Living Wittily

Baptist Spirituality as Seeking the Mind of Christ

The last two days were spent at Gartmore House at the residential Council of the Baptist Union of Scotland. Two of the sunniest days of the year in one of the picture postcard locations of Scotland. To take two days out of a working week there need to be some compelling reasons for going to what is essentially a two day committee meeting. Or is it?

It was time well spent - which doesn't always have to mean there were tangible results, concrete achievements, far reaching strategic decisions. Though each of these were evident without being the main deal. Meeting with over 50 other Baptists for a series of long conversations, in a community that believes when we meet together in Jesus' name, the risen Lord is present and we are together trying to understand the mind of Christ, is some of what we mean when we use that most Baptist of phrases, communal discernment.

When we meet together with that intention fo helping each other discern, find words for, and jointly own, what we believe to be the mind of Christ we are doing several things at once.

We meet together under the Lordship of Christ,

His living Presence assumed because promised,

our thoughts and words open to the guiding wisdom,

the disruptive purposefulness,

and the generous giftedness of the Holy Spirit,

with Bibles open and our hearts focused

our wills quietened to obedience,

and our minds malleable and receptive,

listening to God expectantly, attentively and trustfully,

listening to each other humbly, carefully, openly and generously, 

listening to God through each other in shared conversation,

submissive to the witness of Scripture,

in the context of worship,

in a disposition  of prayer

in the shared love, life and faithfulness,

of the Triune God into whose life we are drawn,

by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

through the love of God,

in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

A communal Baptist spirituality 

embodies the crucial disctinctives of our tradition,

it's radical roots in a gathered community,

its Trinitarian foundation lived out

as we are called into relationship with the living risen Christ,

nourished and nurtured by the Holy Spirit,

seeking to bear witness to the creative, reconciling, renewing love of God,

in a world fractured, often self-destructive, and its own worst enemy,

and doing that by being a community of contradiction,

where forgiveness, love, welcome, peacemaking and hope

are the central values of the good news that,

God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.

What happens at the Council is no more important than how it happened, and why,

and that it happened through such a dynamic and risky process.

But one with a profound theological rationale,

rooted in a faith tradition in which the gathered community

is believed to be a true church of Christ.

That means called to follow faithfully after him,

on a road that leads to the cross and beyond,

to life affirmed, recovered and gifted by the Resurrected Lord,

to be lived as love on fire energised by the Holy Spirit,

and therefore our lives of discipleship continuously transformed

by the renewing of our minds

that we might present our bodies as a living sacrifice,

holy and acceptable to God,

which is our spiritual worship. 

 ...........................

That is as near to a Baptist spirituality as I can come. I offer it as the primary reason for taking two days to seek together the mind of Christ as we seek to serve God in the power of the Holy Spirit. And if taken seriously, it justifies far more time given to such prayerful conversation and communal discernment.

Anyway, as a young friend sometimes says after defending her corner against all grown ups who think they know better, 'That's what I think' :)

Who we once was and who we now wish to be!

Just spent a weekend at a church helping celebrate their anniversary. A Church Anniversary is a bit like a birthday but without the presents. Years ago it was a big deal, and the biggest social event in the Church Calendar. Now the date survives in some church programmes but it isn't the major occasion it used to be.

I suppose one of the more useful functions of an anniversary is gratitude for what has been. That has to be combined though with a willingness to ask about the future. And these two questions, who we have been, and who we are now called to be, lie at the heart of our identity, both as local church, and as denominational expression of our own distinctives.

Nothing of this is peculiar to Baptists. Every denomination is now in that place that can be called liminal. And in a culture fast dissolving and reforming into ever more complex and unpredictable expressions of community and conviction, and evolving increasingly diverse moral codes and social mores, the church is in danger of being what it has always feared being, and at times succeeded in being - an anachronsm desperately seeking relevance to give content to its being and reason for being.

I enjoyed my time with the friends who shared the weekend. Many spoke of being helped and provoked to think in new ways. But I am left with the feeling, not just arising from this weekend experience but from many encounters with churches seeking to find a good way ahead, that who we have been and who we would now feel called to be, are going to be very different pictures. Going to think more about this  - but not expecting it will make gently encouraging devotional reading!!

"The cross unmasks the world..." Not mission but witness?

The answer to Tony's question is that the book available for $38 in the States is Resurrection and Discipleship, the earlier and larger book by Lorenzen. It's also the one from which Graeme quotes.

