Living Wittily

Category: ministry

  • Commemorating Ordination 4. ‘with cheerful aplomb’

    1986  Adrian Hastings, History of English Christianity, 1920-1985. A terrific survey of English church history in the volatile and challenging 20th Century. Now revised and updated to 2000, but I haven’t bothered replacing my first edition.

    1987  Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, 2 Vols. The best history of the Victorian Church by the best church historian I’ve ever read. Owen Chadwick exemplifies careful, witty and weighty judgement. His comment on Spurgeon’s spiritual confidence, ‘He approached the burning bush with cheerful aplomb’. Superb!

    1988  Philip Toynbee, End of a Journey. This was the second volume of Toynbee’s Journal. The first, Part of a Journey, I read while on a caravan holiday in 1977! This volume is movingly written against the backdrop of his final illness, and his late-in-life journey to God. He is a crabbit saint, at times moody, at other times surprisingly reconciled to his own mortality, and most of the time on speaking terms with God.

    1989 Gordon Rupp, Religion in England, 1688-1791. Vintage Rupp. He writes about the decades before the Evangelical Revival with far more historical reliability than a lot of stuff up till then. And his account of the Evangelical Revival itself is nuanced, fair and satisfying. This is one of those books that is also beautifully produced by Oxford – a bibliophile’s must have. And it aint cheap – but quality shows. You show me your BMW and I’ll show you my Rupp!

  • Commemorating Ordination 3. And remembering a liberal prophet

    1985 – J A T Robinson, The Priority of John.

    Book Bishop John Robinson was infamously famous for his book ‘Honest to God’. It was the book John MacQuarrie described as the result of taking three good German beers (Bonhoeffer, Bultmann and Tillich) and creating a lot of froth! That wasn’t fair, and it probably wasn’t MacQuarrie’s finest scholarly hour, but it is a brilliant sideswipe. When a book of theology becomes a bestseller, though, academic theologians need to pay attention, listen, and hear the sound of people’s longing, rather than rush into print scoffing at those who have touched the nerve of a public MacQuarrie could never have hoped to reach with such effectiveness.

    Anyway, The Priority of John represents John Robinson’s legacy – he died before it was published, and did the final writing while suffering at the later stages of cancer. They were to be the prestigious Bampton Lectures, but were never delivered. The book is way out on a limb, arguing not only for the substantial historicity of John, but that John was the Gospel written first. Now I wasn’t persuaded by his arguments, but I was tempted to be, by the sheer ingenuity, passionate exposition, and oh so obvious love for this wonderful Gospel story as told by John the Evangelist and interpreted by John (Robinson). The book is a gem. I bought it hardback – it cost £19.50 – (Amazon have it ranging from £40 to £151!!). I read it slowly through Lent 1986 and appreciated the reverent scholarship of one who spoke deeply about the Passion of Jesus. All the more poignant that some of this writing was done in the full knowledge of his own terminal illness.

    Here’s a very small extract which shows why this Bishop was also a trusted pastor to many. Commenting on Matthew 26.53 where Jesus says he could appeal to the Father to send 12 legions of angels to rescue him, Robinson observes:   

    "There is no suggestion he could lay them on because he was God. He is a man of power because he is a man of prayer. But because he is a man of prayer, he knows that it is not the Faither’s will to win that way."

    A good book to commemorate the vocational centre of ministry, which is abour prayerful obedience rather than charismatic power.

  • Leadership – and all too human forms of community

    1175193430508_2 When a group of people who would (probably!) be considered ‘leaders’ amongst Scottish Baptists, meet together to discuss the nature of ‘leadership’, based on previously prepared papers, and with a whole day to expose areas and expressions of difference, disagreement, consensus, temperament, personal baggage, – it becomes clear that ‘leadership’ can have as many expressions as there are people, contexts, leaders! That’s what I was doing yesterday, along with five others, up in early autumn Pitlochry.

    So it was interesting to move throughout the day (guided by praying the daily offices of the Northumbria Community), to levels of agreement on some underlying principles, theological and pastoral assumptions – and also to be just as clear where there were quite fundamental differences in other key areas. I’m neither phased nor surprised at that. I think uniformity of model when discussing and exploring the nature of leadership within a Christian community would do violence to specific contextual realities. It would also overwrite individual giftedness and temperament, and would simply be one person / group’s construct, even if they claimed it was ‘biblical’ – ‘even THE biblical view’. All of which would ignore the variety and provisionality of the New Testament evidence, and the interpretations of such texts, and their translation into existing models of Church leadership. Diversity of practice so underlies our own Baptist traditions that it takes considerable care to identify what are the changing continuities of that tradition.

