lurchersontheedge

It is with prayer and silence that difficult decisions need to be made. Silence creates space for healthy and holy listening. Perhaps that is what keeping a holy Lent can enable: space, in which attentive listening can begin.

I am inspired to blog because of a church member’s commitment to blog during Lent. His can be found at http://entheosbg.wordpress.com/.

Lent is a time for taking stock. I will be taking stock over why I am so busy.

lurcher

I am going to be local and just try to assess what might have been achieved in the Parish (Anglican) of St Michael and All Angels, Bartley Green in 2010.

January saw our first ever ecumenical engagement during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with an expressed desire to do more of the same during the year. Needless to say that did not happen. In the first month of the year also, we had an open PCC meeting with around 40 people present as we sought to look at the Bishop of Birmingham’s Transforming Church iniative. Lots of good ideas and postivity. In September, we launched Messy Church as a direct result of this meeting.

March saw Lent Groups – another alleged first – and then during Holy Week, we journeyed to the Cross together, eating, studying and worshipping.

April saw our affiliation agreement with Bartley Green school launched. Church members have been into school to take part in lessons, and I am actively involved in teaching PSHE, governance and assemblies. On the whole, it is positive, although I have to admit my Christmas assembly was awful.

June and July saw our Transition Project, led by a local artist, involving all the primary school children moving to Bartley Green. It was appreciated by the primaries and also, I think, by BGS.

September was the launch of Messy Church (www.messychurch.org.uk), which was well attended and has helped us be in touch regularly with 3 to 5 additional families. St Michael’s also took part in Back to Church Sunday.

October saw our Patronal activities with a concert in church – rock band, school choirs, messy church, organ recital etc.

November saw remembrance – the beginning of advent and then into December for Christmas.

We have – I have – been busy! We have had new people come – some have stayed; others have not. We have looked outwards; although cultivating a culture of welcome is not at all easy at times. Yet, should we have done more…. perhaps should we have done less.

We have of course journeyed with people in sadness and gladness; supported and (sadly) forgotten them. We have tried to be constant.

I cannot help think that we have not achieved all that much…. I have not achieved all that much; then again how do you measure being and doing church on the edge.

I am – allegedly – writing a course on the Revelation to St John the Divine to be delivered in the summer at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham. I am not making much progress.

One of the key texts I am reading at present is Eugene Petersen’s Reversed Thunder. He makes the observation that John is to be seen as a prophet, poet and pastor. John the Divine was and is on the edge. He was on the edge of the Roman world, exiled in Patmos, and part of his corpus, Revelation has been described by D H Lawrence no less as the ‘Judas of the New Testament’. I say corpus as I am one of few who still think that the writer of the Fourth Gospel and the Revelation are one and the same.

Eugene Petersen uses the description ‘poet’ as for him poets are makers of meaning. Certainly John the Divine was making meaning. One of the most poignant passages in Revelation 5 describes how Jesus is seen as the powerful Lamb, which brings a smile to this interpreter’s face as I imagine this Lamb being held up as a rival to Caesar, and yet seemingly is still vulnerable.

Priests in the Church of England make meaning as well. I hope that is what I am doing when I baptise or conduct funerals. I hope too that as I wander around and wonder that I make meanings for people.

The edge is a good place to make meanings. The edge is the periphery or the boundary. At boundaries meanings are often made. Heres to making more of them.

Between my colleague and myself, when Christmas Eve arrives, we will have conducted eleven funerals in 10 days (less if you discount the intervening weekend).

Each funeral was a tragedy, even when death was described as a release. I happen to be with the Apostle Paul that death should be described as an ‘enenmy’. No one who has heard the final ‘wail’ of someone grieving when curtains close or do not close in a chapel following the prayer of committal will not have had their common humanity touched to the core.

I wonder how others cope with such a touching?

To those of my generation of a certain musical persuasion, the edge is, naturally, part of great rock band U2. To those who would share my gentle evangelical catholic spirituality, the edge embraces the place that Jesus of Nazareth seems to have occupied during his life and ministry.

I am on the edge for a number of reasons: I am in Bartley Green, which is an outer estate area of the edge of Birmingham. I am on the edge of that estate because as one of the members of my congregation puts it, ‘you have too many books to live around here’. In English terms, I am a middle class educated professional living in a working class patch. I am also on the edge because I am a priest. Priests within the Church of England used to be at the centre. That is not true anymore, we are sometimes sought out for spiritual wisdom; although people tend sadly to go elsewhere for such resources instead of to Christian ministers.

The edge is a good place to be. It can be uncomfortable, but you can with such a view from being on the edge see much more than from residing in the middle. With such sight, words can be spoken after ears have listened.

I am glad to be on the edge… what about you?

I am a priest in the Church of England. I find I enjoy being a priest. I am not particularly interested in some of the current debates going on within the Church of England or wider Anglican Communion. This is not because I do not care, but at present they deviate from what I see as my primary goal, and incidentally the primary goal of the Church, which is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What is this Gospel? It is that ultimately God loves people and is there for people, alongside people, and this has been especially revealed in Jesus Christ.

Why is this website so named? I have two lurchers who keep me sane, and we live on the edge of Birmingham. I like living on the edge; it suits my personality to be on the edge looking in; sometimes going into the middle but not have to stay there.

Enough for now.

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!