My DTh Thesis Abstract

Paul Bradbury Christianity, mission, Pioneer ministry, theology , , , ,

I recently completed my DTh and successfully defended it at a viva examination. A number of people have asked what its about. Others have asked if they might read it at some point.

I have a few corrections to make to the thesis before I have officially passed and before the thesis will be made publicly available. Eventually it will be available online. However it you would like to receive a pdf version by email please email me: revpaulbradbury@gmail.com and I will add you to a distribution list.

Becoming a becoming church: a conversation between dynamic ecclesiology and the practice of pioneers in the Church of England.

Abstract

Following the 2004 report Mission Shaped Church, pioneer ministry has developed into a significant element of the Church of England’s missional ecclesiological practice. However, more recently, central funding designed to enable local mission has given priority to models of congregational church planting. This research begins with an exploration of the theological roots of this preference for ecclesial models. To do this formal sources of theology are engaged with in conversation with insights from the field of complex adaptive systems. A process of theological action research (TAR) is then used to develop a constructive practical-theological account of the practice of pioneers. By bringing the earlier, more formal theological approach into conversation with empirical data from pioneer practice an account of a ‘practical ecclesiology of emergence’ is then described. This account is characterised firstly, by the creation of ‘spaces of open dialogue’ where conversation between the church and people in the local context enables a collaborative participation in the missio Dei, and secondly, by the trust and attention that pioneers give toward the presence and agency of the Holy Spirit in-between the relationships developing in community. In this account the formation of new ecclesial communities takes place over time by a process of emergence. The thesis argues that this practical ecclesiology is faithful to the nature of the church as a becoming within the movement of God’s Spirit in creation. The movement of the Spirit invites the church to participate in the divine revelatory space between the ‘given and the found’, between the givenness of normative theology and practice and the foundness of the world.  Pioneer ministry enables the church to attend to this space and serves the church as a becoming. For these reasons its contribution within the Church of England should be valued, supported and resourced.

Moving On

Paul Bradbury Uncategorized

This is a short note to say I’ve decided to venture into the world of Substack. It seems a good blend of what Twitter used to offer, until it became toxic, and a blog which I continue to want to develop as a way of being accountable to the call to think and write. I see now that I’ve been writing on here for over 10 years which is remarkable really. Its been a great space to test ideas and develop a craft. But I feel its run course.

If you would like to continue to engage with my writing you can find me on Substack here: https://substack.com/@paulbradbury1

Hope to see you there.

Paul

Trust in the Slow (and local) work of God

Paul Bradbury mission , , , ,

The following is a talk I recently gave to a conference in Bristol. I began by reading a ‘pioneer parable’ called The Lighthouse.

I want to start with 2 images/stories of the church in relation to our culture in the west.

The first one was explored in that parable. The aim of that parable was to invite people into a story in a way that disrupts how we think and how we imagine the church in the world.

The inspiration for it came from a local landmark in Dorset called Clavell Tower. Clavell Tower was moved 10 m in from a cliff which is still eroding rapidly. And when I first walked past it I remember thinking: how many years does 10m of cliff buy you?

Image

In the parable the sea and storms that cause cliff erosion in the parable acts as a metaphor for some of the forces at work in our western culture. These forces are huge. They invite something far more radical and imaginative than moving the architecture a bit and carrying on a before.

The second one is another landmark near me in Dorset. Knowlton Church. It happens to be on my route between Poole and Salisbury so from time to time I stop there.

It seems to tell in one place a spiritual narrative of the UK. An ancient place of some ceremonial significance, 2 concentric earthen rings. Then the coming of Christianity, the placing of a church in the middle of those rings (you can debate the extent it was welcomed, imposed on, or dialogued with the pre-Christian culture of the time). This very traditional piece of architecture, still very recognisably a church, is roofless and eroding into the soil. However, on the very edge of the rings there are two yew trees, trees with ancient religious association – which are now a focus for prayers, memorials, candles and other motifs of spiritual practice.

Image

The church has been decentred. And the trees which were perhaps a marker to point people to the centre of spiritual and communal life, are now expressive of a diffuse, but sincere spiritual search.

Many of you will have read the recent report from research done by the Bible Society. ‘A Quiet Revival’ argues that Christian practice (church going, bible reading, praying) has gone up markedly amongst the GenZ age group. When I read that report, and many of the comment pieces following it – the thing I heard most of all (reading as it were between the lines) was a large sigh of relief.