The one shown on the right is the book I quoted from (Stuart's copy which I'm still clutching) which expands on the earlier sections on Discipleship and Justice. And it is indeed expensive wherever it's for sale - the $21.95 one on Amazon is from a US seller who doesn't so international shipping.

 

"The cross unmasks the world as the "world" - bereft of love and therefore of God, driven by selfishness, self-interest and violence. Where the "world" remained true to itself by fording Jesus to the cross, God remained true to God's self. God, being love, identified with the victim, took the crucified one onto God's own being, and thereby created new life out of death. The violence of the world was transfigured into a new ontology; the ontology of justice. That means that at the center of life, in the foundation of being, there is not nothing, but God; there is not violence but nonviolence; there is not war but peace; there is not hatred but love." (page 79-80)

Now I have issues with the term "missional". Far too agenda driven, dominating, smacking of ideological imperialism and conquest or control seeking. For Christians the preferred and New testament term is "witness". And that last sentence about what is at the center of life is as comprehensive, challenging and attractive as any statement of the church's call to witness as I know. And if nonviolence, peace and love were further up the agendas of Baptist communities we might be able to stop agonising about models and methods of mission and start affirming the models and methods of the God revealed in Christ - peace-making, reconciliation, love, the grace of generosity and the generosity of grace. Or so it seems to this baptist with a small b, or to this small baptist :)

Resurrection and Discipleship - the Theology of Thorwald Lorenzen

 
Stuart has just bought a book. Another book. I'm guilty of envy. I've borrowed it clutchingly. Stuart burst or robbed a bank to buy it - as you have to if a book is both brilliant and scarce. Why hasn't Smyth and Helwys republished this slim masterpiece of applied theology and saved the rest of us from enying the possessions of someone else who hands over their wodge of cash smilingly and think the deal is still a bargain? I've been allowed to borrow it on the secure assumption that my envy will remain a sin of disposition and won't graduate to the sin of misappropriation.

Resurrection, Discipleship Justice. Affirming the Resurrection of Jesus Today, by the Baptist theologian Thorwald Lorenzen, argues that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are relational events aimed at the establishing of justice. So resurrection is relational; but (my phrase, not Lorenzen's), Christian relationship is also resurrectional. In other words the resurrection defines discipleship and community. To be a new creation in Christ is to be radically resurrected so that as the blurb says, "resurrection faith has to be understood in terms of intentional and serious Christian discipleship."

Here are two brief quotations taken at random cos I haven't read the book - yet. I am about to hand over a wodge of cash smilingly when I click the add to your basket button. When it comes it will feature here for a week - at least. And maybe Stuart will guest post as well....please?

"The Holy Spirit is relationship par excellence. The Holy Spirit brings together what belongs together. The Holy Spirit makes what happens between people interesting."

"The Kingdom of God is celebrated when love becomes an event."

Pages 54 and 74 

 

Baptist identity - is it what we take ownership of, or what we give ourselves to?

The past couple of days I have been with the Baptist Union Council sharing in a residential conference, and trying to practice what we say we believe about a Baptist way of being the church. Communal discernment is all very fine in theory, can be strongly defended biblically, can be shown to be good practice in a community impatient with hierarchy but staying this side of anarchy. But it's hard. And what makes it hard is the ingrained bias of our default habits of thought.

For example, Scottish Baptists are just not comfortable with silence, as if it suggests no one has anything worthwhile to say. Well, actually that might indeed be what it suggests, and in that case silence is the more creative option. Then there's the question of agendas, time constraint and the safety felt in a followed programme, so that departing from what was planned seems radical and risky- what might be radical and risky is to abandon any programme that imposes control, and trust the Holy Spirit to push, persuade, pull and prepare us to see what at present we can't see, to hear what we are too busy to listen to, to think what we previously thought unthinkable, to feel more deeply than we have for years, to reach out to each other in the fellowship of the One who washes feet, breaks bread, shares wine, and walks beside us on the way.

