Transformed and transforming

‘We don’t try to get people involved with church; we try to get church involved with people,’ says Mark Stirling from the Cornerstone Community Church in St Andrews. He adds that they equip people ‘to live where they are and to carry out God’s mission wherever God has planted them.’

His is one of the voices heard in a research report published last week. Transforming Scotland: the state of Christianity, faith and the Church in Scotland was produced by the American Barna Group, commissioned by Transforming Scotland, a committee of influential Scottish Christian leaders.

Against the background of declining church attendance in Scotland, the researchers questioned 1019 Scottish adults on their views of Christianity and the church, and their beliefs about Jesus and the Bible. They also surveyed groups of Christian leaders; they focussed in depth on the leadership and practices of a small number of churches seeking to identify common factors among those which were growing.

They found that while 55% of all Scots have a ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ favourable impression of Christianity, only 16% say that faith has ‘greatly transformed me.’ 21% of all Scots see Christianity as ‘judgmental’; 20% as ‘hypocritical’; 20% as ‘out of touch with reality.’

Yet where churches focus on factors such transparent leadership, prayer, life-related Bible teaching, the church as a nurturing community, engagement with the outside world, there is encouraging evidence of growth. In particular there is evidence (though sample sizes were small) that among 18-30 year olds generally there is a resurgence of interest in, and openness to the Bible and Christian faith.

I welcome the research, but I have a few caveats.  In the first place, it has been shaped by a particular group within the Christian Church. The participating leaders and churches seem to come overwhelmingly from within the evangelical tradition.

The researchers used answers given in the public survey to define how evangelical the respondents were in terms of their beliefs about the Bible, the significance of Jesus’ death, the need for conversion and for the active living and sharing of faith. They divided the 51% of Scots who identified as Christians into three groups: ‘Legacy Christians’ for whom Christianity is part of their Scottishness with little impact on their lives; at the ‘other end of the belief spectrum’ ‘Evangelicals’; and in between folk who aren’t thoroughly evangelical, but who have a personal commitment to Jesus.

This is surely suspect. Many Roman Catholics (and that Church is not mentioned in the research report) might find it difficult to accept the evangelical terminology used in the survey. Where do committed Catholics and liberal Christians find a place in this dubious ‘belief spectrum’?

Evangelical are often zealous, loving, God-focussed people – I know and dearly love many. But surely the research is wrong to imply the superiority of one particular expression of Christian spirituality?

The implication is that if only we all became evangelicals, Scotland would be transformed. We hear nothing of good practice in sharing faith among the liberal and Roman Catholic communities.

I struggled for years to be thoroughly evangelical before I realised it’s OK to be the kind of Christian I am, that God has called me to this. And so I much prefer to be defined by what I am – a struggling believer with a conversion story, glimpses of glory, and struggles with doubt – than in terms of my falling short of an evangelical ideal.

Second caveat: the research notes that 86% of Christians who no longer attend church were at one time church-goers. But it shows no awareness of research by Steve Aisthorpe of the Church of Scotland (Investigating the invisible church 2014) which identifies significant numbers of Christians who feel called to disengage from church, and find fellowship and nurture in other ways in order to be free to live for God in their own environment. This surely is another significant factor in transforming Scotland.

Final caveat:  the research mentions ‘the on-going work of the Holy Spirit in the world and in the people of Scotland’. But how does God work? Just in churches with a particular theology and view of spirituality? Surely not! Surely God works in the lives of all Scots, prompting us towards goodness and light; the God who is ultimately behind every act of love and goodness whether or not the person involved recognises it. Our lives as Scots are transformed spiritually to the extent that we open ourselves up to the Love who is God, the love we see in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Personal question: is each of us willing to confront the needs in our lives and communities, and whatever our theology seek by prayer, through action and in dependence on the Father to be both transformed and transforming?

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News, dated 10th September 2015)

The God-goven power of imagination

At the start of the day, we were asked to tie a piece of string loosely round our neighbour’s wrist. We were at a retreat at Hilton Church, reflecting on the theme ‘Extraordinary God in an ordinary life.’ It was led by the writer Merryn Glover, and by Church of Scotland Mission Development worker Steve Aisthorpe, both from Badenoch.  

The string was a reminder to each of us to ‘stay awake’, open to the whisper of God in one another, in the words we read and listened to, and in the ordinary things around us – the bread and wine, the beauty of the garden, the autumn sun shafting through the window.

Bishop Mark Strange gave the same message at Inverness Cathedral on the 1^st Sunday in Advent. ‘Stay awake!’ he urged. Christ has come; Christ is with us; Christ will come again.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that artists at work often feel they’re not so much creating something new as uncovering something already there. There are innumerable ways of combining the notes on a keyboard to create a new tune, but to the composer it can feel that all the possible melodies are already present, waiting to be discovered.

I believe imagination is among the most wonderful gifts God has given us, and that the correct use of it is key to staying awake. We are people of imagination, because God is a God of imagination, for God imagined the universe before it existed.

Merryn Glover quoted Albert Einstein: ‘There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.’

To live the latter way is to use our imagination – not in order to see what is not there, but to truly see what is there.

Imagination reveals what lies behind the surface of things, enabling us to see new possibilities and different ways of doing things, to forge new connections, to be makers and creators, to enter into the experiences of others, to enjoy poetry, music and drama.

But the gift can be wrongly used. A darkened imagination led to Auschwitz and its gas chambers, to the atomic bomb, to countless evil and destructive actions. If deployed unwisely, imagination can ensnare rather than liberating us, as when we imagine that the worst will happen.  Unwilling to face reality we can misuse imagination to hide from the facts.

