Category: ministry

"Preach the simple gospel. Make sure the old woman who sits at the back of the church can understand you". That kind of comment is patronising nonsense not far away from uninformed arrogance. So forgive me, but I've just heard it or something like it one too many times.

On a par with thinking visiting older people is a chore rather than a privilege, or an inefficient use of a dynamic church leader's time, a task for ancillary ministry rather than strategic leadership. As if accompanying friendship, pastoral companionship, available presence, attentive conversation, weren't a privilege, a gift and an opportunity to share in richly textured experience.

Some of the finest practical theologians I know sit in the back
seats at church, or at their tea table, and I've coveted their nod of approval for the truth I've tried
to speak, framed in words with maybe half the depth of their experience of life with God.

Hence the prophetic edge to this entire treatise in pastoral theology distilled into just over 60 words. An R S Thomas prose poem, written late in life, that tells us why we might never be near good enough to preach up to, let alone down to, the level of "the old woman who sits in the back pew".

'The holiness of the heart's affections.' Never tamper with them. In an age of science everything is analysable but a tear. Everywhere he went, despite his round collar and his licence, he was there to learn rather than to teach love. In the simplest of homes there were those who with little schooling and less college had come out top in that sweet examination.

(R S THomas, The Echoes Return Slow (London: MacMillan, 1988), 62.

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Just back from Aberdeen where I was conducting a marriage ceremony for a family I've known for many a year. The groom was 10 years old last time I saw him before he emigrated to Australia (16 years ago). Came back to Scotland to get married though – Australia doesn't have a University founded in 1495, nor a University chapel with oak carving older than the Reformation!

I still think a Christian marriage service bears witness to a way of living that at its best is a demanding critique of our throwaway, serial relationship, obsessively individualist culture. Faithfulness gives love its discipline and its joy; covenant promises have no inbuilt guarantee they won't be broken, but they are a clear and public statement of intent to which each is accountable.

Amongst the extraordinary privileges of being a minister, is being invited to turn water into wine, to take the hopes and desires and loves of two people, and through their promised faithfulness and incredible courage of trust in each other, produce that intoxicating joy of knowing, against all the odds and to their endless surpise, not only that they are loved – but that they say so in public, and bear witness to their intention to live the rest of their lives cherishing and exploring the mystery that is this other person who out of all other possibilities, said yes to them, on that day, and in front of all the people who matter most in their lives. I never cease to wonder at the sheer crazy hopefulness that informs that kind of risk taking – and thank God that still, there are those like John and Julie, who do so.

Just back from a 24 hour meeting of our denominational Ministry Resource Team. As committee's go this group is about as good as it gets. Different perspectives, wide experience, the right combination of frankness and courtesy, a safe place for adventurous thinking and the contemplation of risk, newness and different possibility.

One of the times of prayerful reflection was around John 13. We were asked to sit quietly and read it, reflect on what it might have to say to us in our work together, or in our own journey towards a deeper grasp of what it means to be a minister of Jesus Christ. I've read this passage so many times – its cadences in the RSV are like footprints in my textual memory. Again and again it surprises me. And did so again.

It's that discordant note that Peter can't help sounding, his habit of not getting the point, of wanting to  set the terms of every relationship. Evelyn Underhill, one of the finest spiritual directors the Anglican communion ever produced, pointed out the hard work of unselfing the self, the humility to make space for the other. And there it is. Peter won't wash feet so Jesus does. Jesus washes feet but then Peter doesn't want his own feet washed by Jesus. Then he wants to be washed all over, hands, head and all.

John 13 is often seen as a depiction of ministry as serving others, just like Jesus. But this embarrassing exchange is also yet one more time when the self gets in the way. Peter isn't prepared to be served, unless it's on his terms. Underhill also spoke of the claimfulness of the self, the issue of status, rights and reputation. And so, maybe the hardest thing about ministry isn't the serving of others, which may or may not require of us a healthy humility. The more Christlike attitude may be that degree of humility that accepts service from another, that is humble enough to have our feet washed without complaint or sensed diminishment.

And, subversive thought – before Jesus washed the disciples feet, his own feet had been washed, by a woman's tears of gratitude. And again everybody else had an opinion about it. Whereas Jesus received the gift of service with the grace and the mercy of the gracious and merciful – and both he and she were blessed.

This ministry thing – not as straightforward as we'd all like to think.

The sketch by Vellatton as always says multum in parvo. "She has covered my feet with perfume and washed them with her tears."

For years now I've written a Saturday Sermon for the Aberdeen Press and Journal. It's one of the few papers left that preserves some column inches (400 words to be precise) for comments and perspectives that express Christian values and derive from Christian teaching. Not a good idea to overcook the occasion by proselytising or pushing party lines. No problem about overt Christian comment, just an assumption of courtesy and respect for a readership that is multifaith, multicultural, and may or may not be interested in a Saturday Sermon, whatever that is! Here's the script for the one published in Aberdeen today.