 My own contribution, for what it is worth, and it is worth something I think, was to ask that we choose our vocabulary more carefully. No one was swearing! But some words we use seem to suggest mechanism rather than organism. For example to say we should have a sense of ownership, requires of us a more self-centred and self conscious taking to ourselves of something, denomination, church whatever. I prefer the word belonging, in which the driver is not what I own, but what I give myself to. And indeed the most important form of ownership of Baptist identity isn't to own the principles and practices, but to give ourselves to them. To present our bodies as living sacrifices to Christ, living out his teaching, expressing his risen life within and amongst us, embodying his presence in a world hungry for bread, desolate of light, and where for all our claims to grown up cultural maturity, the church encounters a world frightened of its own shadow side.

I'm not sure where Scottish Baptists will be in a decade. But wherever it is, I would want us to be Christian in our vocabulary. So, why is it we have bought into the word "risk", as if risk was good for its own sake. My own understanding of Christian discipleship is that to follow Jesus is a decision high in risk, offset by trust. Do I trust this One who says, Come and follow me, take up your cross and come.... Radical is a word so overused now it refers mainly to things that might be thought or done slightly differently. I see it as a disruptive word, referring to definite discontinuity with status quo, a word itself redolent with risk, inviting to ways that are different, daring a new way of thinking that is only ever confirmed when practised.

If baptists are radical believers, and if we are people who give ourselves to what we believe, then maybe we need to find radical, risky, costly, personally disruptive ways of being together, thinking and praying together, walking with Jesus together. 

The statue is the magnificent Thorvaldsen's "Christus", in Copenhagen. The artist's intention was that " you only see his face when you kneel at his feet". Maybe that is where communal discernment begins.....

Baptists, religious freedom, and catholicity of spirit

After our emergence in the 17th Century, Baptist communities in the British Isles existed in peace only after religious toleration became an accepted cultural attitude with legal and religious validity. For that reason liberty of conscience in matters relating to God has remained a core Baptist principle. Baptists were born in an age of zealous persecution, and like other dissenters suffered from religious intolerance. The Baptist conscience is therefore genetically predisposed to resist religious oppression, to refrain from judging the faith of others in ways that are obstructive or repressive.

(The first Baptist meeting house at Goodshaw was started in 1685, probably at the house of Henry Butterworth or in his blacksmith shop.)

More positively, Baptists who affirm liberty of conscience before God, gladly recognise and respect the work of God in the lives of others, even when their experience is different. "Baptist Catholicity" is a phrase being used increasingly to describe that way of being Baptist that traces our rootedness back into our own tradition, but then back further into the deeper loam of the Christian tradition in its rich diversity. A dissenting ecclesiology need not mean sectarian isolation, and a Baptist commitment to Christ-centred discipleship gives no mandate to disenfranchise other Christian traditions.

I was nudged, if not shoved, to think about all this late last night when I was reading Evelyn Underhill's book on worship. Written in 1936, against the darkening skies over Europe, by a middle-aged, middle class, genteel Anglican steeped in mystical theology, and conductor of refined devotional retreats in rural Pleshey, the book is one of the few credible attempts to describe what worship is from the perspective of one who understands transcendence, adoration, and the response of human finitude to the Eternal.

I don't know how many readers of this blog have ever read Evelyn Underhill. Not everyone is patient now with a style that can seem rarefied and lacking practical usefulness. What I like about her is that much of her writing does indeed lack practical usefulness! Instead she explores why the human heart must worship, and finds the answer in the nature of God, the attraction of Love Eternal, the innate response of human longing to the Word Incarnate.

So when I read Underhill's paragraph (cited below), I thought of why I am a Baptist, and why as a Baptist I am passionately outspoken about our traditional commitment to religious tolerance. And why in faithfulness to Christ and to the Church which is the Body of Christ, I am respectful and receptive to the truth of Christ as we encounter Him in the experience and faith of other Christians. Such Christ-centred openness to other Christians requires theological humility, a sense of our own need of the other, and a spiritual obedience to the apostolic logic of welcoming one another as God in Christ has welcomed us.

"Some of the friends and fellow students who have read these chapters have been inclined to blame me for giving too sympathetic and uncritical an account of types of worship which are not their own. It has been pointed out to me that I have failed to denounce the shortcomings of Judaism with Christian thoroughness, that I have almost unnoticed primitive and superstitious elements which survive in Catholic and Orthodox worship, that I have not emphasized as I should the liturgic and sacramental shortcomings of the Protestant sects.

But my wish has been to show all these chapels of various types in the one Cathedral of the Spirit; and dwell on the particular structure of each, the love which has gone  to their adornment, the shelter they can offer to many different kinds of adoring souls, not on the shabby hassocks, the crude pictures, or the paper flowers.