Here’s an intriguing question: does our imagination actually change things? Well, imagining a better future certainly empowers me to live hopefully and positively. But you sometimes hear it suggested that we can ‘ask the universe’, changing by using our imagination things which otherwise lie beyond our power to change.

But if that’s true why are there times when despite all our prayer and agonising and imagining nothing changes? It seems to me that the only wise way of using the gift is to remain awake to God, asking God to prompt our imaginations, showing us things God has already imagined, the combination of notes which God has already heard, the futures in which God is already present, the dreams of God whose hour has come. These are the dreams which, when we enter into them imaginatively, are fulfilled.

We might think that God’s imagination is limited to religious issues, but in truth God’s dreams are holistic – there is nothing good which we can dream as cooks or architects, as cross-stitchers or engineers, as scientists or play-leaders, as ordinary folk wanting to bless others and make them happy, nothing good we can dream which God has not already imagined. So God doesn’t just give us imagination, but also guides our imagining – if only we stay awake.

God prompts us at this time of year to look at the Baby in the manger, at once ordinary and extraordinary, and to awaken to God’s imagined future – a new heaven and a new earth – and to our role in bringing that future closer through transforming the world smile by smile, sacrifice by sacrifice, dream by dream.

We need to seek reminders to stay awake which are as powerful as the piece of string round our wrists that day at Hilton. It’s significant that we tied the string on one another’s wrists, for we stay awake best when we are members of an expectant community, encouraging one another, transformed ourselves and transforming the world we live in as together we catch sight of God’s imagined future.

And yet each of us must find our own way. Merryn Glover quoted Rowan Williams – ‘With every person there is one way in which that person can show the life of God – and that person only.’ And we find that way in awakening to God’s imaginings for us as individuals.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 11th December 2014)

Fresh expressions

Last Saturday David McCarthy told Oscar Wilde’s story The Happy Prince. It’s about a city-centre statue of someone from the city’s history, a statue with heart. The Happy Prince contributed the gems and gold leaf he was decorated with to help and transform the lives of people in need, assisted by a bird which put its migration plans on hold to help out.

In the end, decrepit and unappealing, a dead bird killed by exhaustion and the onset of winter cold at his feet, the statue was demolished by civic leaders. And yet in God’s eyes, the most precious things in the city were the Happy Prince’s heart, and the bird’s fragile remains.

David, a Church of Scotland development worker was speaking last week at a conference held by the Church in Smithton aimed at empowering churches in their mission. Oscar Wilde’s story resonates with us, David said, because its themes – love, serving others, sacrifice and transformation – are close to our hearts regardless of the beliefs we hold.

Also that day, Steve Aisthorpe from Badenoch reported on his research project into ‘invisible Christians’ – an astonishing 45% of the Highland population who have Christian faith but do not currently attend church.

Those who once went to church had stopped for various reasons: they no longer felt they fitted in, they found sermons had little relevance, church didn’t fit into their schedule, ‘changes which happened within me’ made church no longer appealing. Others wishes to free up time for things they felt called by God to do.

Steve’s research confronts us with the fact that as Christians we have many different ways of experiencing and expressing,  and of describing and understanding our faith.

Yet some of us are not, I think, particularly comfortable with difference in Christians. Someone suggested that people considering leaving a church should be offered counselling. Now this may be appropriate if the person’s disaffection with church has resulted from some traumatic life experience.

But I believe people who have a foot in the back door should be seen not as a problem to be sorted, so that once again they will ‘fit in’, but as a challenge to make the church sufficiently inclusive of those who at present feel ‘on the edge.’

David McCarthy’s area of expertise is in developing ‘Fresh Expressions’ of church – a new approach to meeting together out in the community, in places like coffee shops and pubs and leisure centres where folk who would never be at home in a formal church can gather and talk about God.  Many new churches of this kind have come into being across the UK.

We call it a ‘fresh expression’ of church. Perhaps it’s more a recovery of an old expression of church before we made the Church an institution. It is the way of Jesus, who gathered people around him in the fields, among the fishing nets, in their homes – at the heart of their everyday lives.

I felt rather on the edge at the conference, because the language used by some of those involved was the language of evangelicalism, one of the streams within the Church of Scotland. People at home in that stream are often passionate and devoted in their faith, and I tried for many years to be a good evangelical. But I came to realise that though I love and totally trust the God who came among us in Jesus, my faith is a fragile thing of many doubts and questions.

Fresh Expressions, Dave McCarthy assured me, reflect all strands within the Church, yet I was reminded of our tendency to expect people coming to faith to experience and express it in the same way we do.

Folk who are moved and responsive to the fundamental principles of love, serving others, sacrifice and transformation are already, albeit unconsciously, responding to the call of Jesus, in whose life these principles are embedded. For them, to find Jesus is to discover whose voice they have been listening to for so long.

Fresh Expressions, in my view, should not be about imposing a particular model of spirituality on people, but on learning together as we sit round the table with the Happy Prince.

All God’s creation is wildly varied – why should we be surprised that there are many different ways of being Christian? Our failure is not one of faith or commitment, but of imagination, a failure to embrace the glorious rainbow people of God, not ‘ins’ and ‘outs’, but sisters and brothers.

Finding faith is becoming our true selves, no longer constrained by cultural pressure or by the views of a particular church group. It is as we discover God loves us in our uniqueness that we begin to live out a fresh expression of our authentic identity.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 2nd October 2014)