    My own paper was a further stage in my thinking about the community theologian(s), and in particular that person or more likely, group of people’s role in calling the community to faithful obedience to Christ. In fulfilling such a role I further developed two key ideas – kenosis (self-emptying as the notion is used in Phil. 2.1-15; and paracletos with its cognate paraclesis (with their core meaning of encouragement and accompaniment).

    The one sentence I’ll quote is the one that was affectionately but loudly mocked for its rhetorical flourish – och they were just jealous anyway!

    "Community theologians heighten awareness of divine activity amongst us, in our all too human forms of community – and do so by reminding us, with the gentle persistence of Scottish drizzle on a June day in the Trossachs, of the graceful kenosis and non-grasping love of God in Christ."

    Now what’s wrong with that as a piece of tartan theology? Eh?

  • Commemorating Ordination 2: And remembering F. F. Bruce

    There is neither rhyme nor reason to the books I’ve bought myself around my ordination date. Looks like it was whatever volume I fancied at the time or whatever area I was interested in, or preaching on….

    1981 – J Thompson, Jeremiah, (NICOT)

    This book proved to be a solid, unexciting and traditionally conservative treatment of Jeremiah, whose passion, anguish, anger and sheer persistent in your face protests against political and religious stupidity, needs a much more imaginative and passionate commentator. Thompson was concerned about history and historicity, and sure his commentary is full of important detail – but the prophet’s message isn’t in the details. It’s in his outrage and courage, in his strangeness and stridency, in the tension between theological vision and political realities. Brueggemann and Fretheim (along with Patrick Miller in the New Interpreter’s Bible), quarry the theological depths and measure the seismic disturbances triggered by Jeremiah’s prophecy – they are now my preferred guides in this ‘dark valley’ of a book.

    1982 Evelyn Underhill, The Mystics of the Church

    Long before Anglicans ordained women into ministry, people like Evelyn Underhill exemplified pastoral care as spiritual direction. This wise, likeable, well-off middle class scholar of mysticism was the real thing. This book introduces various key figures in Christian spirituality – and it’s written by one who was herself a key influence in 20th Century spirituality. Her book, Mysticism, and the later volume Worship, are now classics in their field. But her best writing is in her retreat addresses. The School of Charity is a beautifully written meditation on the Apostle’s Creed, that once ‘restored my soul’.

    1983 Gordon Rupp, The Righteousness of God

    I won a prize with an essay on Luther in 1984! It was entitled, "Luther’s Tower Experience; A Theological Evolution?" I’ve still got the laboriously type-written copy in the days before computer word documents made every essay look like publisher’s copy. I remember being captivated by Rupp’s account of Luther’s theological discoveries through his work as Bible expositor. It created an interest in Luther and Reformation spirituality that lasts to this day

    1984 F F Bruce, Galatians (New International Commentary on the Greek NT)

    Brucef No Evangelical biblical scholar did more to instil respect and gain a hearing for Evangelical biblical scholarship than Frederick Fyvie Bruce. From a north east Scotland Christian Brethren background, and a grounding in classics, he became a universally esteemed NT scholar, eventually Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism at Manchester. Bruce’s work was characterised by sober judgement, researched historical detail documented and fairly interpreted, and by an underlying faith commitment that ensured his tone was respectful of the text and aware of its spiritual significance. This commentary, along with his book Paul. Apostle of the Heart Set Free, and his classic commentary on Hebrews, are now dated, but are still revered and faithfully visited presences on my shelf.

    For an affectionate pen portrait of this attractive Christian scholar, written by David Clines, also Brethren, one time student under Bruce, now himself a global class OT scholar, see Clines’ tribute here. Any of you readers whose background is in the Bretheren should read this delightful but positive account of Brethren culture, its ‘Bible conferences’, ‘meetings’ and the dangers of ‘mixing’ with the world!

  • Commemorating Ordination 1

    Below are the titles of the books I bought to mark my ordination date, August 30, years 1976-1980. And some of the reasons I bought them.

    1976, W D Davies, Setting of the Sermon on the Mount.