 It was as though, despite all the things that we’ve been told for a very long time that church ‘isn’t working’ this research seemed to imply – “hold on tight, don’t’ give up yet – the tide is turning.” And whilst there were various recommendations in the report about how the church might practically respond – I think my sense was that that sigh of relief was an expression of that posture which kind of says, ‘cultural trends come and go, staying true to being the church as we are will win out in the end.’ In other words there isn’t much we need to do except stay true to our tradition and wait for the tide to turn.

And it may be that the tide, or perhaps its better to say, one current in our complex culture in the west, is drawing people to church. And I would absolutely want to rejoice in that. However, I do not think it should dissuade us from continuing to listen very deeply to the culture in which we find ourselves and be willing to adapt, innovate and to work creatively and imaginatively to respond in faithful ways to what we hear.

In his book Found Theology Ben Quash argues that the revelation of God to us is at its most fundamental ‘an ongoing historical dynamic whereby, in God, human beings are constantly invited to relate the given to the found’. What does that mean? Well I think it means first of all that what we might call the revelation of God is always somehow mediated by experience. We form our understanding of God through encounter – that may well be encounter with scripture, or tradition (ie going to church, learning the principles of the Christian creed etc) but encounter nevertheless. (And of course Scripture and tradition are expressions of more primal encounter with Jesus’ ministry and in particular the cross and resurrection events.)  

And all this encounter happens in the context of our own life and culture. And as individuals, but most importantly as communities, we are constantly relating the given of the Christian faith to the found nature of our lives. We are constantly asking – OK, so how does the Christian gospel, the life of this Christian community, my life as a disciple of Jesus – how does it relate to this new piece of information, this new experience, this new encounter? Have we learnt something new here? Is this revelation? What new bit of the journey am I being invited into here? In what ways are we as a community of faith in this place being shaped by this experience, this encounter?

What Quash is saying – and what I believe passionately – is that the ongoing life of the church is the expression of that dynamic. Read the book of Acts – and what is it except the early disciples seeing the church emerge, see it morph and change and grow, through the dynamic between the given of their tradition and this new encounter with the risen Jesus. And then the dynamic continues as the church encounters Gentile believers who’ve received the Spirit – the givens of Judaism being challenged and ultimately adapted by what has been found as the Spirit of mission extends the church into new cultural contexts.

So I don’t want to be cynical about the possibility of a Quiet Revival – after all the heart of that research is the same as mine, to listen to what is going on in our culture (the found) and communicate that to the established church (the given) in order that it might faithfully respond.  But don’t think for a minute that the conclusions of the Quiet Revival, particularly the headline picked up the church press, mean that all is well, the tide is turning. The cultural currents of this strange new world are complex and mysterious and need an ever closer attention to the conversation between the given and the found, and not just through reports, but through ministry. Through the sorts of things many of us are doing in our contexts.

Today has been called ‘Mission in a Strange New World’ – which is a good title because I hope it guards against the expectation that says – once we’ve figured out the kind of new culture that we are in we can find some kind of magic bullet response to getting back to business as usual. I hope it rather says that we are more like exiles, and aliens in a foreign and strange land – the cultural landscape under our feet has undergone an earthquake, the cliff is collapsing beneath us,  and everything is now strange. I hope it invites a deep humility about our disposition as the church in our culture.

What I think is ours to do, as the church, is not to look for the answers, not to look for certainty, not to look for the next universal solution – but to look for signs of life. Stories, movements, examples of hope that point toward the future in a prophetic way. Not in a way that says – if we all just do this, our fortunes will be revived! – that’s not (I don’t think) the prophetic tradition. The prophetic tradition is to look for deserts blooming, mountains being laid low, lions lying down with lambs, these visible icons of life in the wilderness that help us navigate into the future. Things that say – I don’t know the totality of what the future looks like, but this is a sign of how to get there.

For example, as we began to emerge from the worst experiences of the Covid pandemic I started to notice something. My attention was drawn more and more to networks of small missional communities in various places across the country. Its hard to say what the connection between Covid and the higher profile of these communities was. Perhaps they had started during that time, or grown – or perhaps the debate around the nature of church had surfaced their story. Either way I decided to spend some time travelling and speaking to people leading these networks of small Christian communities. And what I suppose I hoped to do was get a sense of what (if any) insight these communities might be offering for the wider church? Ie what is this expression of church tapping into that means they are becoming more common and growing?

There’s lots I could say on this – but I want to offer two areas of reflection in particular.