………………………………………

I once managed to so offend at least four people in one
sermon, that I had to apologise for speaking of that which I did not fully
understand. The sermon is now long forgotten, at least by me. But for some
reason I took a good natured swipe at jigsaw puzzles and those who spend hours
completing them. Why would you spend hours trying to piece together a picture
someone else deliberately cut up into small pieces and jumbled up in a box?

With more courtesy than perhaps I’d shown, it was explained
to me that ministers could learn as much from putting a jig-saw together as
putting a sermon together. One of the jigsaw enthusiasts explained that time
without number, through building a jigsaw with them, he had helped young people
whose lives had fallen to pieces, whose hopes were reduced by circumstances or
choices to fragments that needed fitting together again. Corners, square edges,
a picture of what might be, and a supportive collaborative friend, created a
place and a process where rebuilding could begin. That image has since entered
my key moments of insight about how to live wisely and well.

Sir Kenneth Calman, Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, and a former Chief Medical
Officer of Health at the Scottish office and then Westminster,
is currently studying for an M.Litt on medicine and literature. Calman began as
a GP, and has always been interested in patients as people, recognising the
importance of the story that was each individual life. Telling of his lifelong
passion for human wellbeing he mentioned an observation that reminded me of
that less than proud moment many a year ago when I scoffed at those parables of
pastoral care, the jigsaw builders. Someone had said: “my story’s broken, will
you help me fix it?”

And there it is again. The recognition that sometimes our
own story is broken, and often enough there are those we meet day in and day
out whose own story is also broken. I’ve thought for a while that compassion
requires imagination, an ability to wonder what it’s like for that other person
to live out their story. Or having the patience to sit alongside someone whose
life is in pieces and help them look for the straight edges, the corners, the
picture that can still be made. Or as Jesus said, “Do for others whatever you
would that others do for you.”

 Just preached at two services over in the East Neuk 
of Fife. Despite warm comments, and genuine 
appreciation,there is still, and always, the sense 
that words cannot "stretch to the measure of 
eternal things". The last phrase is P T Forsyth's. 
Sometimes I think that other brilliant, infuriating 
genius, the one from Denmark, should be heeded 
more:

Biography as theology - and as ministry.

Going to see a friend today. I first met him in 1971 when he was asked by our denominational Ministerial Recognition Committee to assess my preaching potential and report back. I was of course very young at the time – honest! No kidding – not yet 21!

In those days references were confidential – but afterwards I was phoned by my assessor and told what he was going to say and given the chance to discuss it with him. It was a fair and encouraging report and spoke of gift and potential, and identified obvious advantages in a full course of training. Anything I've learned about balancing honest assessment of gift and ability with personal encouragement, and about the importance of example and demonstrated support as people struggle to discern their calling, I learned from people like him. Ever since then we have been friends, he has stayed in touch as encourager, and as an example of lifelong ministry in our churches. Long since retired, he remains for me a father figure, a sympathetic critic, an interested friend who prays for my ministry, and one who reluctantly but with transparent gratitude, is acknowledging the constraints that his years now put on his activity.

Today we'll talk about a lot of things – books, people, probably a few moans about what's wrong with the church and how we would fix it (aye right!), reminiscences about people who mattered in our churches, and his plans for the next stage of life. And as always I'll come away from him with a good feeling – about the Church we complain about but love, about a Gospel we still have in common though our theological emphases and insights don't neatly coincide, about pastoral ministry as the high calling of God, as undeserved privilege, and as one of the church's essential life support systems.

And I know before I go, I'll come away feeling good about myself in the light of all of this, because this man I've known for forty years, believes in people – he has a ministry of appreciation, who loves without sentimentality but with shrewd appraisal. He is a man whose estimate of you makes you want to live up to it – which is that rare gift of affirmative affection that makes you believe again in yourself as a work in progress, and the work is God's!

Now and again, it takes P T Forsyth to reset the preacher's heart to the default setting of grateful wonder at the mystery of the Gospel and the privilege of proclaiming it.

The secret of spiritual realism is personal judgment, personal pardon, and personal prayer – prayer as conflict and wrestling with God, not simply sunning one's self in God. There is no reality without wrestling, as without shedding of blood there is no remission…For the preacher it is only serious searching prayer, not prayer as sweet and seemly devotion at the day's dawn or close, but prayer as an ingredient of the day's work, pastoral and theological prayer, priest's prayer – it is only such prayer that can save the preacher from histrionics and sentiment, flat fluency and that familiarity with things holy which is the very Satan to so many forward apostles….. (Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, 108ff).