    I’ve always taken an interest in the critical appropriation and existential demands of the Sermon on the Mount, and Davies’ massive study set the benchmark for exploring the background of the Sermon in 1st century Palestine. He went on to write with D C Allison the second best commentary on Matthew,[ in the International Critical Commentary (3 vols)] – I agree with Sean, Luz on Matthew is a masterpiece – also three volumes, but I don’t know a commentary like it.

    1977, Leslie Allen, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, (NICOT)

    This volume includes Allen’s take on Jonah as a short story, presenting a deeply ironical reading,  replete with theological insight. Some conservative minded folk took umbrage at his unconcern about historicity in Jonah. It’s still my preferred commentary on these books because it takes God seriously, and it allows the genre of this little masterpiece to fly beneath our self-righteous radars and realise that God’s mercy, and God’s ideas are bigger than ours – mercifully. I used the volume in 1978 when I took a week’s Bible Studies at WEC Kilcreggan on Mission and the Love of God.

    1978, Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, SPCK.

    I still remember reading this book chapter by chapter, aware that I was reading theological construction and reflection of a high order. Newbigin’s later stature as a leading missiologist and interpreter of the Gospel in a pluralist society, for me begins with this book. Details here and there are dated – but this is still a key text in understanding the why as well as the how of the church’s mission as God’s mission.

    1979, C E B Cranfield, Romans, Volume 2, ICC.

    I bought the first volume of Cranfield’s Romans, volume 1 in mint condition for 10 pence (That was 1/60th of its cover price then), in a University book-sale in 1976 – a review copy some blessed liberal didn’t want to keep. I say blessed because the book blessed me, and I’ve blessed the person who donated it, many a time. So in 1979 there was no discussion – the book to buy was the just released volume 2. Cranfield pre-dated the New Perspective on Paul, and so is now dated – but it remains a thorough, balanced, exegetical commentary in the classic enlightened Reformed tradition. The two volumes will be on my shortest short list of books to keep when life means downsizing my library.

    1980, R E O White, Christian Ethics, Volume Two. Changing Continuities.

    Again a second volume. The first was biblical, this second volume historical. They’ve since been combined in a chunky softback. They are dated now of course – but the attraction for me was that the books were based on lecture notes, and reading them I could hear the loved voice of a stern, authoritative teacher who had done his own thinking. Buying this book was a way of paying tribute to a former Principal of the College, one who’s influence went beyond what he taught.

  • Ordination date as a feast day…..?

    Being a Baptist minister is one of the defining commitments of my life as a follower of Jesus – along with being married to Sheila, caring for and being cared for by our two children, and serving God in my current vocational place in theological education within our Scottish Baptist community.

    There is a jejune fashionableness in some Christian circles today, not absent from our own Baptist tradition, to be dismissive of ordination to Christian ministry. This takes the form of talking down the importance of a ceremony of commitment where public promises are made to God, with a clear profession of faith and intent, and to which those who aspire to ministry can and should be held accountable. I find it interesting that often those who downgrade and devalue ordination, have nevertheless a high view of their own ministerial / pastoral / apostolic even! authority. Ordination far from being a ‘power statement’ is a public acknowledgement that it is God who is setting apart, it is God’s call through his Spirit that is being celebrated, and it is to the service of God in Christ, within the body of Christ, that this person is now set apart.

    This is by way of saying that the date of my ordination, August 30, is a personal feast day on the same level as August 2, 1972 when I was married, February 1951, my birthday (date witheld in case you think I’m soliciting presents), and April 16 1967 when I heard Jesus’ call and said ‘absolutely Lord!’. Every year since 1976, near the date of my ordination, I have bought myself a book to remind me Whose I am and what my life and energy are for, and to recall to Whom my gifts such as they are, and my core spiritual affections, are given. And to remind me of promises I made then which still shape and guide the way I try to follow Jesus and serve God’s people. Ordination for me was indeed about status, authority, and the special privilege of being set apart for ministry – but it was about Jesus’ status as Lord of the church, about the authority of Christ expressed in the living Christian community through the life of the Spirit. And the special privilege of ordination can never be a cause for self-congratulation, self concerned status guarding, nor can it ever, ever, be a basis for claiming authority over others. It is God’s call. In my view ordination shouldn’t be understated, dismissed as mere ceremony or irrelevant formality in an increasingly ad hoc culture, or shoulder-shruggingly put down as a mostly human acknowledgement of a ministry’s validity.

