Present Challenges: Conclusion

I have been Vicar of Christ Church, Kowloon Tong for 7 years. In this series of posts, I have been trying to examine some of the Challenges that I see facing myself and the Church.

On the positive side, Christ Church is a Church with a tradition and strong roots in the local community. Given that we are an English-speaking Church this is very important. We have a wide circle of adherents, that is, people who feel attached to the Church even if they are not regulars at the services. We also have a committed core who support the regualr life of the Church. Services are well-attended. We are in a good position financially with our buildings in a sound condition. We attract many young families because of the Schools, one of the benefits of which is a thriving Sunday School. People who come to Christ Church frequently comment on the friendliness and the warmth of welcome they experience here. Meetings are free from acrimony and there is little argument or divisiveness. This, and much more besides, is a cause for thankfulness.

However, as I have said, I do still think there are serious challenges that need to be faced. Essentially, they all come down to the question of how we can grow spiritually and avoid the danger, as I wrote last time, of being simply a successful, spiritual club. Growing spiritually, as I see it, means 'growing in knowledge and love of the Lord' and engaging in mission. We have amazing opportunities for mission because of the numbers of people seeking baptism and places at the Schools. The problem here occurs because those in this position seem to be uninterested in anything other than advancing their children’s educational careers.

It would help if I had some help. It would make a huge difference to have some clergy support. This need not be full-time stipendiary support. What we call a NSM (a non-stipendiary minister) would make a great deal of difference. There are such people around in Hong Kong; unfortunately, they are attracted to ministry at the Cathedral, which makes for a real imbalance in clergy provision amongst the English-speaking Anglican Churches here. I don’t wish to complain, but being the only clergyman in a Church of this size is very demanding, and means that most of my time and energy is spent on maintenance rather than mission. So while we have the financial and material resources we need as a Church, we do not have the ministerial resources we need to meet the challenges that face us.

Perhaps I am being unduly pessimistic. If I am, then it is only because I find it tragic that we are not fulfilling our spiritual potential and as the spiritual leader of the Church, I must bare the responsibility for our failure to do so. I am convinced that renewing the Church spiritually must now and in the next few years be our priority just as renewing the buildings has been in the past few years. Quite how to achieve this is another question altogether! I’ll keep you informed as to how we get on.

Present Challenges: 5. The Problem of Inclusivity

When I began blogging, Blogger did not allow you to label posts. This changed some time ago, and I have been going back giving labels to previous posts. This means it is possible to find posts on similar subjects or in a series. So clicking Personal Journey will display all the blogs in this ongoing series together. It also means I can refer to previous posts more easily. Seasoned bloggers will know all this already, of course. Others are far more sophisticated in their blogging than me. I hope the relative simplicity of this blog does not spoil it for anyone. I really do appreciate the time people spend reading what I have to say even though my posts are not always as regular as I would like them to be. I am working on this - I promise!

In recent posts labelled Present Challenges, I have been trying to face honestly some of the specific challenges here in Hong Kong that I find myself facing in this stage of my personal journey. I have identified four so far:

1. Baptism
2. The Schools
3. The Congregation
4. The Buildings

I will make the last post about present challenges today before I get completely depressed! I am calling it the Challenge of Inclusivity. Appropriately it will bring me back, after a short detour, to my Personal Journey.

In my next blog, I will offer a conclusion to this short series. After that, I will attempt to explain where I personally am now and where I see myself going. This is going to be interesting because while I think I know where I am, I am not so sure I know where I am going! I know where I would like to go, but that is another matter!

Present Challenges: 5. The Challenge of Inclusivity

Depending on how many of my previous blogs you have read, you will know that my Christian origins lay in a very evangelical and charismatic context. Over the years, I have found myself ministering outside of this context while remaining sympathetic to many of its emphases. The advantage of ministering in a definite theological context is that you know where you are and where your congregation is. You can reasonably confidently make assumptions about what people believe, think, and experience.

In Moreton, for example, as a curate, I could assume that people believed the Bible to be reliable and authoritative and that the Holy Spirit could be experienced in a certain way in the present. In Banchory, the congregation was far more diverse. Some did indeed believe that the Bible was reliable and authoritative, but others saw it merely as one source of authority and one that needed to be interpreted and applied with caution.

At Banchory I decided to make a virtue out of necessity, namely, out of the diversity. While at Bedford, working in a secular context, I had seen first-hand how irrelevant the Church was to most people’s lives. It wasn’t that people weren’t interested in spiritual things; it was just that they did not go to the Church to find out about them. I had come to feel that the Church needed to be far more outward looking and less focused on internal disputes.

I also came to believe that the emphasis on 'theme' churches was bad. By 'theme' churches I mean congregations that follow one theological tradition whether it be liberal, Catholic, evangelical, or whatever. In my preaching and teaching. I stressed tolerance, inclusivity, and open-mindedness. This did not mean that we couldn’t have strongly held views of our own, but that we should also be accepting of other people’s strongly held views.

In my own ministry, I began from the assumption that the Creeds were true and that I did not have to cross my fingers when saying them and that the Bible was reliable and, therefore, should be the basis for my preaching and teaching. Liturgically, I worked with a Catholic approach centred on the Eucharist. I encouraged people to think and to discuss without dividing and separating. How successful or otherwise this approach was is for others to judge, but I felt it was right and provided the foundation for mission and Church growth. My overwhelming concern was to ‘invite, welcome, and include’ those outside the Church.

When I came to Hong Kong, I brought these principles and attitudes with me. The worship at Christ Church was very similar in focus to how it had been at Banchory. That is, a fairly conservative liturgy, Catholic in nature, centred on the Eucharist. Christ Church itself was, by tradition and choice, open and liberal in attitude so in many ways it should have been business as normal in my own ministry. Increasingly, however I have become concerned about the way an emphasis on inclusivity can be used as a cover for blandness and indifference.

I still believe passionately in being inclusive in our welcome of people. I also believe in tolerance and openness to one another. The problem I see with this approach, however, is the way it leads to an abandoning of aspects of the Christian message that sound exclusive or may be thought to put people off and also in the way it can result in a modification of our view of God. (See my series on Changing our View of God). In my own spiritual life, I think I avoided this, at least to an extent, by continuing to believe in the Bible and the Creeds, but I am not sure I was very successful in helping others to avoid it.

Furthermore, in a congregation that is not particularly focused on teaching and faith, and which is not especially motivated to meet together for Bible study (see my recent post on Buildings), tolerance and acceptance can be no more than indifference and apathy. That is, we get on with one another not because we respect each others views and opinions, but because we can’t be bothered having any views or opinions of our own, and still less bothered in finding out about other people’s.

It is easier in a theme church because everyone is left in no doubt about the terms on which they are there. If you are part of such a Church there are certain things you must believe and do – or not do – to be accepted as part of the community. The challenge for me is to know how to accept diversity and, at the same time, to encourage spiritual growth.

A feature of Hong Kong life is that many people are members of social clubs. This is because of the size and nature of the places where people live. Clubs make it possible for people to socialize and have access to facilities that there just isn’t the space for in high rise apartments in a crowded city. Each club has their own identity, but you don’t have to sign up to any statement of belief to belong to one. You just pay your monthly membership fee. I am very worried that both here, and elsewhere in the Christian world, Churches are just becoming clubs. There is a vague spirituality about them, but as along as you pay your fees no-one is going to question or challenge you.