Each great form of Christian cultus is here regarded...as a "contemplation to procure the love of God"; for its object is to lead human souls, by different ways, to that act of pure adoration which is the consummation of worship".

Evelyn Underhill, Worship (London:Nisbet, 1936), pages xi-xii.

Denominational amnesia and loss of convictional integrity

Now I don't want to trivialise  denominationalist, post denominationalist arguments. But I can't make up my mind whether this cartoon is saying something funny in a serious way, or saying something serious in a funny way.

But for myself, I remain passionately committed to the diversity of the Body of Christ, and a yearner for its unity to be expressed in the co-ordination and harmonic actions that embody the presence of the risen Christ in the power of the Spirit to the glory of the Father. The reasons why a denomination was first formed can of course lose their validity and convictional hold for later generations - but not necessarily so. And not if those reasons continue to express distinctives made authentic in convictional practices that are to the enrichment of the whole body. Something about if the whole body were an ear where would be the sense of smell.....

The cartoon is on page 62 of the Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality, Evan B Howard, (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008). Don't be fooled by the title - this "Introduction" is 500 pages of double column large format hardback. It's a superb resource and very, very good value - The Book Depository has it for around £13 including postage.

Gordon Fee as Exegete: Giving Paul his due and the importance of word order

Two examples of Fee's no nonsense exegetical comments:

"R F Collins argues (unconvincingly) that Paul has here taken over an earlier formula and adapted it to his own purposes. While all things are possible, not all possible things are equally probable. Indeed, it is of considerable interest that the most creative theologian in the early church is seen as not capable of being creative at points like this, but must be assumed to be borrowing from others - and that without evidence."

............................

On Paul's use of charis and shalom in the greeting:

"Paul salutes his brothers and sisters in Christ with "grace to you - and peace." It is worth noting that this is the invariable order of Paul's words, not "grace and peace to you" as in most translations. Very likely there is significance to this order: the grace of God and Christ is what is given to God's people; peace is what results from such a gift. Hence "grace to you - and peace."...The sum total of God's activity towards his human creatures is found in the word "grace"; God has given himself to his people bountifully and mercifully in Christ. Nothing is deserved, nothing can be achieved. The sum total of those benefits  as they are experienced by the recipients of God's grace is "peace", God's eschatological shalom, both now and to come."

......................

If the task of the exegete is to enable later readers to hear as clearly as possible, the voice of the one speaking in the text, then these two brief quotations are good examples of why Gordon Fee is a trusted guide. For myself, I wholly concur with his pedantic care in translating Paul's greeting "grace to you - and peace". Allowing the brief pause between the two both distinguishes and connects them in a way that is profoundly theological.

On another note, the Scottish Baptist College Blog is being revived into a discussion forum for issues that we as part of the Scottish Baptist community want to explore in conversation. In particular we want to explore areas of theological education, ministry formation, discipleship in 21st Century Culture, and we will include occasional book reviews. It will also contain news and comment from our College community and have some guest posts from students and others now and again. You might want to go look - I'll occasionally flag it up here as new material is added. 

Induction, covenant and celebration - Catriona has arrived in Scotland!

Every induction of a minister to a pastorate is an event to be celebrated, a covenant to be sealed by promises, a confirmation yet again of the surprising call of God to all too human people to serve the Body of Christ, the Church. As Baptists we gladly hold to the practice of making covenant. A church is a gathering of believers who in their membership of the local church, embody the promise to walk together, faithfully, after Christ. And the call of God is to do so together, and to persevere and work at it even if at times it exhausts patience and breaks the heart. And to do this while also knowing that in the shared fellowship of the journey, they have discovered joy, the understanding of others, the generosity that humbles, and that one surprise, repeated so mercifully often, that one surprise of being loved.

 And so to Hillhead Baptist Church on Saturday October 3rd, and Catriona's induction. Most people who visit this blog will know Catriona as the skinny fair trade latte blogger (see sidebar), minister till recently of Hugglescote Baptist Church (aka Dibley). I met her the year before she went to Hugglescote, and then several times more recently as she came up to Scotland to meet those who will now be the congregation amongst whom her ministry will be. The Induction service was built around the theme and the experience of making covenant. Catriona told her story, the Church told theirs, and we sensed how these stories coincided. And of course the church from which Catriona came, Hugglescote Baptist Church, they too are part of the story and they were there too. Then Catriona and the Church made promises, and in our prayers we laid hands not only on the new minister, but on representatives of the congregation, so that they set out together on their journey, in covenant with each other, and looking to God to lead, accompany and hold them true to themselves and each other. All of this gathered together by Ruth Gouldbourne, preacher for the day, under the deceptively simple command, "Be kind to one another". Except that kindness is patterned after the kindnes of God, who in Christ chooses to be kind, to come close, to empathise, to walk the way of human life.