    Ordination (for me, at any rate) is a recognition of call to service, a statement of personal preparedness for that service through training and personal formation, and an enacted promise of faithfulness to Jesus Christ – Whom to follow is a life’s joy, Whom to serve is a lifestyle of self-donation to Christ as we meet Him in others, and to Whom we are accountable for what we do with who we are, as we serve the community of God’s people. So, each year, I buy a book to commemorate and to remind myself of the promises I made on a Saturday afternoon in August 1976. Looking at the list, and thinking back to the reasons I bought that book that year, is an interesting process of autobiographical review. Over the next month or so I’ll occasionally post on the books I’ve bought on my ordination feast day.

    Do Baptists have feast days? Are they Scriptural? Oh I’m sure I can find a few texts………..

  • Charlie Simpson – a quiet presence in my memory…..

    Charlie Simpson was one of the cheeriest human beings I’ve ever met. An old school Baptist minister, complete with deep dog collar, black stock, striped trousers and black jacket. He trained for the Baptist ministry just after the Second War and did much of it by correspondence with the London Bible College. Like many people going into ministry after the war when there was an acute shortage, he was fast-tracked in, and most of his life he felt the lack of a formal academic training. I met him when he was minister at Carluke Baptist, and he was the one who led me to faith in Christ. He guided my first hesitant enquiries about ministry, (less than a year after my conversion), he lent me several of his books (one of them Spurgeon’s "nae messin aboot’" approach to baptism, called Much Water and Believers Only!). He was also one of the first Christians who modelled a love for learning, a passion for books, and the importance of continuing personal development. Remember this was in 1967 he had no degree – no diploma – just a man in love with God, and determined to serve God with the best he could be.

    Two further early memories of Charlie Simpson the lover of God who happened also to be a book-lover, which have influenced me subtly but permanently. The year I was converted (1967 – forty years ago), he persuaded me to go to Filey Christian Holiday Camp. I still remember the embarrassment, the strange world of big gatherings and having to drink bucketsful of Christian devotional cordial concentrate. BUT – I also remember Charlie took me into the humungous Book Tent and I stood there like Moses gazing at the promised land – except in my case I’ve been allowed to go in and possess it. I wandered around, picked up what I think was the first commentary I’d ever handled, and Charlie bought it for me. It was John Stott’s Tyndale Commentary on John’s Epistles, hardback. I still have it. He told me that he always had a commentary on his desk that he was slowly working through, and he encouraged me to read my bible using a well informed guide. And so, from then till now, I have been a commentary reader.

    And then there was the time, near the end of my ministry training, I went into Charlie and Nettie’s house in Knightswood, Glasgow, and Charlie came to gloat over his new purchase. It was the Baker Dictionary of Christian Ethics. It was 500 pages of double column text covering loadsa stuff. I was impressed and, by now as bad (or as good) as he was, decided I needed to get one as soon as I could afford the £6 – which by the way was expensive in 1975. Then Charlie said something which ever since, I’ve refused to forget, and which probably contributes to my ongoing love for learning and desire for God. This wonderfully cheerful, spiritually serious man of curious intellect, hefted the book in both hands and said, ‘I’m going to read this. I’m going to start at A and work my way through to Z’. It turned out that Charlie read reference books. Oh, he knew they were for consulting. That they were the quick route to the essential information. But he also knew, that if you want an overview of a subject, if you want to know where your gaps are, if you want to have a mind stored with the salient issues, the varied perspectives, and the relevant arguments, then there was nothing to beat a systematic browse through a recognised reference book. The New Bible Dictionary, and the New Bible Commentary, and the Baker’s Dictionary of Practical Theology, and the New International Dictionary of the Christian Church were amongst the goodly land he traversed from Ararat to Zion, from Agape to Zeal, from Abelard to Zwingli.

    Charlie Simpson raised my intellectual awareness and nurtured my love for books. But more than that; the gleam in the eye and the heft of a heavy book, and the anticipated hour or two at the desk with a book it would take a long time to finish, but which would feed his faith and increase his mind’s capacity for the truth of God, showed a 17 year old retro ned, that study is a way of loving God. From that first Spurgeon book on baptism, and Stott’s Tyndale Commentary, and Baker’s Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Charlie, that self-taught, well read, disciplined scholar (he would have laughed at the word scholar predicated of himself, but I reckon I’m now qualified enough to recognise one when I see one), who was my pastor and friend, has been a quiet presence in my memory. He is in the front row of that section of the great crowd of witnesses nearest where I am on the track. And if the communion of saints means anything at all, then he is likely to be cheering cheerfully and wanting to know what commentary I’m reading.