This fits well with the social climate and mood of the day where judgement is out and acceptance is in and where all values and beliefs are relative. Christians are being seduced by it, which is why we prefer a Benevolent God who always loves us and forgives us to One who may occasionally disapprove of us and what we do. I think we have to face up to the extreme selectivity we are engaging in when we follow this line of thought. We stress Jesus’ eating and drinking with sinners and constantly tell and re-tell the parable of the sower, but keep quiet about Jesus saying he came to bring a sword and to divide families. And parables about eternal punishment rarely get an airing.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want to return to the days when Christianity was more about fear than forgiveness. I am increasingly challenged, however, to find a way in which both themes can be kept together. I am especially challenged when I see individual Christians and, indeed, whole congregations not really thinking it matters what you believe or do as long as you get on with one another.

Rained Off?

At Christ Church, we have two morning services, the first at 8.00am and the second at 10.00am. Yesterday it was raining very heavily, so heavily that I got soaked just walking the short distance from the Vicarage to Church. Despite the terrible weather, the congregation at 8.00am was completely normal in size. At 10.00am, however, it was at least one third down. I don’t quite know what this shows, but it is interesting, nevertheless.

My sermon at 10.00am was on the conversion of the Philippian gaoler and his question, What must I do to be saved? (The sermon is available in audio form on the Christ Church website so I won’t repeat it here). The question itself, somehow, sounds very old-fashioned. It shows how our way of understanding the Gospel is somewhat different to how it was understood in the past. I am not sure even us Christians think we need saving. Perhaps if we did, people wouldn’t stay away from Church because it is raining!

Anyway, the rainy season is well and truly upon us, and it looks like being wet for the rest of the week. Maybe it will encourage me, too, to stay in and write my blog!

Have a good week!

The Brothers of our Lord

Readers of this blog may remember that I recently wrote about a book by Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. I enjoyed it so much that I bought his earlier book, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus, which I am half way through. It, too, is a fascinating and enjoyable book.

Amongst other things, I must confess that 1 Corinthians 9:5 had not made the impact on me that perhaps it should have. Paul writes: ‘Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?’ The point is that he mentions the ‘brothers of the Lord’ as a distinct group who travelled around with their wives preaching and teaching for Jesus.

It reminds me of how much we don’t know about what was going on in the first years of the Church and how easy it is to impose a later perspective on it. It is so important to read the Bible in its historical context. This calls for some imagination as we try to picture what life really was like.

I remember the first time I went to Galilee. I was shocked by how small the Sea of Galilee was. I imagine that if we could travel back in time to the time of Jesus and the early days of the Church, there would be many such shocks and surprises! Time travel, sadly, is not an option, instead we must rely on the glimpses that work such as Bauckham’s gives us.

Christ Church: The Building - A Picture

I thought I would have a go at posting a picture following on from yesterday's blog.

Present Challenges: 4. Church Buildings

I had to work away from Hong Kong for a few days which has rather set me back on my work here and it has taken a little time to catch up. So here after some delay is the second part on church buildings.

Present Challenges: 4. Church Buildings

Part Two: Easier said than done

‘The Church is the people, not the building.’

How often have I heard this said in my Christian life and ministry? As I have tried to explain in part one of this blog, I think it is more complicated than that and that the relationship between the people, who form the congregation, with the building they meet in is not quite as simple as this saying suggests. It certainly is not simple for me here.

Space is fantastically at a premium in Hong Kong. My parish in Banchory covered an area of about 400 square miles with about 12,000 people. Hong Kong is also an area of 400 square miles, but with a population of 7 million people! Very few people live in houses, most live in apartments in high rise buildings, often what would be regarded as small apartments by people in the UK where I come from. This means that many Churches cannot afford a church building and meet instead in schools or even office space.

Christ Church, then, is extremely fortunate to have a building of its own and a relatively large one at that. It was built in the late 1930s and can seat 250 people comfortably. It is in every way like an English parish church building of the same period, which is not surprising given British influence on Hong Kong. Attached to the main church building is a smaller building with toilets, storage space and a multi-function room. We also have a larger church hall within a newly built block at the school next door. The school has use of this during the week, and the Church uses it only rarely because most of the time the multi-function room at the Church serves most of our needs.

The church building is used for two services on a Sunday, for school services during the week, and whatever weddings or funerals there happen to be. The rest of the time it is locked up. It is quite a landmark on Waterloo Road on the way to the New Territories and to China. The multi-function room is known as the Committee Room and that gives the clue to its main use!

Seventy years old is old for a building in Hong Kong, and it has to be said that the climate is not kind to buildings like ours. There are, of course, always maintenance issues with any building, but maintenance is a particular issue for us. When I arrived the roofs of the buildings attached to the church and to the Vicarage were leaking like sieves in the rainy season. The Church itself, while in generally good condition, also needed some renovation.

What is more the government had made available a considerable amount of money for schools to improve their premises. For us at DPS, the School next to the Church, (about which I have written earlier at some length), this meant demolishing the existing stand alone church hall and building a new 5 storey block containing a new church hall. It was officially opened earlier this year. It was big project taking a few years to complete, but I won’t bore you with the details!

In other words, since being here I have found my time being taken up with buildings to a very significant extent. In addition to the work on the School and church hall, we have re-roofed the flat roofs, replaced all the windows in the church, repaired the external brickwork, repainted the exterior and interior of the church, installed a new pa system as well as all the minor ongoing repairs that have been needed - like replacing the electrics! I have been extremely fortunate in that the Church has given generously to finance this programme of work. Their continuing generosity is a mark of how committed people are to the church and its buildings. We are now about to embark on a major interior refurbishment of the buildings attached to the Church. It is also our hope to install stained glass in the church building itself to enhance its beauty. (Although we are having trouble finding an artist who is able to help!)

I believe in all this and am committed to making it work and to ensuring that the work is done and done well. It does, however, take a great deal of time. And this is where the challenge comes. Firstly, quite simply, work on buildings leaves less time for the work I have always felt most committed to doing, that is, preaching and teaching. Inevitably and rightly, the responsibility for getting the work done and supervising it while it is being done falls to me. The congregation is supportive, but they don’t live here, I do and it really is part of my job as the Vicar.

Secondly, though, it is extremely hard to get people to meet during the week. I think that this is a phenomenon in many churches both in and outside of Hong, especially in congregations where men and women have successful, professional careers.

In an age when often both partners are working, and are often working long hours, by the time they get home from work, see their children, and attend to domestic matters, the last thing they feel like doing is going out to a church meeting – many of which are boring and unnecessary anyway! If I had to spend a couple of hours sitting in traffic to get home after a long and demanding day’s work, I wouldn’t want to go out either.

But this raises the question of how we function as a Church and how those of us with pastoral responsibilities can encourage and help people to grow spiritually. I am concerned that I am spending so much time on the church building and not enough on building the Church. The challenge occurs because many want the building looked after and there for them when they need it, but don’t want much more besides. It suits people to see the Church as the building for if they ensure it is in good condition, then they can feel they have fulfilled a significant part of their Christian responsibility and don’t have to worry about spending additional time, they can ill afford, meeting during the week.