The first one is about place. One of the common features of these communities is their commitment to particular places – sometime very particular places, a few streets, a small village. This comes in the context of the west experiencing what you might call the triumph of space over place. Consumer capitalism with its need to universality, more reproducibility, for efficiency – has erased particularity and replaced it with standardised offers which reduce place to a kind of neutral space in which goods may be exchanged. So modernity has little interest in history, story and the particulars of place – it is simple interested in the landscape as a potential resource for generating products, delivering sales, maximising outputs etc. A prime example of that is the way in which so many high streets look the same, with the same brands of shop churning out the same stuff from one end of the country to the other. We also build spaces in which to live conveniently next to transport hubs so we can commute to work and fly abroad on holiday, and so we can sell property – but give little or no attention to what makes a place where connections and relationship thrive.

And yet, through Covid I believe we all got a taste of place again – of neighbourhood, of solidarity with others, of the ties that enable care and creativity at a local level. And that this is good! This is part of what it means to be human – not the disconnected, fragmented experience of space that modernity has brought to bear on us.

And I wonder if what missional communities are exploring, and (if you like) betting on, is the enduring commitment of God to place. The enduring commitment of God to the particular – to this place – this obscure, rough, marginal, unheralded, inconsequential place even. And  what they are therefore betting on, or responding to, is that fullness of life, is in part a rooted life, a life in community and in place. Now of course you might say (particular if you’re Anglican) – well that’s what the parish system is all about! Absolutely! And perhaps what we might be seeing in some cases is a reimagination of the idea, the vocation of parish, for a new era.

The second one is about time. One of the experiences of our age is what you might call an experience of acceleration. A sense that everything is getting faster and faster. That more and more is expected or demanded of people in our culture than we can possibly have time to do. John Swinton, in his book Becoming Friends of Time,  talks about the way time has been turned into a commodity, a thing, and put to use in our modern age of industrialisation and consumer capitalism. But really time is a creature. A fundamental part of the fabric of God’s creation. By commodifying time we have abstracted time from its place in the complexity of the creation. We no longer live in what would have been understood previously as ‘God’s time’ – ‘sacred time’. We have become in Swinton’s words ‘people who think we have to fit God in rather than fit in with what God is doing.’

So many of our churches are places of acceleration. Frenetic places of activity, engaging in the culture of acceleration where we have to compete for people’s time and attention in a fierce market. This provides a dilemma for the church. Do we engage with the culture in this way or provide a prophetic alternative to it? We may need to do both. But I sense in the rise of missional communities a move to do the latter. The communities I spoke to are small, trying to do less, trying to do Christian community well – integrating discipleship and mission in the context of communal life and witness. Tring to live in God’s time.  

I recently read James Rebanks‘ new book The Place of Tides – if you don’t know James Rebanks, he’s Lakeland farmer who writes about farming, the land, place and is a vocal exponent of regenerative agriculture. In this book he spends a summer on a remote island off the north western of coast of Norway with a woman who is one of the last people continuing the traditional industry of producing duck down from eider ducks. ‘Duck islands’ and ‘duck farmers’ were once part of a major industry and way of life in Norway. But like so many traditional rural industries it is dying. But Rebanks finds something inspiring and important in this woman’s determination to revive one of the former duck islands. She is an older woman, close to retirement. She has sought no recognition for her work. And nothing about her appearance or manner seeks reward, or status. She does it out of conviction that its necessary. And as you read this book you start to believe in this woman’s mission and side with her. Start to lament for the loss of a craft which paid such loving attention to the environment and the sacred nature of the sea.

And this book moved me deeply. And I thought why is this book so powerful? Maybe I’m just getting sentimental as I get older! Maybe its just pure nostalgia. Afterall when the future looks uncertain or strange nostalgia for the familiar is a common response. But I don’t think its either of those. I believe this story is a prophetic story. In this story of one woman’s apparent fight to keep alive a tradition you start to realise that some of what we have lost in the modern era are precisely what we are going to have to rediscover and reimagine for the era we are entering.  The story acts as lens on between the past and the future and says there are some things about the past that we urgently need to help navigate the landscape of the future.

Why is this important for people like us? Local ministers, pioneers, entrepreneurs, people exploring mission in a strange world and in name of Christ? Well because I imagine that many of us may feel that what we are doing is small and insignificant. Maybe we feel like the duck woman, carrying on the vocation on the margins wondering if anyone is noticing. Maybe we just wonder if what we feel called to do is a rather weak cry of lament, or a cry of protest in the face of some of the forces we are up against in this world we are in.