Then there was the biblically mandated buffet meal. This is one of my favourite icons, depicting an early buffet meal, complete with angels unawares. The fact that the icon images the Trinity and the Triune communion of love and perichoretic purpose, enriches further the idea of hospitality. Food, good talk, laughter, the shared satisfaction of being together, the courteous recognition of the other, the welcome that makes the presence of another both wanted and felt to be wanted, - and all expressed with good food, the mutuality of serving, and the fun of not knowing everyone who is there, providing opportunities to reach out with the offer of our name and the gift of their name.

So the day closed around 8.pm and we made our way home. But only after taking time to acknowledge the spiritual potency of those occasions when you know you stand on the brink of new possibility. And however hard we try, and no matter how much we think we ourselves achieve, we know that those possibilities come to be, not merely or mainly through our energy, but because when it comes to kindness, God takes the lead. He is there long before us; his generosity has no inbuilt limitations, and time and again we discover to our embarrasment, his grace second-guesses our needs.

.  

John Colwell and biography as theology

Thanks to Andy Goodliff for flagging up the new title by John Colwell due to be published by Paternoster in December. John is one of our most original and constructively provocative Baptist theologians. His previous books on ethics, the sacraments and systematic theology through the Church Year are amongst the most valued volumes of those who've read them. Knowing the man, makes them even more trusted as the genuine wrestlings with faith and truth that they are.

This will be a book that combines biography, theology and pastoral reflection. John talks honestly of his experience of bi-polar illness, and does so as a man of faith seeking to make his human condition somehow capable of meaning within that faith. So the book will be theology lived, and tested in the valleys of deep darkness as well as the green pastures and occasional still waters. As one who teaches systematic theology, or dogmatics, or Christian doctrine, I am only too aware of how much theologising is so technically executed, so dependent on discourse as esoteric as any mystery religion, so inaccessibly beyond all but those who want to play the intellectual power games of the academy. So I'm always keen to find texts that have clear rootedness in and connections to the lived experience of people of faith. Only then do theology and biography enter a fruitful conversation to their mutual benefit.

One of my own research interests is the connection between Christian faith experience, church as community and people whose sense of self is different because of varied conditions that affect mental health.

Here is the information about the book with some significant endorsements.

Review

This book is a gift to anyone who has been touched by the darkness of bi-polar illness. Colwells willingness to write honestly about his illness will be an aid for those struggling with the condition, but even more important is his use of the psalms and attention to Jesus way of dereliction to locate how such illness is not pointless. This is a book that needed to be written. But only someone like John Colwell could write it. --Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School, USA

It is a well-known fact that the Church doesnt do depression. Melancholy just doesnt sit comfortably with our sanguine view of spiritual progress. Thank God, however, that John Colwell has the guts to attend to this erroneous state of affairs and offer us a spirituality that embraces the wintry as well as the sunny seasons of our lives. --Ian Stackhouse, Team Leader, Guildford Baptist Church, England

If the best theology is attentive to Scripture, focused on Christ, and meaningful for human life in all its messiness, then there are few better examples than this new book by John Colwell. --Steve Holmes, Lecturer in Theology, University of St Andrews, Scotland

Product Description

In this powerful book on the experience of desolation John Colwell focuses on Psalm 22, read in the light of his own struggle with bi-polar disorder and the Christian belief that God the Son suffered in his humanity, to offer existential-theological reflections on the experience of God-forsakenness.

The author writes, My concern in writing this book and in reading this psalm is to reflect on the felt experience of God-forsakenness, my own and that of Christ in the light of this psalm; to explore the theological and spiritual significance of this felt experience for myself, for Christ, for Christians generally. If this exploration proves to be helpful to me or to others then obviously I am glad, but I am not writing this book to be helpful but rather to be truthful (and perhaps hopeful). This is a personal journey of reflection with a psalm which I invite you, the reader, to share if you will.