The fact that we do not meet much outside of regular Sunday worship, which is, of necessity, in the church building, and that so much of our time in Committees and the like is spent on discussing building matters, also, inevitably, reinforces the attitude that the building is the Church. Of course, it is more complex than that and I am generalizing horribly. But, I think it is inescapable that the time and emphasis spent on the building strengthens the reluctance for social reasons to meet in small groups during the week! It is a vicious circle: the feeling of being too busy to meet, justified because there is no need to meet anyway.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I, too, love our building and want to see well cared for. I do not want meetings for the sake of them. Many meetings I have to go to as a clergyman I find an unbelievable, even sinful, waste of time. But if a church is to be the body of Christ, a living temple, growing in the love and knowledge of the Lord then it needs fellowship and teaching. How can that teaching and fellowship be provided in a congregation where people have the lifestyles that people in my congregation have and where there is such a strong focus and emphasis on buildings?

It is a real challenge.

Present Challenges: 4. Church Buildings

Today I am resuming, after a break, where I left off in my series looking at some of the challenges I see in my present ministry. This was itself a part of the larger series on my personal journey! I am going to write this blog in two parts. The first today to try to describe my attitude to church buildings and then next to try to describe what I see as the challenge at the moment!

Whatever our attitude to church buildings, most Churches do own property. Do we see this property as simply the place where we meet? Or do we see it as having some spiritual significance in itself? This is the subject of today’s part!

The weather is getting wetter here in Hong Kong. We had our first ‘red rainstorm warning’ this week. When it is not raining, it is still quite wet because of the humidity. I cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like in the days without air-conditioning. When I look at pictures of the old colonial days, way before air-conditioning came along, I am amazed to see British soldiers in full ceremonial dress at the height of Summer. It must have been unbearable! Of course, the weather here causes no end of problems for old buildings, but I’ll come to that next time.

Have a good weekend!

Present Challenges: 4. Church Buildings

Part One: Just Bricks and Mortar?

Some of you may remember me writing some time ago about how I first became a Christian through the House Church Movement. In those days, it was just that, namely, a movement that believed in meeting in houses. Many of those who were part of the movement had come out of traditional Churches. Houses were the only place to meet given that those concerned did not own other buildings to meet in! However, meeting in houses was seen not just as practical necessity, but as saying something important theologically. It stressed informality and spontaneity, family and closeness.

I have to say that whatever else I believe about the Church, I still believe that this was an important insight that we have not subsequently taken as seriously as we should. I would recommend R J Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community, as an excellent study of what St Paul has to say about the Church.

However, as far as the House Church Movement was concerned houses were not only good, traditional church buildings were bad. God did not dwell in holy places, he dwelt in holy people. You didn’t go to Church to worship God, you worshipped him anywhere and everywhere. This meant traditional attitudes to church buildings were theologically wrong, they reflected the attitudes of the old covenant and not the new. The Church is the people not the building.

It wasn’t long, however, before the House Church Movement outgrew houses. Those part of it wanted buildings to meet in and acquired often very expensive buildings in which to gather for worship. (It has often intrigued me that those most critical of traditional church attitudes to buildings spend infinitely more money on them than many local traditional churches!) They kept the name House Church Movement, but that was more about past origins than present practice. Nevertheless, those associated with the movement continued to be critical of any tendency to accord the building religious significance. This was where the Church met. It was not the Church.

This theology permeated traditional congregations as well, not least through the charismatic movement. So congregations led by keen Vicars started vandalizing existing church buildings. Oh alright then, reordering them! The result was much the same. Centuries old pews were thrown out in favour of chairs that had a life of a few years. Church ornaments were sold off to antique dealers. Everything was about usefulness. Nothing was sacred and nothing was holy. How could it be?

Ironically the contemporary manifestation of the sprit of the House Church Movement, the Emerging Church, is rediscovering the importance of the holy and of sacred space. So places like Iona and Lindisfarne are suddenly tourist hot spots for radical Christians. It’s a funny world.

Many Christians found themselves caught in the middle. They could see the argument about the Church being the people and not the building, but they also loved what were often old and beautiful buildings. Another consideration for many traditional Churches, of course, was finance. Beautiful old buildings cost money, lots of money. Mission not maintenance was the order of the day. Why waste money on buildings when people needed our help?

So when I was ordained I found myself somewhat torn. I still had house church attitudes to buildings, but now I was part of a Church that owned many old buildings, buildings to which many accorded religious significance. As a curate, I had the luxury of not having to worry about it. As a college chaplain and a lecturer in a college without a chapel, I was again spared the problem. When I went to Banchory, however, I had to start to face up to it!

Both my Churches in Banchory were Victorian of a gothic design. While they had been looked after, they both needed work doing on them and constant maintenance. This was the first time I had had responsibility for church buildings, and I had to work out my attitude to them. During my time in Banchory, I found attitude changing in a a series of steps:

Step one: the importance of stewardship. At first, I took the attitude that whatever significance the building did or did not have, theologically and spiritually, it had to be looked after and maintained and this was just good stewardship. I did what I could, therefore, to look after the buildings and make sure they were kept in good condition.

Step two: creating a welcoming environment. As my time at Banchory moved on, I became increasingly convinced that looking after the building wasn’t about maintenance, but about mission as well. If the place where the church meets is badly cared for and dilapidated, as many church buildings are, what does that say to new people? Apart from anything else, you don’t want to invite people to a building that is in a terrible condition. This led me to work hard to improve the overall appearance of the building and to make it warm and inviting.

Step three: a place for worship. I gradually became convinced of the importance of the place where we worship for worship. I accepted, in a way I would not have done years earlier, that physical surroundings have an affect on how we worship. While worshipping God in a tin shed might be as valid, in God’s eyes, as worship in a Cathedral; nevertheless, some buildings, because of their architecture and the way they have been cared for and arranged, inspire worship.

Step four: sacred space. I finally came to believe that not only was the building the place where we meet for worship, but that it was itself a part of our worship. It shared in our worship and acquired a character and importance because of it. In other words, I came to see that physical space could have spiritual significance. This did not mean that I thought the Church was the building or that you could only worship God in special buildings or that you shouldn’t hold services elsewhere, but rather that certain places were especially conducive to worship and became themselves sacred because of it. Furthermore, I came to believe that these sacred spaces should be honoured as such.

This, I think, is significant for I know many Christians who would go a long way with me down the path I have described, but who would not want to take the last step. They would agree that looking after the building is good stewardship. They would agree that it is a bad reflection on a Church if the building is in poor condition. They would accept that we should make the building as warm and inviting as possible to newcomers. And they would even agree that the physical condition and atmosphere of the building affects worship. Where they would stop short is in seeing any building as having any spiritual significance in and of itself and so of being itself worthy of honour.

I respect that. I also accept that it is not true of every building used for worship and nor need it be. Plenty of people have to rent halls, schools, community centres, and the like, out of sheer necessity. There is nowhere else for them to meet, and their worship is no less worship because of it. Other Christians choose not to create or to regard the space where they worship as sacred, even if they could. They will meet in the church building for worship on a Sunday and use the space for something else quite different during the week. That, I believe, is a valid choice.

But is it really so terrible if some of us feel the space where we worship, and where perhaps generations of Christians have worshipped in the past, is special? And is it so terrible if we want to recognize that it is special by the way we treat it and behave in it, not only when we are there worshipping, but at all other times as well?

Well, that at least was the position I came to while at Banchory, and it was with this attitude that I came to Christ Church, Hong Kong.