But I would say that that feeling of smallness, of insignificance is itself a legacy of that same culture. A culture which seems always to seek the universal, to do everything on a grand scale, where growth and significance are the criteria of success. And besides  the testimony of the gospels it seems to me is the prophetic power of the particular – that this encounter between Jesus and Peter’s mother-in-law, or the woman at the well, or with a Jewish leader, or woman suffering from lifelong bleeding – as much as bringing life to that person, to that community, has the prophetic power to point others to new possibilities, and to wider transformation.

Many of you – perhaps most of you – are involved in a faithful, committed, patient ministry that God has called you to. And this is precisely what I believe the future requires. Modernity searched for models of practice that could be reliably replicated efficiently in every place, as though place didn’t matter. But the complexity of the future requires a return to place, to particularity. To each of us faithfully and patiently doing what we are called to do by God in the place in which are.  And in that to trust that not only does it bring life to that small corner of humanity in which we minister – but it points to others – it has a prophetic power that we can only trust God will use by his Spirit. 

So I just want to finish with three encouragements to us as we end today:

  1. Stay faithful to your particular call. Don’t lose heart. Be patient. Be prayerful.
  2. Tell your story. Its unique. Because your place is unique and God works out his purposes in the particular. The telling of stories is the way in which the power of prophetic action can amplify and bring transformation in other places. An telling your story is different from telling people how to do what you have done or are doing. Tell your story without necessarily trying to systematise it, or turn it into a model – let your unique find its voice – in that way it can retain its prophetic gift for others.
  3. Commit yourself to conversation with others. Conversations like today. Don’t get so busy that this kind of thing gets squeezed out. Because to keep making sense of what we are encountering in our ministry we need to talk to one another. We need communities of discernment to help one another understand what God is doing as we journey into the future. And it is in prayer and conversation together that we help one another discern.

I want to close by reading as a prayer for each other this reflection from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called Trust in the Slow Work of God.

Cutting down trees – public safety or outsourcing?

Paul Bradbury Society

Once more the cutting down of an ancient tree makes headline news. This time the identity of the lumberjack is clear. And justification is given for the motive. Toby Carvery’s response to the outcry at the felling of magnificent oak tree that still had perhaps 200 years of life left was that it was causing a risk to customers.

As ever the lines of debate seem drawn. Between ecologists on the one hand who see the wanton elimination of a beautiful tree as yet another example of our alienation from nature. And on the other, economists and business leaders who see the attention given to obstacles such as trees (or bat colonies, or rare newts) as a case of simply getting our priorities wrong. We can’t let the odd tree get in the way of economic growth and the jobs that that will inevitably deliver. 

But drawing lines like this in such binary ways will only result in a kind of ideological stand-off between one moral take and another. After all both the ecologist and the economists see their position as morally defensible. The ecologists advocate for the health of the planet in which we all live, whilst economists stand up for the health of a society which must find ways of providing for its citizens. Both, in a way, are advocating for the well-being of people, but perhaps putting different things at the heart of what makes for a good life.

I wonder if such instances, and the moral impasses they throw up are part of a deeper issue. I recently heard a social commentator explore the theme of outsourcing. Yes, outsourcing of labour to different part of the globe, outsourcing of elements of a company to another company etc etc. But also the outsourcing of our navigation abilities to something like Google maps. And the outsourcing of our thinking and reflection to AI (why take time to think and reflect on something when you can get an AI summary of a complex topic in a few seconds?). In the time its taken me to write this so far I’ve had to twice resist an offer from co-pilot to rewrite a sentence!

What has outsourcing go to do with cutting down trees? Toby Carvery argued that the reason they had to cut down the tree was due to safety concerns from its customers. Which is code for – we ‘might get sued if a branch falls on a customer’s head’. And we no doubt think this is corporate risk aversion gone mad. But people do sue companies for such things happening. So it’s a culture of litigation – yes – but isn’t it also a culture whereby we outsource our willingness to reflect and evaluate risk ourselves and outsource it whoever owns or is responsible for the space we are in?

What outsourcing does is shift things from relationships of solidarity and common concern to relationships of contract. Outsourcing means we have a contractual relationship with someone where they will deliver what we might otherwise have provided for ourselves in exchange for something material. The basis of the production of a good is dehumanised, and alienated from relationship to some degree every time a step of outsourcing is taken.

The alternative to a relationship of contract is a relationship of covenant. Covenant is a common bond of solidarity and concern where the relationship becomes more important than any goods that the relationship might provide for either party. And covenant works when we put our whole selves in loving kindness and service into a relationship for the benefit of the other. In covenant both parties benefit through relationship without having to itemise every benefit.