    51qz4afx6xl__aa240_ I tell you all this for two reasons. First, people like Charlie Simpson shouldn’t be forgotten. Through an honest ministry conducted with a total absence of self-advertisement, who knows how many souls were touched, lives turned and minds made up for following Jesus? He is a central loved presence in my testimony. Second, in the 40th year since Charlie led and guided me to Jesus, and just under 30 years since he died, I am going to do something in his memory. I’m going to read a reference book, from A to Z, Abelard to Zwingli. The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought is a mega-book – 808 pages, 27.7 x 22.6 x 5.8 cm (that’s big!). Now and again, I’ll use one of the articles to blog – just to map my progress from relative ignorance to the promised land of knowing some stuff! Hope my wanderings won’t take forty years.

  • Held in the nexus of a sane trust

    On Sunday I offered some initial reflections on pastoral and theological responses to those who suffer from Alzheimer’s, dementia or other conditions which impair their sense of self, and frustrate their capacity to relate to others and to God.

    51vvka0g6jl__bo2204203200_pisitbdp5 I was encouraged to think about this further while reading David Willis, Clues to the Nicene Creed, and his chapter on what believing means. This slim book is a gem of accessible theology – (see sidebar). Describing how hard it is at times to believe, and how life circumstances, inner changes, and yes, certain forms of affective disability and mental ill health, can make personal faith all but impossible, Willis argues something very close to the last two paragraphs of my post on Sunday. Here’s what he writes, knitted together from three pages:

    Faith is knowing by heart the one on whose heart all the members of his body rely. When we feel overwhelmed by doubt…we do not feel God to be in our hearts; but that does not mean that God ever ceases to have us in his heart. Our faith – as trusting knowledge of God’s benevolence is not faith in our faith, nor heartfelt experience of our experience…..

    In fact almost as often as not, believers get guided, comforted, compelled, and sustained from day to day by other members of Christ’s body. There are times when we are dependent on what I think we must recognise as the vicarious faith of the community. Often the community trusts on our behalf. We need to recognise – rejoice in, let ourselves be helped by – that vicarious trust of the community to which we belong, in season and out.

    All I am insisting on in recognising the comforting reality of the vicarious faith of the community is that since we are united to Christ in his body and since it is finally Christ’s own fidelity on which we rely and who is the author and finisher of our faith, even in our most forlorn and apparent unbelief, we do not fall out of the nexus of sane trust…..The good news includes the belief that ultimately, no matter how far away and with what unimagined twist, the only inevitable thing is sovereign love.  (pages 25-27).

    Saints Maybe our insistence on faith as personal responsive trust, as an individual, cognitive and volitional response to Christ, can be pushed so far that we overlook those who, for many reasons best known to God, cannot, or do not, believe and trust in such a self conscious, publicly acknowledged way. Yet they are still loved, held, incorporated within the purposes of God’s gracious and sovereign love – and it may be that an important priestly role of all those believers who insist on ‘the priesthood of all believers’, is to hold all those for whom faith comes hard if at all, within the vicarious faith of the community. And perhaps in such cases, the prayer ‘ Lord I believe, help Thou mine unbelief’, could become, less selfishly and more generously, ‘Lord we believe, help Thou their unbelief’. Because in that vicarious faith, those for whom faith and trust as experience of God is at present impossible, will be enfolded in love, and treasured in hope, within a community where no one’s life is hopeless, no person is unloved, and all are faithfully held and cannot fall out of the nexus of a sane trust.

  • Why worship leaders should read Karl Barth

    Lord we just pray that you’ll just undertake to move the hearts, Lord, of those who just open their mouths to pray Lord, without taking time just to think Lord, of what it sounds like, Lord. Lord it’s just so hard to be part of a congregation being led in prayer by someone Lord, who just doesn’t understand how difficult it is to really worship you when the one supposed to be leading our prayers just doesn’t know where the prayer is going, Lord. Lord we pray that you’ll just…………zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

    396274 Caricatures are seldom fair. But they are seldom completely untrue. I was reminded of some of the more forgettable prayers offered up front in worship when reading a wee bit of Karl Barth on public prayer as the prayer of the Church. Talking of the extemporary prayers of ‘officiating ministers’ Barth barely hides his scorn for the unprepared verbiage that passed in his day (and now in ours) for ‘leading in prayer’:

    ‘In many of the Free churches the extemporary prayer of the officiating minister is substituted for the prescribed form. But there is not much advantage  in this if it is understood as a personal expectoration of the thought of the moment. For, exceptions apart, it is hard to see how even a serious minister can claim the right and competence to expect the congregation to accept his momentary(!) prayer-thoughts as though they rested on divine inspiration…..