Books that Make a Difference

Every now and then you read a book that you recognize as saying something significant, even if you don’t completely agree with it. A book that makes a difference. At least that has been true for me. The books concerned don’t necessarily have to be brilliant from an academic point of view, or even popular, they just have that certain something that affects you.

The first to have this sort of impact on me was a book by Isobel Kuhn, By Searching. In it Isobel Kuhn tells of her life and calling as a missionary to China in the first part of the last century. She writes of how the Christian life is a search and that we know God by searching. This has modern resonances where search is the big thing in spirituality. The difference between Isobel’s search and the modern search was that she believed that when you searched you actually found something. In much modern teaching, it is the search itself that matters! Anyway, her book changed me and gave me hope at a time when I felt God was impossible to find.

I have just been reading a very different book. It is by Richard Bauckham entitled, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. It looks at our Gospels and asks questions about how we got them and how historically reliable they are. This is not just another book arguing that the Gospels either are or are not reliable historically. It tries instead to imagine how what we have in the Gospels came to be there in the first place.

What I get very annoyed about in much academic New Testament research is how far removed it is from the spirit that gave rise to it. The New Testament was not written as an academic exercise, but in the white heat of a new faith that had changed the lives of those involved. So much of what is written about the New Testament fails to take into account the inner motivation and convictions of the writers: it breathes a different and foreign air. Bauckham’s book, however, has an air of reality about it that most scholarly writing does not have. It is not always an easy read, but it is a fascinating one.

This is an extremely good review of it, and I think a fair one:

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25349-2633034,00.html

I hope Harvey is right and that we do get a paradigm shift in the way we look at the Gospels! It won’t be before time.

Talk Four: Saved from the Wrath of God

Recently, a friend told me how annoyed he got when other Christians suggested that God was going to send people to hell. He was reacting to a sermon he had heard in which a Christian preacher said just that. My friend a Christian preacher himself said that it was unthinkable that a God of love would ever reject anyone. I don’t particularly like the idea of people being tormented forever in the fires of hell myself, but I asked my friend what he made of those passages in the Bible that suggested that one day God would judge the world. And what he made of the church’s teaching down the ages, which asserted that we would all one day have to give an account of ourselves to God?

The passages in the Bible, he said, were just the products of people who knew no better. They reflected a primitive worldview. Now we know better and understand God better. As for the Church’s teaching, well the Church had just got it wrong as it had got many things wrong in its history. God loved the world and the teaching of Jesus was that God welcomed everyone no matter who they were, where they came from, or what they did. The love of God would triumph in the end and everyone after death would meet a God who accepted them regardless of what their life on earth had been like.

At first sight, this is an attractive message. We all respond to the parable of the prodigal son in which the father forgives the son who had wasted his inheritance in riotous living. We like to think of God as a God of love who understands us and who is always there for us. And it is true, as my friend pointed out to me, that the God of some of the Church’s teaching in the past really wasn’t very nice, not someone you would want to spend much time with, and certainly not the rest of eternity. Why would God want to torture people?

And yet is the message that God will accept everyone regardless of what they have done really more attractive? It means, for example, that Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein will all be there to meet us when we get to heaven, alongside many other torturers and mass murderers. We may be happy with that idea, but most people do have a sense of justice. We believe that people should not be able to rape or murder without facing the courts and receiving a proper sentence. Many victims of crime, while not wanting revenge, nevertheless find some comfort, no matter how small, from knowing that the legal system will track down the person for the wrong that has been done against them and will punish them accordingly. Most of us feel that people need to be held to account if they commit, for example, genocide or war crimes. We do believe that there should be consequences for wrongdoing.

So why do we find it so difficult to accept that God is going to hold people to account for the way they have lived? One of the main accusations levelled against God is that he allows evil to continue in the world. The Christian response is that God respects human freedom, and evil in our world is one of the consequences of that freedom, but one day God will put everything right.

How, though, is ignoring what people have done and not holding them to account in any way at all putting things right? We demand temporal justice for crimes committed in our society. Surely there must be eternal justice as well?

Yes, Christians have, at times, focused inappropriately on the idea of heaven and hell and eternal judgement. God has not seemed very nice or attractive. But to get rid of the idea of justice altogether makes him seem indifferent and unbothered by wickedness and sin. The message of Easter is that God will one day judge the world by the One he has raised from the dead and that all will appear before him. There will, indeed, be eternal justice. For those who belong to Christ, there is no fear for the One who will be their judge also died for them as their Saviour and freely forgives and accepts all who turn to him.

It is him who saves us from the wrath to come.

Talk 3: Raised from the Dead

First, we had the Da Vinci Code, which claimed that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, fathered a daughter by her, and that Mary escaped with the daughter to France where she established a royal blood-line. We were told by author Dan Brown that all this was carefully researched and based on established historical fact. There was no difficulty showing people how ludicrous these claims were, although it took rather a long time to do it. Recently, we have had the claim, on the Discovery Channel no less, that the tomb of Jesus has been found, and he had been buried with Mary Magdalene and his son together with other family members in Jerusalem. Fortunately, there was not only no difficulty showing how ludicrous these claims were, it also took rather less time. It would seem that a Mary Magdalene who escaped alive from Jerusalem with a daughter was more attractive to the public than a dead one with a son!

Why do people, often intelligent people, insist on making these claims and why are so many people interested and taken in by them? Well, there is money to be made and publicity to be had for one thing. Jesus still haunts our culture and people are still fascinated by him even if they do not want to worship him or follow him. They may have lost interest in the Church, but there remains a residual interest in Jesus.

We are also frightened by him. For if the Gospel writers are to be believed, this Jesus was no mere mortal. He was the divine Son of God sent by God to a world that had lost sight of its creator and had fallen into error and idolatry. The Gospels claim he was not just another teacher, prophet, or leader, but the way the truth and the life. The One who was sent to save us from the mess we had made of things through our stupidity and wrongdoing.

But that would mean admitting that we are not nearly so clever as we like to think we are, that as a human race we had got it terribly wrong and needed help. As any counsellor will tell you it can be very hard to get people who need help to admit it. We are proud people and like to think we need no help. We hide our need for help from even ourselves. So we try to domesticate Jesus. We can’t simply ignore him: his call is too persistent and his personality too compelling.

So we say he was a good man nothing more. Or a prophet who certainly said many true things. Or a teacher who shows us how to live and to be kind to one another. A leader of a large religion certainly, but not the divine son of God. And definitely not the One on whom our salvation depends.

The Bible, however, is less concerned with Jesus’ life and far more concerned with his death. His death, the Biblical writers tell us, is the key to understanding his meaning and significance for everyone not just those who followed him or heard him during his lifetime. His death, they say, was the cure for our blindness and foolishness that led us to reject our Creator and pursue behaviour that was damaging to us, to others, and to the creation around us. This was God’s answer to our sin and rebellion.

How did they know? Because, they said, God had raised Jesus from the dead. The central question then for us is did he? Christians proclaim at this time of the year that he did. That Jesus Christ is alive today, that the Lord is risen indeed. God showed who Jesus was by raising him from the dead and making him the Lord of life so that all who turn to him find the life they long for.

Why do people want to focus on theories that suggest that Jesus was just another ordinary man? Why we are so entranced by them in a way we would not normally be with such fanciful theories? Is it because we want to avoid the challenge of facing up to the possibility that Jesus really is alive? Are we afraid that his resurrection raises questions not only about how we see the world and live in it, but about our own relationship with God as well. Is the truth just too hard for us to face? Millions have found that by having the courage to face it, they discover that not only is Jesus alive, but that in him they can find life as well.