It seems to me the creeping impact of outsourcing, the colonising contractualisation of more and more areas of social solidarity is the deeper issue at stake in moments like this. There was a time when communities recognise the common risk they all held together in the course of life in a dangerous world. That risk was shared, and the work to minimise that risk was shared. As was the care for those at risk, and those who had suffered despite all efforts to remain safe.

When Covid hit and many of complex chains of outsourcing were severed for a time it felt like we rediscovered the gift of shared community for a time and experience its mysterious and surprising benefits.

So this is not about a choice between the environment or the economy – but a choice about how we want live. How do we want to manage the reality of our interconnectedness? When we are alienated from ourselves, and the creation on which our lives are dependant, when, in our state of alienation, we outsource our relationships of solidarity to soulless lines of contractual obligation we will keep cutting down ancient trees – because the logic of contract makes it so.

Fermented beetroot and the gift economy

Paul Bradbury Christianity, Nature, Society , , ,

Recently the veg box delivery provided us with two large beetroot. A week later we still had one of the beetroot, only it was starting to look soft and unappealing. I confess we are increasingly the kind of people who assuage our guilt by keeping things in the fridge or storage cupboard until they can be composted or thrown away. On this occasion however the soft beetroot was destined for neither. I’d been meaning to try out a recipe for fermented beetroot and now was the perfect opportunity. Two weeks later and I have a large jar of quite vigorously bubbling shredded beetroot which is starting to ooze bright purple juice onto the kitchen table. The beetroot itself tastes sweet, tart and complex. Not something to eat large amounts of in a single sitting. And I have quite a lot of it. At this point I notice a little surge of excitement. Not just that I have transformed something that was destined for the compost heap into something remarkably edible. But that this is a gift perfect for distribution to others.

Image

As it happens, whilst my beetroot was quietly being transformed by the power of salt and bacteria, I had been reading The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Following the huge success of Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer was asked if she would write a book on the economy, a subject she confessed to having little knowledge or understanding of. She turned to nature for inspiration. And found it in the serviceberry, a tree which produces abundant quantities of fruit for birds and humans alike. Her neighbour’s invitation to her and others to come onto to their mixed farm and pick serviceberries for free acts a metaphor for an alternative economy to the capitalist, transactional and scarcity-based economy that now dominates the globe. The gift economy is an economy based on mutuality, reciprocity and abundance –  on the gift of creation and on humanity’s dependence and participation in this complex flow of resources from earth to plant to animal in ways that enable all to have enough. Above all the gift economy is about relationship, about the primacy of connection, about our need for mutual dependence on one another. It is about the currency of gift and gratitude as a means of creating and sustaining connection with one another and creation. Kimmerer writes:

Image

‘I cherish the notion of the gift economy, that we might back away from the grinding system, which reduces everything to a commodity and leaves most of us bereft of what we really want: a sense of belonging and relationship and purpose and beauty, which can never be commoditized. I want to be part of a system in which wealth means having enough to share, and where gratification of meeting your family needs is not poisoned by destroying that possibility for someone else. I want to live in a society where the currency of exchange is gratitude and the infinitely renewable resource of kindness, which multiplies every time it is shared rather than depreciating with use.’

So do I.

This week, as the beetroot slowly transformed, we also met as our small intentional community, and reflected on the story of Jesus turning water into wine (Jn 2: 1-11). We circled round its many insights before a really rich conversation developed on this idea of abundance. Jesus takes water that has been poured into 6 large stone jars, ones usually used for ceremonial washing, and turns it into fine wine. The story says that Jesus’ ministry is about the replacement of a contractual, unsustainable system of sin management with the overflowing of abundant life from a divine source. Later Jesus declares that he has come ‘that you might have life and have it abundantly’. (Jn 10.10) Having this life is however not entering into some kind of contractual agreement with the supplier.  It’s about participation in the flow. Its about living abundantly. Living as though abundance at the heart of creation was not just a nice idea, but a day-to-day reality.

Kimmerer’s writing is so resonant now because we are waking up to the limitations and damaging effects of the cult of commodification to our societies and to the earth. A whole way of life is being threatened by its own inconsistencies. And it won’t disappear without a fight for its own survival. Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon this week following Trump’s inauguration as president, and the reaction to it, highlights the fundamental conflict between a politics of abundance and the politics of scarcity. Between a politics in which there is enough to offer mercy and welcome to others, and one where, under the threat of decline, the winners in the system of consumer capitalism start pulling up the drawbridges and mouthing vicious threats.  

