrament of water Baptism. I will have to consider the texts carefully again but if he is correct then the rite does achieve some remarkable things for the recipient. In Leithart's view water Baptism is a 'radical life transforming event'. But I always thought that the word "baptism" has a range of meanings or at least it could be used as a metaphor. Could not the word be legitimately translated as "immersed" rather than being transliterated from the Greek without neccesarily doing an injustice to the text? Is it so unfair, as Leithart suggests, to treat the word "baptism" as shorthand for the process of conversion which culminates in a public, symbolic identification with Christ's death and resurrection (a rite of passage if you like) and official welcome into the local church community? Leithart thinks this is playing fast and loose with the plain meaning of the text; put simply 'the sign effects what it signifies'. I do find that hard to swallow because it does seem to set these texts at odds with many others that seem to impute the benefits of salvation to the believer by the sheer grace of God alone without the agency of the sacraments. I will have to think on these things some more, but I am still inclined to view baptism as a testimony to regeneration rather than a regenerative act in itself!

There are some helpful correctives in the book. When we come to Christ we are called to be part of the church community and not just live our lives in splendid spiritual isolation. We also need to be aware of the dangers of an inward looking, pietistic form of spirituality. Both these stress "me" and "my walk with God" to the exclusion of our relationships with other believers. A distinction is drawn between the personal and the individual in the Fed Vis lexicon - personal is good: individual bad, an issue that will pop up again in this essay. Leithart makes a fair point about infants being able to form trusting relationships and that there isn't some magical age of responsibility; but that argument really scores against Arminianism rather than believers' baptism as such because faith is a gift of God at whatever age.

Here I want to draw attention to the problem of language and why Federal Visionists(?), Federal Visionaries(?), Federal Visionistas(?) often find themselves 'talking past' people like me... and indeed start to arouse concern. Fed Visers are very intelligent and articulate people who use language with precision - usually borne out of academic rigour - but the words used mean something signifcantly different to the men and women in the pew, or at least the evangelical in the pew. For example the word "Reformed" is used of this theology but something much more sacramental is meant by it than I would hitherto have thought possible. I accept this is probably sheer ignorance on my part.

That aside I am troubled by several aspects of the book, which I read genuinely in good faith. A lot of the words with which we are familiar on the evangelical scene seem to be radically redefined by "Fed Vis" eg, "regeneration", "sanctification" and even "justification" are to be applied to anyone who happens to be Water Baptised regardless of whether they are ultimately saved. "Baptism" texts can be advanced which seem to imply these amazing benefits - but, of course, for Leithart that almost invariably means literal water Baptism and invariably fall short, in the final analysis, of actual salvation. I can't help feeling that this 'radical life transforming event' is not so life transforming after all! Within this new lexicon it is possible to be justified, adopted, sanctified and regenerate and yet ultimately remain unsaved.

The crux of the sacrament is to induct the recipient into civic society. This is a fundamental reorientation away from the Gospel which saves sinners through individual repentance and faith in Christ to a Gospel which seeks social and cultural change through the agency of the Church as a formal institution. In this context it is easy to see why infants can, indeed must, be regenerated and encultured into the Church by means of Baptism. The concept of believers' baptism is treated with some scepticism on the basis that the notion of choice is an illusion derived from our modern worldly mindset. The "baptistic" approach of believers' baptism, is viewed by Fed Vis as deeply suspect and compromised by worldly pre-suppositions rather than being truly Biblical. Maybe I missed a step in the argument somewhere but (as I said earlier) I've always viewed faith as a gift from God. None of these criticisms 'hit home' and I wonder if he really has Arminianism in his sights rather than the target he claims.

Please note that not all paedo-baptists are Fed Vis! There is a spectrum of thought within the church community as to how much continuity or discontinuity exists between the Old and the New Covenant. I tend toward the discontinuity end of the spectrum but others see much more continuity ie, water baptism is the new sign of the covenant taking over from the OT sign of circumcision. Water baptism is, for them, an appropriate sign used to include infants within the covenant people of God; personally I'm not convinced but I do not regard this theology as "beyond the pale" by any means. Maybe this was where John Calvin was positioned. The question is how much further down this Covenantal spectrum is Fed Vis and at what point do we consider it to have crossed the line? Or put another way, do the proponents of FV regard us, sotto voce, as too far up the line?