ONE HUNDRED!

According to google, this is the 100th post I have made. I am sure they are right!

Thank you to all who read these posts, and please forgive me when I do not post as regularly as I should.

A Happy and Blessed Easter to you all!

Happy Easter!

Here is the second in the series of talks.

I hope you all have a very good weekend. It is all about to start in earnest here with the Maundy Thursday Supper! I know many of you will be very busy indeed. Don't get too tired!

Talk Two: Modern Day Idolatry

Idolatry, that is the worship of idols or images, was just a normal part of everyday life in the ancient world at the time of the New Testament. The Jews rejected it, but they were a comparatively small minority who kept themselves to themselves. The Christians, however, saw it as their task to tell the world about the living and true God, who they believed had created everyone. We are all his offspring, they told people, and ‘in him we live and move and have our being’ - whether we realize it or not.

The images and idols that people worshipped were just substitutes for the real thing; substitutes, which turned out to be no substitute at all. We adopted them when we stopped thinking clearly and fell into error. Today we pat ourselves on the back that we do not worship images as such any more. We don’t have pagan temples at the heart of our cities and sacrifices to pagan gods are not part of the daily routine of city life.

Paul, I think would not see our position quite so positively. He believed that images and idolatry were what came after worship of the living and true God had been abandoned. It was, if you like, the next step down the ladder. At least, however, the pagans with their idols were reaching out in search of something. They knew that this world is not all that there is and that there is a spiritual reality beyond us, a reality every bit as real as the physical world we inhabit. Paul thought that their foolish minds had become darkened so that they could not see the truth, but at least they saw that there was truth to search for.

We have gone one step further down the ladder. Not only have we been foolish, we have become total fools. We now deny the evidence of our own eyes and pretend that there is no spiritual reality. We even act as if this foolishness is cleverness. But still we need something to take the place of the God and the reality we deny. Instead now of making gods of things in the world around us we have made gods of our physical appetites and desires, we have internalised our idolatry, but idolatry it still is. Worship is not simply about where we go to sacrifice. It is about the whole of our lives. About the values we live by and what we consider to be important.

We pursue money, career, ambition and status. Sex, pleasure, and possessions are given a significance that it is hard for them to bear. Our new shrines are the malls and arcades where we try to blot out the feeling that there must be more to life than what we can buy, eat, drink or experience. The consequences of our lifestyles and the effects of our new idolatry are there for all to see no less than was the idolatry of Athens when Paul visited it. Drunkenness, obesity, debt, disease, family breakdown and social disintegration are all the consequences of the new idolatry.

The Bible calls us to return to our right minds. To see that the denial of God and the rejection of spiritual reality rather than being a sign of intelligence and progress is rather an irrational rejection of the evidence of the world around us. It is the fool who says in his heart that there is no god and living without god brings only pain, sadness, and loneliness.

The time has come to tear down our altars and to return to the living and true God, who alone can bring peace, purpose and fulfilment.

How are we to find this God? The message of Easter is that he is revealed not in the writings of the philosophers and intellectuals, not in the experiments and discoveries of the scientist and scholars, nor in the sayings of the wise and famous, rather he is revealed in the person nailed to a Cross. In the same way that we rejected knowledge of our Creator in favour of first the image and the idol, and then of our appetites and desires so we rejected the One who came to reveal that Creator to us and to call us back to the living and true God, who alone can satisfy our deepest needs and longings. But still God waits for us and in Christ offers us the chance to know him once again.

Hello Again

Well I am so sorry to be so long absent. Thank you to those who have kept reading. By way of an apology and to get going again, I am publishing today the first in a series of four short talks I have just completed.

What has been going on lately? Well, I have been speaking on 1 Corithinas during Lent for our Lent Bible Studies. I will tell you more about this when I resume my series on present challenges in my ministry here in Christ Church in a few days time. We have also just had our Annual General Meeting.

I have been uncomfortable with Church AGMs ever since one in my previous Church went horribly and unpredictably wrong. Everything had been going smoothly and the year had gone well. One member took it upon himself to vent some personal prejudices in a way that was hurtful and destrutive to many who were present. We did our best to conatain the damge, but it left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth.

Our AGM last Sunday went well, but I still think that the more we make the Church seem like a secular organization in the way we do business, the more we will think and behave as if it is a secular organization. Please don't misundertsand me. I am sure there needs to be good practice and accountability. I just with we could behave more as if we were different. That we were perhaps the body of Christ.

I also intensely dislike democracy in the Church. There is a wonderful moment in the film, the Mission, when one of the Jesuit priests says to the character played by Jeremy Irons, 'Father, we have discussed the possibility and don't think we should do it.' The reply is, 'We are not a democracy, we are an order.' Democracy in the Church is wasting time, effort, and money and passing off the votes of men as the will of God. But it looks as if we are stuck with it!

Enough of my prejudices against democracy for now. Here is the first talk!

Talk One: Idolatry

One thing that most people know about the Apostle Paul is that he went on journeys. In the past, Paul’s missionary journeys used to be the staple diet of Sunday School children. I was reminded of this the other day when I came across a shop on the Peak here in Hong Kong selling a T-shirt with a map of Paul’s journeys printed on it! It was while on his second journey that he visited Athens. St Luke, who records these journeys, tells us that Paul was shocked by the idolatry he saw there. Of course, for the Athenians and for the ancient world in general, this was just a normal part of everyday life. Pagan temples were at the heart of city culture.

Paul as a good Jew, however, could only regard such worship as both dangerous and wrong. The first commandment that God gave Moses was, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’. And the second, ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’ The first Christians being Jewish, as Jesus was himself, were also firmly opposed to idolatry.

The problem was that as Jewish-Christians like Paul journeyed telling people about Christ they attracted converts who came, not from a Jewish background with its hatred of idolatry, but from a pagan background where idolatry was very much the thing. Paul and the other Christian teachers had to teach these converts not only to worship God in Christ, but also to abandon their idols. In one of his first letters to Christians in Thessalonica, not far from Athens, Paul writes of them that they had ‘turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.’

In his most famous letter, to the Christians at Rome, Paul elaborates on this theme and explains what the problem with idolatry is. Idolatry says Paul is what happens when people stop worshipping the living and true God. Evidence for the living and true God is to be seen everywhere in the world around us whether we look at it through the eyes of an artist and see its incredible beauty and majesty such as the beauty of a sunset or the majesty of the sea. Or whether we look at it through the eyes of a scientist and see its incredible complexity and design. You don’t need to be a brilliant scientist or theologian to be able to see that there is a God: commonsense should tell you. How could the universe just be?

In popular media, theists, that is those who believe in God, are often portrayed as gullible and naïve, people who have sacrificed their mind and intelligence because of their faith. The Bible tells us that it is, in fact, the other way round. We sacrificed our minds and intellect when we stopped believing in the living and true God. Our thinking became futile and our minds became darkened, says Paul. But we did not stop being spiritual beings when we stopped believing in the living and true God. Made in the image of God, who is himself spirit, we still needed, and need, something and someone to worship, to give our lives meaning, and to replace the God we have lost.