Derek Murray was ordained in 1958 and served the newly established pastorate at Glenburn Baptist in Paisley, before moving on to pastorates in Fife, Edinburgh and hospital chaplaincy. In addition Derek taught at the Scottish Baptist College for 46 years, full time for five years and 40 part time. During that time he taught in his own areas of expertise in church history and Baptist History and Principles, in pastoral theology and particularly the care of the dying. But he also taught wider church history and biblical studies from time to time, and overall has been a long and faithful friend of the College, and a highly respected minister amongst our churches.

I shared in a celebration of Derek's ministryover the past weekend. You can read about it at the College blog here

This post is an unashamed advertisement for a good book written by a good friend and colleague. The Pastoral Care of People with Mental Health Problems, by Marion Carson, has just been published by the SPCK Library of Pastoral Care. Marion trained and practised as a psychiatric nurse, is a theological educator at International Christian College where her research and teaching span the bridge between New Testament and pastoral care, she is an active member within her own church community and serves on the Board of Ministry of the Baptist Union of Scotland. This book is therefore a coalescence of professional experience, theological scholarship, pastoral engagement and personal reflection on the nature and impact of mental ill health on the quality of human life, and also on the ambivalence and uncertainty of Christian communities to welcome those with mental health difficulties with 'radical friendship'. (John Swinton)

The book is not intended to provide technical medical information, nor is it an attempt to provide a detailed and conceptually advanced theology of disability. This has been done by people like Hauerwas, Swinton and most recently Thomas Reynolds' courageous and moving book which is a profound theological reflection on disability and hospitality informed by the experience of caring for a son with complex learning difficulties. (I will review and give details of this book later). Marion's book is more specific in its aim; it is an informed and informative book that covers several major human conditions, offering enough information to provide an undergirding awareness of the condition and the issues it raises for the person affected, their carers and the professionals who seek to help. As such it combines clear description of certain conditions, provides suggested practical responses, relates the process of understanding and care to an underlying theology that is pastorally rooted in the expereinces of those of whom she writes. Each chapter is therefore an important resource for pastoral response, theological reflection and better understanding.

The seven core chapters deal with mood disorders; anxiety, phobias and stress; schizophrenia; addictions; dementia; eating disorders and self-harm; personality disorders. Listed like that they are an intimidating list of human conditions which can seem like the extreme end of human difficulty in negotiating the complex world of relationships, perceived reality and self knowing. Marion Carson is well aware that the Church often makes unhelpful responses to the presence of people with mental ill health – either shunning them because of their capacitry to be disruptive, or intervening in ways that can be dangerous or ill informed. The book is therefore intended to help communities and individuals to befriend, support and care for those who suffer and their carers. There are case studies and explanation of the condition; theological reflection on what pastoral care would look like in this situation; and practical suggestions to ensure that care is appropriate and responses constructive.

I've been a pastor for many a year now, and met and walked with people who have suffered from the kind of conditions considered in this book. The treatment here is sensible, compassionate, practical, informed and above all rooted in an expereince both professionally skilled and theologically alert, and therefore pastorally responsible and responsive. At 168 pages, chapters around 23 pages long, a writing style that is never talk down but is nevertheless deliberately practical and at times didactic, this is a book that fills the important space this side of the technical diagnostic or theologically advanced books, which remain important but are less accessible. I wish such a book had been around at some of the times when in the context of church life people in such difficulties found their way to our doors.

I finish by quoting the last two paragraphs which are written in such a way that those of us who know Marion, can hear the ipsissima vox Carson!

It is precisely in recognizing our own vulnerabilities that hope springs. Only thus are we led to build communities in which our collective and individual dependence on the triune God is acknowledged. In such communities we can admit when we get things wrong, support each other as we learn from our mistakes, and forgive one another – all the time looking to God for guidance and wisdom. In such communities, we will be enabled to follow the incarnte Christ and serve those whom society considers 'inclean'. In such safe communities, radical friendship can flourish.

In the process of following Christ's example, we may have to change our
ideas about what it means to be human beings in relation to others. We
may have to rethink how we should go about providing pastoral care. But
if we open ourselves up to our own and others' vulnerabilities, if we
are willing to take the risk, we will go some way to providing a safe
place for sufferers and those close to them. The relationships we find
ourselves in may not be conventional, but we will be enriched by them,
and we will see God at work in ways we could never have imagined. (pages 147-8)

Off to Millport with the Ministry Resource Team, to think about, well, ministry! Looking forward to discussion, prayer, a bit of time on a beautiful wee island, good conversation with good friends – and out of it fresh ideas, recovered vision, renewed enrgy, clearer strategy – or any two of the above as a start. There's something different happens when a 'committee' shares food, spends time in the one place for a couple of days, allows ideas to form and kites to fly, and so makes available the time and space for God to be heard.

And the sun is shining, I've packed my wee overnight bag with such essentials as toothbrush and a couple of books, and there's this wee cafe at Largs that sells sublime coffee, newly cooked doughnuts….