The essence of the argument goes much further beyond infant Baptism because it turns on our understanding of "the Body of Christ. Leithart says our concept of "The Body of Christ" should be taken literally to mean just that, it is not a metaphor. If I read him correctly he seems to be saying that the Church is an incarnation of Christ in the world today - to say otherwise is to be guilty of Nestorianism no less! Hence the 'federal' tag ('federal' being a Latin derivative alternatively translated as 'covenantal' in English). The body of believers are in a federal/covenantal union with Christ. I don't have a huge problem with this provided we take care to distinguish between the Body and the Head. I cannot help but feel that Leithart sees the Church as sharing in the Headship/Dominion of Christ. Here it is useful to say that "Fed Vis" is firmly 'Post-Millennial' in its philosophy, which means that, in its opinion, Jesus will return after a glorious millennial Church age during which the world's culture, economics and politics will have been transformed through the agency of the Church. (A-millennialists interpret the 1,000 year reign of Revelation ch. 20 as a present reality we call "the Kingdom of God" which will find its complete fulfillment when Christ returns. Pre-millennialists see Christ as returning beforehand to inaugurate his kingdom in the modern land of Israel).

The discussion within Evangelicalism about Christ and Culture in recent years has been a helpful way of thinking Christianly about how we interact with the world around us and as a way of proclaiming the Gospel meaningfully in a variety of settings. But the "Fed Vis" position seems to be that redeeming culture is the principal mission of the Church, which is a step up from classic "post-millennialism". The classic Post-Millennialists I've met would say that culture will be transformed coincidentally as people come to faith in Christ; I don't have a problem with this conceptually because they recognise that "the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart!" You cannot change anything until the human heart is changed! However I worry that Fed Vis sees our primary mission as changing people's presuppositions as an end in itself, if so then they have started to lose sight of the grace of God and its ability to change the human heart; "not by might nor by power, but by my spirit" says the Lord Almighty. The danger in my view is that the Fed Vis version of post-millennialism will substitute mere formalism for spiritual reality as people are enculturated into Christianity and their confidence is focused on the institutions of the Church.

Perhaps the profoundest difference I have with Leithart is his view on assurance. I just cannot see how Baptism, or the Church minister's "absolution"(!) for that matter, offers objective assurance of anything. Indeed I would argue that the danger here is of placing our faith in people or institutions or rites rather than in Christ alone. Maybe Leithart would deny this on the basis that the Church is Christ, but I'm not convinced. Assurance can only be assurance when the focus is taken away from ourselves or our particular group and placed in Christ exclusively. I have assurance precisely because I have trusted Jesus and have no confidence in myself or any one or any thing else to see me right. I think Leithart would say that this is an unhealthy, disembodied, spiritualised, pietistic kind of belief. I think he is wrong.

I have to say that if Leithart is correct in his theology then my understanding of grace is actually wide of the mark, for the following reason: God would have instituted certain rites and religious practices, not as "a means of grace" - as if it were funnelled by the sacraments - but as grace itself! Not merely would these rites be crucial to our faith but faith itself would actually be more about sharing in the life of the Church community as expressed through the sacraments and less about who we have come to put our trust in. When Jesus promised the thief next to him on the cross "today you will be with me in paradise" the thief had had no opportunity to be water Baptised (ie in Leithart's theology = adopted, sanctified, justified, regenerated etc) did he? I cannot help but conclude that Federal Vision has moved from the concept of "by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone".... it's not that they neccesarily deny any of those beliefs per se, it is that they deny the 'alones' by making something critical of the sacraments.

I can understand why one Fed Viser I heard of described himself as a "Reformed Catholic". And, at least, that also leaves the door open for me to call myself a Reformed Protestant; I'm not an orphan after all!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

post-script: Monday 16th March 2009. I've been reading chapter 11 of the Westminster Confession (about Justification) and frankly it is difficult to square it with Leithart's take on the subject: Leithart says as much himself. Justification is about 'effective calling' in the W Conf (Rom 8 v30 etc) and for Leithart it is about the possibility of new life.

It seems to me that the contrast is between "Justification (in this strong Rom 8v30 sense) by Faith" versus "Justification (in the diluted Leithart sense) by Faithfulness"! Unless I've got completely the wrong end of the stick (and I am open to being put right!); this is no mere academic discussion, this is about the soul of the Evangelical/Reformed faith no less.

I'll have to make this a topic for a future 'blog' I think.

Rules of Engagement!
To facilitate useful discussion I have a few house-rules for anyone posting comments on this 'blog'.

1) This is my blog and as editor I reserve the right to... well... edit!

2) Behave as a guest in my home. See rule 1.

3) Anonymous comments may be deleted. See rule 1.

4) Try and be succinct; you can always come back and build on previous comments, treatises will be deleted. See rule 1.

5) Unauthorised Links to other sites will be deleted as a matter of principle. See rule 1.

6) With due regard to the laws of natural justice these rules are subject to arbitrary and capricious change without warning! See rule 1.

Communion.