For the ancients, God was replaced with images of animals, of the creation itself, or even of other human beings. Not prepared to worship the Creator, we decided to worship what he had created instead. And the images multiplied. Today we may not worship the images of animals any more, but we still need something to worship and our hearts ache to find that something or someone to give our lives meaning. But as the Apostle Paul told people in his day, only the living and true God can do that.

Present Challenges: 3. The Congregation

It may seem strange listing the congregation as a challenge so I had better explain.

Christ Church is made up of two very distinct congregations. First, there is what I would describe as the Parish Congregation. People have been coming to Christ Church now for nearly 75 years. During this time, it has become very much part of the local community. People have come to regard it as their Church even if they don’t attend it very often. This is not to say that this Parish Congregation part of the Church isn’t represented in worship: it is. It is just that only a small percentage of it is there regularly on a Sunday.

People in the Parish Congregation feel comforted to know that 'the Church is there for you' for births, marriages, and deaths as well as the major festivals of the year. In this way, it is very much like a traditional Parish Church in England, and it is something that Church of England Churches (which we were until comparatively recently) do best. Indeed, the sort of community that the series Friends presents and which many find so attractive(see a previous post), the Parish Church had many, many years ago.

This then is the first congregation: the Parish Congregation, mainly Chinese, part of which comes to worship and part of which will come occasionally, but which values its attachment to the Church.

Secondly, there is the School Congregation. The key ages for children here are 3 and 5. At 3, they have to apply for kindergarten, which covers the ages of 4 and 5. At 5, they have to apply for primary school, which covers the ages of 6-11. The primary school a child attends will normally determine which secondary school the child will eventually go to. The kindergarten will help determine which primary school the child goes to. Getting into what are perceived as the better schools is fiercely competitive. Fiercely!

Children at the age of 3 will have portfolios of achievements. Every waking moment of the child will be occupied in educational activities. Parents will pay any amount of money and make any sacrifice to get their child into the desired kindergarten or the desired primary school. The system is open to the worst of abuses.

It is, then, no big deal for parents to get up on a Sunday morning to take their child to Church. If there is even the slightest chance it might even help a little, it is worth it. If a parent is willing to pay for Maths, Chinese, English, Art, and Music lessons, and much more besides, at the age of 3, it is no great sacrifice to go to Church for an hour on Sunday.

This means that we have a large number of people, easily outnumbering the numbers of the other part of the congregation, who come solely and only for the purpose of being able to say that they attend Christ Church when they apply for schools. Friends in England have said that this goes on there too. To an extent it does. But I have to tell you it is not remotely on the scale it is on here!

I have written about the problems this causes specifically with baptism, but the problems it causes are not confined by any means simply to baptism. For not only do people come to Church, they also say and do all the right things, and for a season become committed members of the Church. They learn the language, beliefs, and ideas. They volunteer for all the jobs. They are often very enthusiastic. They are prepared to give of their time, effort, and money. Until their child has got into the desired school, that is, then we don’t see them again.

The drop-out rate is about 95%. And that is probably only because the other 5% haven’t found the right school yet.

The normal response of people to this is to say it creates opportunities for evangelism and ministry. And it does, and I for one seek to take those opportunities. All I can say is that there is little evidence that such evangelism and ministry meets with any real success.

I suppose I could live with the School Congregation side of things were it not for the effect it has on the Parish Congregation. It is overwhelming and suffocating. Furthermore, it is hard not to become cynical.

Let me give a typical example. I am not referring to anyone specifically.

Imagine John starts coming to Church. He asks to see the Vicar. He explains that his life has been devoted to money and career in the past, but now he wants to find something more. He has discovered great spiritual fulfilment and meaning through coming to Church. He would like to volunteer to help and would like to offer support financially to the Church. He comes to meetings. He is a happy, friendly and apparently very sincere person. He talks about all God has done for him since joining the Church and how important Christ is in his life. People like him.

One day he asks to see the Vicar: ‘I hope you can help me. I have a son who is 3. I want him to have a Christian education. Could the Church help him get into the School?’ Whether or not his child gets into the School, once he knows the decision that is the last that is seen of him in Church.

An added challenge is that many of the Parish Congregation are very comfortable with this situation. It makes the Church feel full and busy. It keeps the show on the road and relieves the regulars of some of the workload. Sadly, it has to be said, it also gives some the feeling of power and influence. For the Vicar won’t be the only person John approaches for help.

I know, in theory at least, how to minister to the Parish Congregation. I haven’t a clue how to minister to the School Congregation. You see its not ministering they want. It’s a place at one of the Schools that they are after. And they are extremely focused on getting it.

And while I have been writing this blog, I have received three requests for baptism from families wanting to get their child into School.

Present Challenges: 2. The Schools

School work in the normal run of things has always been a major part of the work of the Vicar here at Christ Church. The Vicar sits on five school Councils and is intimately involved in the life of two of them. So even if everything was going very smoothly a lot of the Vicar’s time would be spent on School work. I knew this when I came and accepted it gladly. The trouble was that things were going anything but smoothly.

My experience at Banchory was that school-work was a vital part of my own ministry and that of my Church. However, as you may remember from a previous post, when I came here the situation at one of the Schools, DPS, was in meltdown. A popular headteacher had been forced out, an unpopular one appointed, half the teachers had resigned in a protest against the existing management, parents were in uproar, and people outside the daily life of the School were jockeying for position, power, and influence. It was a total nightmare not only for the School but also for the Church, which was being blamed for many of the problems in the first place.

My first goal was to calm it all down and that meant getting us out of the press. I took over responsibility for all news management. This simply meant making sure there was no news! The next immediate problem was the problem of the headteacher. The truth was that he should never have been appointed. He was a perfectly nice man, and it was not his fault that he had been appointed. But given the situation he inherited, he was always going to be in difficulties.

I think those who supported the former headteacher wanted rid of him as a sort of revenge. ‘You got rid of our headteacher so we are going to get rid of yours.’ He had had no co-operation from the moment he arrived and had had a systematic campaign waged against him of the nastiest kind. How do you behave as a Christian in this sort of situation? On the one hand, you can see the problem: that this was not the right person to have been appointed. On the other, he had a right to be treated fairly and legally. This was not an easy message to communicate when people were divided into two camps either for or against him.

I argued that we needed to give him time to prove himself with the support of all involved. Then at the end of this period we could organise an appraisal exercise to be conducted by an independent, outside group of appraisers to be appointed only with his agreement. This I argued would be fair to all. It was eventually accepted by all concerned as a reasonable proposal. I think we did try to offer him support, I know I did often attracting quite a lot of criticism in the process!

Without going into too many details, however, the appraisal was not good. We paid for someone to come from Australia who could not possibly have any prejudice in the matter and sought the support of two very experienced Hong Kong educators. The appraisal was conducted over a week and was very thorough. We had no choice at the end of it. We offered the headteacher the opportunity to resign rather than to be sacked, but he refused. So it fell to me sack him. One of the saddest of jobs given what he had been through.

We were now without a headteacher and to make matters worse the sacked headteacher took us to an industrial tribunal accusing us of unfair dismissal. I found myself both very involved in the day to day management of the School and representing the School in a legal case. Fortunately, because of our genuine desire to be fair, the case against us could only fail. We were completely exonerated of any wrongdoing.

The next job was to appoint a new headteacher. We appointed someone who had been at the School for quite some time and knew it and its problems well. We wanted someone who was competent, but who knew what they were getting into.