The question, in the face of such powers, and one which Kimmerer raises, is how such an economy can possibly find space to develop and thrive. Kimmerer notes that it is in small close-knit communities that economies of gift and reciprocity often thrive. Few of us live in one of those any more. Most of us live in cities and cultures which powerfully mitigate against local connection rather than encourage it. Yet Kimmerer argues ‘intentional communities of mutual self-reliance and reciprocity are the wave of the future…’ I agree. Over 40 years ago Alistair McIntyre concluded his book on moral theology by saying ’What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the dark ages which are already upon us…We are waiting not for Godot, but for another – doubtless very different – Benedict’.

Are we are still waiting? Or perhaps we don’t need another individual like Benedict, but lots of little communities inspired by him, and by Francis, the Beguines, or by Nicholas Ferrar or Dorothy Day, and ultimately by the abundant life of Jesus at the heart of the gospels, to be communities of abundance in the midst of the world. Such communities are being formed, and in increasing numbers in a variety of places and independently. Is this a movement? A wave of the future?

If so we are part of it. Its not very dramatic. Sharing the use of a car. Giving away to one another when we have more than we need, or simply when there is a need, doesn’t seem very groundbreaking.  But its surprisingly liberating and joyful, and quite frankly fun. Because fundamentally as much as its about resources for life, its also about connection, about reintegrating our physical well-being and need with our social and spiritual well-being and need – about fullness of life. In the practise of abundance, what we might call the gift economy, we practise the reality of the Kingdom of God. In between the connections of grace and gift formed by simple acts of generosity and reciprocity, there is God – to practise the gift economy is worship, for it is to join in with the flow of life at the heart of creation which flows toward the fullness of the Kingdom.

There was a point in the process of fermenting my beetroot where it all seemed like a waste of time. Nothing was happening, and the assurance was sounding very hollow, that unseen natural bacteria would eventually get to work on this mess of oversalted vegetables. So much easier surely to head out to the supermarket and purchase a jar. I’m glad I waited.

Gated communities are the future

Paul Bradbury Society, Spirituality , ,
Image

A few years ago my next door neighbour and I battled through 30 degree heat to remove a 3-foot high brick wall which was about 6 inches inside the fence between our gardens. This wall was of course the original boundary, until the house next door erected a wooden fence just next to it. And indeed an identical 3 foot wall would have been all that stood between all the gardens of this row of Victorian/Edwardian terraced houses along the street.

Such a neighbourhood is hard to imagine now. What kind of world was this where people ventured into their back gardens only to be confronted by the neighbours!? And yet this was precisely the world people lived in. One where houses were built with the idea of community designed in. Yet in only 125 years we have somehow gone from this designed conviviality to rows and rows of 6-foot-high fences behind which the lives of our most proximate human beings can carry on in virtual complete secrecy.

Lately I have been connecting with Elizabeth Oldfield’s podcast The Sacred. In recent weeks she has been running episodes, each of which connect with a chapter in her new book Fully Alive. This book explores each of the 7 deadly sins as part of wider project to explore what lived Christian faith, fullness of life, might look like for us today. Her final chapter is the chapter on pride in which she describes pride in terms of individuality, a focus on the self, as disregard for those around us. In other words, pride is a rejection of relationality, a turning away from the human inclination and need for connection. Oldfield refers to our culture as ‘a culture of disconnection’.

I was thinking of all this recently as a friend and I created a gate in the fence between our garden and those of our newest neighbours. These new neighbours are friends of ours, and also members of our missional community, Reconnect. They have recently moved into a house around the corner whose garden shares a boundary with ours. Our commitment together, along with another person who lives not far away, is to explore what living, praying and serving together in this community might look like. We have made a garden room into a chapel, agreed a rhythm of prayer and started to eat together regularly. Together we are involved in the community in lots of ways, and are also leading on the creation of two community gardens, one in the street, and another in the grounds of a local church.

Image
Image
Image
Image

There is a hunch I think, in us as a group, that the invitation from Jesus to life as a community of missionary disciples has to be more integrated and intentional than simply turning up at church from time to time, making polite conversation with people and then going home to prepare for another week of work. And part of that intention involves making some choices that feel a little risky, a little uncomfortable, more than a little countercultural.

The gate is such a choice. It is a choice that leans into connection rather than away from it. It is choice in which you can feel the pull of the culture disconnection, which is the air we breathe, the ‘social imaginary’ in which we live.  And it is the choice which I believe leans into the truth of who we are as human beings, made in the image of a God, whose very nature is community.

I love this verse from 2 Peter:     

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature..”

2 Pet 1: 8,9

Participation in the divine nature is not a status, but a practice. It asks ‘what does it mean for me/us to live in the flow of that nature here and now?’ It asks ‘what if we put a gate between our two houses and tried to live in a more connected way?’