Charlie Skrine led the service this morning and when it came to communion invited "everyone who trusts and loves the Lord" to share in it.

Today Helen & I helped with communion at church. We had a strategy worked out; one starts with one row and the other takes the next one from the opposite aisle... that way we then pick up the bread & wine the other has launched. Sounds simple doesn't it? Not so in reality!

Row 1: this is Helen's row but I'm stood too far forward so the lady next to me thinks I'm about to pass the bread to her! Ooops quick step back. Sorry luv.

Row 2: Bread Away! Pause... now launch wine, not forgetting a tissue to wipe the cup. So far so good. Helen collects at the far end.

Waiting for row 1 to finish; bread done phew! But wait for wine.... come on, come on! Oh no the wine's stalled!

Row 3: Helen has relaunched bread followed by wine. But I'm still stuck by row 1! Bread & Wine both zip along row 3 in lightening speed as I am picking up belated wine from the first row.

Row 4: Collecting the proceeds from 1 and having dashed to row 3 to receive the bread & wine I'm like Manuel juggling plates and glasses and simultaneously launch them on Rows 4 & 5. The tissues, the tissues! Don't forget the tissues.

Of course there are no stallers on either row so Helen has to shuffle all four items to rows 6 & 7: Oh no!... stallers in both rows! So we have bread & wine stalled on one and wine only stalled on the other but the bread has zipped along again! So I'm holding one bread but daren't move to row 8 for fear of missing something! The wine's stalled because Helen has run out of tissue paper. This comedy of errors continues as we work towards the back.

All the other servers have finished and are offering to help. Oh no, please don't complicate things any more than they already are!

Finished. Phew.

Charlie Skrine winds up the service.

Helen & I both realised later that in all the kerfuffle we never actually took communion today! I don't believe the Lord Jesus thinks any the less of us for it though!

"Look on the bright side," I said to Helen, "we won't be asked to help again!"

Central Focus.

Thursday night is our Bible study night. There are about a dozen groups which meet centrally at St Helen's in the heart of London. We have a meal together and then have an hour or so studying a Bible passage. Isn't it interesting that so much of our church family activity starts with a meal?

This year we have been looking at 1 Corinthians which is a letter the apostle Paul wrote to a newly founded church in Greece during the first century. It was a port city with a racey reputation.

The thing which has struck me so far this year is how Corinthian we all are! The church at Corinth had a firm grasp of the liberty they had come in to now that they were in Christ, but they were so fixated on their 'rights' that they had lost sight of the fact that Jesus requires us to be prepared to forgo those 'rights' for the sake of our brother & sisters. Love is about putting the other person first.

As it happens last Thursday we were looking at 1 Cor 11 v17-34 which is about the shambles the Corinthian church made of the Lord's Supper! He reminds them that this meal is a means by which a disparate group of people come together to share a meal in remembrance of the Lord Jesus' death on the cross. These people from all social classes and racial groups are meant to come together for them to express their unity together as "the body of Christ" around a common meal - all these individuals come together to be one. Not unlike baptism when an individual publically proclaims their faith in Christ and is welcomed into the local church. Both sacraments are centred on the historical reality of the cross and are not about little "me".

We are called into a community defined as a people purely by the fact that we belong to Christ. So Paul takes a dim view of the factionalism and selfishness these Corinthian believers indulge in. Paul has to remind them, in all their self indulgence, that communion is about proclaiming together the Lord's death until he returns because they seem to have forgotten its true purpose - it should be approached with our minds and hearts engaged it is not primarily a sensory experience!

It's a timely reminder because we are having the Lord's Supper this Sunday.

The Corinthians were a fractious lot and we are not immune to being the same. Christians are not perfected beings but a 'work in progress'; we say and do stupid, selfish, insensitive things.... things which do not reflect well on the Lord we claim to follow. It would be great never to make a mistake but sadly that isn't realistic. The key is to make sure we judge ourselves aright - we need to have that capacity for critical self reflection which Paul urges. If we do that then we can remove the barriers in our communion with each other.

"The Shack" by Wm Paul Young

is a surprise bestseller and is doing the rounds within Christian circles, often hailed as a modern day "Pilgrim's Progress" no less!

It is "notoriously difficult to write a good review about a bad book" and I appreciate that this particular book has touched a lot of peoples' hearts. But I believe that they have not so much had an encounter with God but with a candy floss deity who reflects our own post modern values back to us.

The embittered hero, Mack, is invited to meet with God in "The Shack" which is where his young daughter was murdered several years previously. He encounters God in a variety of incarnations and is profoundly changed as a consequence. In my opinion, while the book does contain the odd nugget of gold (more ably expressed elsewhere) it is in truth a sentimental journey into the sort of God our age craves. As such it says much more about ourselves than it ever reveals about God.