The School had suffered terribly in the years of conflict. It was still attracting new parents because of its ‘elite status’, but it was clear to anyone who knew it that it was living off past glory and its close association with the famous secondary School, DBS. One of the problems during the time of the popular headteacher, back in the nineties, had been to do with this close relationship. She had wanted to redevelop the School moving it to the campus of the secondary School. At the risk of oversimplifying, everyone associated with the two Schools supported the idea and everyone associated with the Church didn’t. The idea collapsed amidst much bitterness and recrimination. People who had been friends for years and who had even been pupils together at the two Schools fell out with one another. The argument left wounds that still have not healed and damaged the reputations of all involved including that of the Church.

The idea of redeveloping the existing primary school had collapsed. The former headteacher, however, with the support of the secondary School decided to go it alone and build a new Primary School, which they hoped would replace DPS as the natural Primary School for the Secondary School. This meant that DPS was being cast adrift. Its buildings were old and in need of renovation, its staff demoralised and inexperienced, its headteacher still very new and inexperienced, and what is more, because of all the troubles, it had failed to keep up with all the changes that had been taking place in Hong Kong education. Its curriculum, methods of assessment, and teaching style were all hopelessly out of date.

For the past five years, we have been working hard to turn it around. We have built a new annexe, renovated the old buildings, introduced curriculum reform, recruited new teachers, set up a Parent-Teacher Association, turned co-educational, worked on introducing Mandarin (the language of the mainland) into the School, organized events to raise much needed funds for the School, and much more besides. This would have been demanding enough, but we have had to do it at the same time as the new School was being set up. They not only sought to recruit many of our pupils, they also recruited the whole of our senior staff and our two best English teachers. Maintaining morale amongst the teachers and parents that remained has been no easy task!

We have just had a routine external review conducted by the government body responsible for education in Hong Kong – a bit like an Ofsted review in England. We are waiting their report.

I have wanted us to create a Church School that is a Church School in more than name. I have also wanted to try and deal with arguments, conflicts, and trouble in a Christian manner. How far we have succeeded is for others to judge.

I have gone into all this background for two reasons. First, it has been such a big part of life here, and is, I think, worth recording, albeit it in outline, and, secondly, to try to illustrate how time consuming this part of my work has been. My predecessor had a full-time lay worker and two part-time clergy colleagues. I am effectively on my own. This does not necessarily mean that I work harder; there are, after all, only so many hours in the day. It does mean, however, that something has to give - and I have only described some of my work in one of my Schools.

Now, after nearly seven years here, I am reviewing my priorities. Adjusting the balance can seem like that I am not wanting to continue my involvement in the Schools and there is still much to be done. However, it is also true to say that while much has been achieved in the Schools, it has not had a corresponding benefit for the Church. What worked at Banchory has not worked in the same way here. Anything, but.

I will explain why next time! And I promise it will be soon.

Back!

Well, it's been a little while since I posted and I can only apologize for the enforced absence. I won't bore you with the details, but it has been a difficult two weeks. The sort you get from time to time. Thank you to all those who have visited the blog while I have been away and thank you to all those who have remained loyal. The next full blog will appear later today!

Rightly Handling the Word of Truth

No sooner was I back and busy catching up this week than I came down with a very nasty cold. The trouble was that having been away for Chinese New Year meant that I couldn’t really take any more time off sick. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been for a rather nasty cough. It certainly made delivering our Lent Bible Studies on Wednesday that bit more difficult.

This year, we are looking at 1 Corinthians. I wrote a thesis for my Master’s degree on 1 Corinthians and as apart of my preparation for the Lent Studies I have been looking at what academic scholarship has said about it in recent years. Readers of this blog will know that academic theology is an interest of mine because anything to do with the Bible ultimately cannot remain academic. I think many Christians are rather in awe of academic scholars and feel embarrassed when they are in the presence of those who study it academically. This is understandable: after all, we all feel humbled by experts.

Increasingly, however, I am more and more frustrated by experts especially when it comes to studying the Bible, in general, and the New Testament, in particular. Let me try to explain why. In the sixteenth century, a German academic, for that is what Martin Luther was, challenged the Church’s understanding of Paul. He argued that the Church had adopted a belief in salvation by works whereas for Paul salvation was by faith and faith alone. Works of any kind whether good works, such as giving to the poor, or religious works, such as going on pilgrimages, could not save you only Christ do that by grace through faith. You will know the story.

One of the consequences of this was the complete fragmentation of the Church. A small price many would claim for the truth. From this point onwards the doctrine of justification by faith became central to many Protestant churches: the doctrine by which the Church stood or fell. In academic circles, it was seen as the key to understanding Paul and what he believed and taught.

Then, about 450 years, later a very different academic, this time from America, argued that Martin Luther, and all who followed him, had completely misunderstood Paul and the Judaism of his day. Judaism was not a religion of works-righteousness. The Jews were not trying to earn their salvation through good works. The Jews knew that God was a loving gracious God who given them the Covenant and made them his people. The Law was the means by which they responded to God’s grace and generosity.

E P Sanders supported what was at the time a highly controversial claim by a thorough examination of the documents of second temple Judaism, that is, the Judaism of Jesus and Paul. He argued that Luther had got it terribly wrong and that most of the New Testament scholars who had studied Judaism had also got it terribly wrong.

This was a bombshell in the world of New Testament scholarship. The consensus became, however, that Sanders had got it right in his analysis of Judaism. People were less convinced, though, that he had got Paul right. Sanders seemed not to know what to do with Paul. It looked like Paul was fighting an opponent who did not exist. For if the Jews did not believe they were saved by works, why did Paul write as though they did?

Consequently, many scholars undertook to re-examine Paul’s teaching in the light of what Sanders had shown them about Judaism. One scholar, my own supervisor at the time, J D G Dunn, in particular, sought to interpret Paul against the background of this new understanding and to formulate a more satisfactory understanding of Paul’s teaching. It was Dunn who coined a phrase that has become the standard term for all this: the New Perspective on Paul. Dunn argued that when Paul said we were not justified by the ‘works of the law’ what he had in mind was not so much good works, but Jewish religious practices that distinguished them as Jews. Practices like not eating pork, keeping the Sabbath, and cirucumcision.

Dunn was followed by many others, including the now Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright. Not only were they pioneering scholars in the world of New Testament scholarship, Dunn and Wright succeeded in popularizing this new understanding so that even if lay people did not use the same terms as the academics, they were being taught the same ideas. Clergy at theological college certainly were.

In Churches that felt that God had revealed something special at the Reformation, there was uproar and New Perspective scholars were, and are, accused of betraying the truth. Wright’s response, which is well documented, has been that we have an obligation to get back to the sources and that this was what the Reformation was all about. All this is described in many places both on the web and in popular Christian books. Those who may not have heard much about it can easily follow it up if they want to.

There has, however, now appeared another book about which many are getting excited called Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul by Chris VanLandingham. This argues that both Luther and Sanders were wrong and that both second temple Judaism and Paul believed in salvation by works. The book is an academic study examining the very same Jewish texts that Sanders based his study on and the very same Bible passages that Luther based his understanding of Paul on. It is not clear yet how this will be received, but some people are getting excited by it.

I give this as an example. A major one certainly, but disagreements like these occur between scholars over almost every point of interpretation of the Bible and its context.