We are not alone in this. Another two families within Reconnect have joined their whole gardens together and invite others to share in a community meal each week where gospel stories are told and prayers prayed together. Other networks of similar communities seem to be emerging in all sorts of places. I have written about some of these in my new book In the Fullness of Time.  In a world of disconnection, where the consequences of that disconnection, with God, with each other and with creation, dominate our news and stalk our futures, these are a source of hope. Indeed some argue that in the same way that monasticism kept the flame of civilisation alive in the dark ages, such small intentional communities harbour something critical for the age we are entering now. A gate in a fence may be a small act, but it opens a door to a different kind of future. 

Image

PS My new book In the Fullness of Time is available now from Canterbury Press and other retailers. It explores responses to the crisis of decline in the inherited church using story, poetry, interviews and theological reflection.

How to start a movement (possibly)

Paul Bradbury Leadership , , ,

Not so long ago a friend said to me ‘what you’ve done Paul, is start a movement’. Which I thought was hilarious. Because it kind of implied I know what I am doing, or that what may (or may not) have emerged from anything I have ‘done’ has had some kind of pre-determined plan or strategy. The thing is that all the plans and strategies I have cooked up in my head and tried to put into practice have not worked (at least in the way I thought they ought to have done). Anything that others think I have done that has ‘worked’ has only made sense in retrospect, and in that sense its success cannot really be attributed to me.

I don’t think I started a movement. I got swept up into one. Indeed if mission is anything it is the movement from God toward the fulfilment of all things, which Jesus called the Kingdom. And we get to participate in it. This Sunday I was asked to preach on Ephesians 3. Turns out it pretty much describes Paul telling the Ephesians how he was one small part of this movement of God through Jesus to the apostles to the Gentiles, the rest of humanity and then all creation. (v 7-11) And he says ‘Although I am the less than the least of all God’s people, this grace (i.e. to preach to the Gentiles) was given to me’ (v8). Playing the part in God’s movement that Paul was called to play seems to Paul like a ridiculous, illogical surprise – a work of utter grace.

Image

And this is the thing with the movement of God’s mission. If we are sitting appropriately human-sized within them we feel constantly humble, inadequate, on the edge of chaos, overwhelmed and disturbed. So as my friend and colleague Jonny Baker once said to me “if you think you’ve got movement sussed you’ve probably just killed it!” Why? Because the movement is always bigger than our attempts to describe them. And they don’t ‘work’ when we think ourselves big enough to control them. When that happens we domesticate them or turn them into institutions.

Nevertheless I think we might be able to understand the dynamic of God’s movement that is mission to suggest some principles it and therefore a posture of leadership within it. My friend who thinks I started a movement asked me to write a side of A4 on how to start a movement. You don’t start a movement – you join in with on – but still here goes…

  1. Movements are animated by purpose and values and not by predetermined outcomes.
  2. Movements are fuelled by connection – ie by the dynamic created by lots of people oriented toward the same purpose able to talk to one another, encourage one another and learn from one another.
  3. Movements are enabled by key people who enable connections to happen – e.g. by facilitating online connections spaces, in person gatherings, by developing relationship with other key people in the network.
  4. Leadership of movements is not leadership in the sense we often mean it – think ‘gardener’ rather than ‘manager’ – it’s all about tending to the environment and trying to ensure its healthy and protected from the kind of things that might hinder growth of the movement.
  5. Leaders within movements are good storytellers – stories are another thing that fuel movements i.e. good examples of how the purpose and values of the movement are being expressed in one particular context.
  6. Leaders within movements are ‘sensemakers’ – they are able to make sense of what is happening and describe it well to others. This is both so those in the movement get a sense of the whole movement and where its going, and also so those outside the movement get a clear picture of what is happening.
  7. Leaders within movements advocate for the movement with ‘the powers that be’. I.e. there is always a wider context to any movement that will be a mixture of support and resistance. Movement leaders engage with both, drawing supporters in and engaging with those who resist a movement by advocating for the space for those in the movement to do what they do. (I’ve always gone with the maxim of St Francis that ‘the best critique of the bad is the demonstration of the good’ (or something like that!) ie don’t’ waste too much time trying to convince people, let them see the obvious good of what is being proposed.)
  8. The chief agent in any movement of God is the Holy Spirit. So the question is often – ‘how can we ensure we participate with what God is doing?’ and ‘How can we try and ensure we not hindering or domesticating what God is doing?’