    Perhaps the solution is for the minister to make ‘extemporary’ prayer no less an object of serious and careful preparation than the proclamation of the Word of God, and both with the same regard to the congregation, to its historical connexion with the earlier Church and to its need for a certain stability of form. The minister’s task – a real task which must on no account be left to momentary inspiration, would then consist in leading the congregation afresh each Sunday in relation to each sermon and situation, in the one age-long prayer.

    There is need that the question…should be discovered and taken up by congregations no less than ministers as a burning question which it is not merely a matter of taste and judgement but of life and death. In prayer even less than in other things…[the Church] should not be asleep but awake.’

    Church Dogmatics, III.4, 114-5.

  • Community Theologians and the Miracle of the non grasping God

    Evelyn Underhill, one of the more spiritually subtle, perceptive Anglican spiritual writers, spoke of un-selfing the self. She didn’t mean denial of self, but the surrender of self-interest, self concern and self-promotion as the controlling motivations in Christian devotion and service. She was far too shrewd to be taken in by all the disclaimers that can be invented; that self-denial is psychologically damaging or diminishing; that leadership is about charisma, authority, and effective strategic thinking; that there is a proper love of self; that self-esteem is good and lack of it is bad.

    Hanna17  If all these points are true what does it mean that the one who was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped? And why DID Paul place this great hymn of humble sovereignty and exalted servant-hood, smack bang in the middle of a letter about disunity and dangerously self-centred attitudes? (Philippians 2.1-11). Just look at the community descriptions and community exhortations that lead into this sublime statement of divine condescension, this hymn about the miracle of the non-grasping God:

    The Community Descriptions

    • Encouragement from being united with Christ
    • Comfort from Christ’s love
    • Fellowship with the Spirit
    • Tenderness and compassion towards each other

    The Community Exhortations

    • Likeminded, same love, one in spirit and purpose
    • In humility count others better than yourselves
    • Not only your own interests but those of others
    • Do everything without complaining

    The Community’s Defining Call

    • Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling
    • God is at work within you…to do his purpose
    • Shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life

    Now whatever else those community descriptors mean, they are a call to Christ-like kenosis. They describe what un-selfing the self might look like. And they tackle head on attitudes that very easily attach themselves to common forms of leadership, approaches to ministry and claims to authority within the Christian community. And their contradiction isn’t an argument  but a theology rooted in the truth of who Christ is, and the nature of redeeming love as self-giving and non grasping.

    300pxchrist_of_saint_john_of_the_cr The community theologian is one who embodies and lives the truth of Christ, the self-emptying, non-grasping One whose authority is defined by obedience to the Father and whose Lordship is the victory of love. But then, the community of Christ is made up of all those called to the same kenotic lifestyle, to the taking up of the cross, to the reckless losing of life for Christ’s sake and the Gospel’s – that’s what Paul means by being stars in a dark universe…holding out the word of life. The community theologian is one called, by God and by the community, to think out and help them think out, what working out their own salvation with fear and trembling might mean for THIS community; called too, to remind and encourage that it is God who is at work to will and do according to His purpose; called to hold out the word of life, proclaim the gospel of redeeming and reconciling love in a world where redemptive conciliation seems beyond human grasp – and must therefore come by divine gift.

    The community theologian’s thinking isn’t therefore imposed on the community, but arises from good questions, creative conversations, biblical reflection, prayerful listening, – all of these are communal activities and spiritual disciplines of those who covenant together to follow after Christ.

    .

    Working out our own salvation with fear and trembling…. And God at work amongst us to will and do according to His purpose – two theological assumptions that define the theological community and the work of the community theologian – fear and trembling, God at work…fear and trembling because God IS at work – and because GOD is at work, amongst of all people US, and of all times NOW.

    .

    The Community theologian heightens our awareness of divine activity in our all too human forms of community – and does so by reminding us, with the gentle persistence of scottish drizzle on a June day in the Trossachs, of the grace, kenosis and non-grasping love of God in Christ, who ’emptied himself of all but love’.