Now in the world of academics all this would be just good fun. Overturning standard wisdom is what the academic game is. As with the Athenians, success in the world of PhDs, journal articles, academic conferences, and university careers is based on saying convincingly anything new and novel. You won’t get a PhD by saying what has already been said - even if what you say is true. You have to get an original angle.

This is all very well and good if what you are studying is the nineteenth century novel or the history of Troy, but for us Christians, whatever our flavour, the Bible is not at this level. Even if we are the most liberal of liberals, the New Testament is still the only way into the origins of Christianity (even if some would prefer it if Dan Brown were right and we could turn instead to the Gnostics). For most of us, however, the Bible is more than a historical record. It still has ongoing authority and, for some us, it is the authority by which we wish to live our lives.

It is not much use as an authority, however, when even the most expert scholars and interpreters can’t agree on whether Paul thought we will be saved by faith or works. This isn’t a minor point, it is absolutely central to understanding the message of the New Testament. My eternal destiny may depend on me getting the answer right and not unreasonably we look to the experts to help us.

That there is something extremely wrong with the expert’s expertise, however, should be apparent from this latest disagreement over the nature of second temple Judaism. We are not talking about a large body of literature here. Luther can be justified in getting it wrong because the resources available to scholars today were not available to him. But when the very best experts can read the literature and come to diametrically opposed conclusions about its interpretation we are in great trouble.

Some will argue that scholars inability ever to agree undermines the whole academic enterprise and calls into question the usefulness of academic scholarship when it comes to understanding the Bible. And, frankly, academics have only themselves to blame if they do. But for those of us who believe that the Bible is the Word of God in the words of men then understanding those men, their culture and their times, becomes essential if we are to understand the Word of God itself.

I don’t have any easy answers. I would however plead with Christian academics to be more responsible and careful when it comes to these issues. Your career and fame as a scholar are less important than rightly handling the word of truth. After all, it is not only our salvation that is dependent on you getting it right.

Anything but the Truth

We have had to deal with the alleged historical fact that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had a daughter by her, which was nurtured in France, and established a royal blood-line now we are faced with a new alleged historical fact. This time the claim is both that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, had a son by her, and was buried together with them in Jerusalem and also that the tomb has been found. First, we had a novelist, Dan Brown, claiming his fiction was fact. Now we have a filmmaker, James Cameron of Titanic fame, claiming the same about his contradictory claim.

After all, Dan Brown and James Cameron can’t both be right. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what Dan Brown thinks of what James Cameron is saying? Wouldn’t it have been even more interesting if both claims had been made at the same time? But they wouldn’t want that to happen, would they? Each would have cancelled the other out.

There will be plenty on this story in the press both for and against it. What interests me is the way people prefer to believe almost anything about Jesus than what the Gospels claim for him. I find this encouraging to a point. It shows that people do find the Gospels challenging and their fear of that challenge is itself an indication of its truthfulness.

Paul wrote that the message of the Cross is foolishness to them that are perishing. Sadly, it means they will follow any foolishness to escape it

Personal Journey Present Challenges: 1. The Problem of Baptism

Well I am now back in action after a very full two weeks. I may not have been blogging for the past couple of weeks, but I have been giving it some thought. I think that it might be interesting to write about some of the challenges I am facing at the moment both in my ministry and more generally. I would be very interetsed to hear your reactions and opinions.

Personal Journey Present Challenges: 1. The Problem of Baptism

Readers of this blog may remember me writing earlier on in this series about baptism and the problems I had with infant baptism when I first became a Christian. The Christians I associated with took a very dim view of babies being baptized. How could they have faith? And baptism was about us consciously professing our faith. There were even more problems with non-Christians getting their children baptized as no-one involved had faith. At least with Christians the parents had faith. For a while this issue of infant baptism kept me from committing to Anglicanism.

While at LBC, I came to the conclusion that there was a reasonable argument for Christians being able to baptize their children and that at the very least it was a valid position for Christians to take. In any case the vast majority of Christians believed just that. The alternative: ‘believers only baptism’ sounded very pure, but it created problems of its own. When is someone old enough? And are we really saying that believers’ children are effectively pagans until they get baptized?

So I adopted the mainline position. All of which is fine, except that in the CofE, the vast majority of requests for baptism come from people outside the Church. For centuries, the Church has encouraged people to bring their children for baptism. This was all well and good when people had a strong connection with the Church, but with the collapse of Christendom in the West, this connection often simply does not exist. The problem is that a parent’s right to have their child baptized in the parish church does still exist and many want to avail themselves of it for all sorts of reasons. Many people seek baptism to do with custom and social convention, but many also because of a desire simply to express thanks for the child and to have a naming ceremony.

This has created a crisis of conscience for many Anglicans. They just do not feel happy people making vows that it is obvious that they don’t mean or intend to keep. Some Vicars have tried to obstruct people who come for baptism if they are not church members. Others have offered a different ceremony that they feel is more honest. The problem is that many of those coming for baptism want baptism itself and resent being thwarted in their desire.

When I went to Moreton, we were overwhelmed with the numbers seeking baptism for their children. The services were a joke with people wanting to get it done as quickly as possible so they could get off to the party that was being held afterwards. We went down the route of making it more difficult for people, but it wasn’t really facing up to the problem. At the end of the day, we were turning people away who, however tenuously, were coming to Church.

At Bedford, working in a secular context in the College, I met people who had been turned away by their local parish Church. They had taken it very personally and bore a real grudge against the Church because of it. What is more, they often felt that it was their child that had been rejected. This may be illogical, but this is not about logic and the hurt went very deep.

So when I went to Banchory, I adopted a completely open policy and avoided putting any obstacles in people’s way. We tried to be as welcoming as possible in the hope that people who may not have previously have come to Church would now. This did happen in a number of cases, although by no means all. Nevertheless, being open and welcoming seemed a better place to be and fitted with what we were trying to do in terms of mission. Given the emphasis we were placing on Sunday School and attracting families, refusing baptism seemed totally impossible. We insisted that baptism must take place during the morning service so at least we got the family to Church, but that was the only condition - if you can call it a condition.

When I came to Hong Kong I came with this approach to baptism. Christ Church had the same approach and both never refused baptism and always conducted it within the morning service. However whereas in Banchory relatively speaking weren’t that many baptisms, at Christ Church the numbers coming for baptism were huge so that sometimes as many as 22 baptisms were performed in the morning service. Maybe once in a while this would be ok, but it was happening with amazing frequency.

I at once took the decision that I was not going to conduct baptisms in the morning service, but immediately after it in the hope that this would preserve the link with morning worship while not disrupting it in the way it was being disrupted. The congregation breathed a big sigh of relief and those seeking baptism rather liked it as well. It made it easier for them.

The problem occurs because people perceive there to be an advantage in having their child baptized when it comes to gaining admission to the schools. Indeed, there is some advantage although not nearly so great as people think. Whatever, parents are prepared to lie and say anything that is required of them in order to secure baptism. They will attend Church for the period and then leave as soon as they have got what they want. I must confess to being at a total loss to know what to do about this. The present situation is not satisfactory, but I can see problems with all the alternatives.

What to do?

Hello Everyone

And welcome to all those who have stumbled across me for the first time in the past couple of weeks! I am now back and will post tomorrow. I have been giving some thought to how to tackle this the next stage in the journey. And as this is where I am at, I am going to ask for your help because as you will see, I am not entirely sure in which direction I should go!

See you tomorrow!