This God is so respectful of human rights that he would never violate them; he refuses power because that is coercive by definition. (The Church is a power structure - of course!) God so loves mankind and respects its independence so much he limits himself against any responsibility for events, to interfere would be a denial of love. Given the book's plot presumably God is too loving to intervene to rescue the young daughter. (The problem of evil is not so easily answered!) I would imagine most grieving parents would rather God was a bit less 'respectful' and a bit more intervening. Either way the hero seems satisfied with this as an explanation. Indeed why should Shack-God intervene anyway? The God of The Shack isn't even vaguely disappointed with anyone because S/he has no 'expectations of humanity only expectancy' whatever that means! Presumably Shack-God is not even disappointed with the serial killer!

The God of The Shack will not judge sin (if there is such a thing) because 'it is its own punishment'. I don't see in the book how this principle is worked out in the life of the child's murderer. And it is a curious fact that the author concludes the novel by having the serial killer caught and imprisoned. When push comes to shove we all actually crave some sort of justice. We do want God to be angry when cruelty and evil are encountered: in fact it would be amoral if He wasn't angry. Shack-God never gets angry. We all know that the axiom of sin being its own punishment doesn't work in the real world and the author knows it too otherwise the book's conclusion would have been different. Again doesn't this reflect our society's conflicted view of sin? We want justice but we are not prepared to take the responsibility of making a judgment; we have a 'don't get involved' and 'don't be judgmental' approach to situations. Our post-modern world makes a virtue out of not caring and Shack-God's respectful 'hands off' approach to Mankind is in reality indifference by another name. Thank God Jesus did not look on the world with "benign neglect"!

In Shack-world there is no concept of sin or evil - it seems that being 'messed up' emotionally is the closest we ever get to it. We are somehow the victims of our circumstances. In this context forgiveness is a self-help therapy to get over those who have hurt us: forgiveness is never something of which we are in need of course. Which means that sin (in so far as it exists at all) is never a description of ourselves but always of someone other than us. Well, The Shack isn't exactly breaking new ground there is it? Everyone "otherises" evil don't they?

The Shack has no Cross. At the heart of the Christian faith is the Cross which reveals how God demonstrates his love for us; at the Cross His perfect love as expressed by his outrage at evil is reconciled with His perfect love as expressed in mercy.

The Shack is a cross-less christianity and consequently it is also graceless. There is a poor understanding of sin (which is odd given the occasion for this divine encounter!) and there is no concept of God's holiness. In the Bible when people encounter God they are profoundly shaken by His prescence. They are deeply conscious of their own unworthiness and are awed by God and are changed as a consequence. But this is not the God the world - or even some Christians - feel is marketable.

Mack's wife, Nan, is mentioned tangentially as a nurse who works on a cancer ward and who, as a Christian, has written about the subject of 'suffering'. I would have been curious to know how her theology held up under the pain she was feeling and, indeed, how Mack related to her spiritual understanding. That might have been a segue into the pastoral issues surrounding evil, suffering and redemption but it wasn't a path the book took us down.

As I said earlier; this book reflects our own sorry age, God is reduced to a therapeutic agent for those of us who recognise that we are 'messed up'. Was it my imagination or does Shack-God keep using the catch-phrase of Dr Phil McGraw "how's that working for you?" as the hero's behaviour is put under the spot light? Please don't get me wrong; I like "Dr Phil" (a US TV psychiatrist) I just don't think our model of God should be drawn from day-time TV.

At one point in the book Mack is reassured that the murdered daughter isn't really out of his family's life because they will continue to encounter her in their dreams! This is only one example of the cloyingly sentimental approach of the author. It is a gooey, sticky, candy floss God we encounter here, all sweetness and no substance. It is not a book I would give to any grieving parent.

The book's advocates promise an exploration of evil and redemption, it promises much and delivers little.... what we actually encounter is a godless deity who incarnates our society's value system.

Resurrection!

Last autumn we attempted to improve the soil condition of our garden by sifting out all the stones and digging in some decent compost. The stones and dead bulbs were dumped in an empty compost bag and left to itself for the winter.

This week on surveying the garden the flower beds are as lifeless as they always tended to be. But the discarded bag of rubble has a host of golden daffodils! Truly, truly, the bulbs that the gardener rejected have become the finest display in the garden!

In the spirit of the compost bag I have decided, against my better judgment, to revive my old blog; so after one year, two months and eight days, or if you prefer 436 days or even 37,670,400 seconds, this will be the first of a whole new series of Swiftypete. Not that I am entirely reconciled to the whole self-promotion thing. But who knows what might come of this.... who knows?