Alan Bates – An Unlikely Leader

Paul Bradbury Leadership, Society , , , , , ,

Like many, even most of us, I watched the ITV docu-drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Its been incredible witnessing the impact that drama has made on public opinion, policy and ultimately )one hopes) the lives of those affected. It’s a testimony to the power of good storytelling to change things.

One thing that has not been commented on much though is the leadership of Alan Bates in the whole process. I was so stuck by the incredible way in which this unassuming man doggedly led a campaign that has achieved the impact it has. We still expect our leaders to have status, charisma, power. We still expect them to be magicians – capable of ‘hitting the ground running’, ‘turning things around’, ‘getting results’. There is an irony in this, because all these phrases, and the leadership culture they come from, are part of a corporate managerial culture which has been exposed by this whole scandal. A culture that concentrates power into the hands of a select few people and protects it from the ordinary person by any means.

Cast of ITV Drama Alan Bates vs The Post Office

Alan Bates’ leadership was counter-cultural in that respect. Perhaps prophetic of the kind of leadership we want to see, the kind of leadership we need, in the dehumanised world of hyper-modernity.

So what are the characteristics of the leadership embodies by Alan Bates in this story:

  1. Guided by a deep purpose.

There is a moment in the drama when there is decision to be made about a civil action against the Post Office. It becomes clear that the best-case scenario for each individual sub-postmaster is a pay out (if they win) of something in the region of £22k. For most this is nothing compared to what has been lost, materially and personally. There is a murmur of revolt at the thought of another long fight when the rewards may not outweigh the cost. But then Alan Bates speaks and reminds them they not fighting for money, or for compensation – ultimately they are fighting for the truth. Deeper than any material outcome in this case, is the principle of truth and justice, principles of eternal and lasting value.

Too often we lose sight, if we ever had it, of the deeper purpose of what our leadership is about. The fundamental purpose, deeper than say an annual goal, or a particular target, or a strategic aim, deeper than our personal ambition, or our ambition for our organisation or group, gets lost in the detail. What is what we are doing really about? Why are we putting our energies into this? What is the fundamental and eternal purpose which, even if we failed at this juncture, would still motivate us to keep going?

2. Patience

Patience is not a virtue we value in our culture. Some years ago I saw an advert for a new delivery service which simply said ‘Waiting. Boring.’ Our culture values speed as a moral good. To be busy is to be someone. Our culture encourages us to display our identity and worth to others through a performance of busy-ness.

Alan Bates never seemed to be in a hurry. If he had been he would have given up years ago. His wife refers to him as ‘bloody-minded’ which no doubt is true. But I think deeper than determination, or bloody-mindedness, is a resolute patience, an unwillingness to succumb to the timeframes of our culture and to set his watch perhaps by the historical timescales of social and systemic change. As Martin Luther King said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Patience in this respect is not just a virtue but a practice that schools us in the timescales of eternity.

3. Non-anxious presence

At the end of the ITV series, many of those who have been wrongly accused of theft and false accounting have their convictions quashed at the Supreme Court. They celebrate their victory outside as the TV cameras capture the moment. Watching from their home in Wales Alan Bates and his wife. ‘You should have been there’ his wife says. ‘No…its not about me’, Mr Bates replies.

Picture of Alan Bates Picture of Toby Jones

This attitude seems to me entirely in line with his leadership all the way through which exhibits a calmness, an unwillingness to resort to anger, a non-anxious presence which provides a still, yet powerful, presence throughout the campaign. The unspoken message of Alan Bates’ disposition throughout the story is one of calm, determination toward the possibility of justice. Mr Bates doesn’t need to make impassioned speeches to motivate people toward that end – he simple models it authentically in his tireless work on behalf the movement and his personal demeanour throughout.  

4. Curating space for the leadership of others.

Whilst the ITV drama was entitled ‘Alan Bates vs The Post Office’, as though one man took on the might of a monster corporation, it becomes very clear just how good Alan Bates was in bringing other people into the campaign and curating the campaign as a movement rather than a one-person crusade. A key moment exemplifies this leadership. Knowing the identities of only 7 of those affected by the scandal, Mr Bates decides to call an open meeting and invite anyone else affected to come. At random he chooses an obscure village in the midlands to hold a meeting, hires the hall and waits to see who will come. When they do come there is not great rousing speech from Bates, no clever strategy launch –  they just sit in a circle and tell their stories. And so a movement grows based on the solidarity of a shared experience of injustice.

Leadership is so often cast as being about personality. About being the kind of extraordinary person who can do heroic things on behalf of others, drawing people together by the sheer force of their charisma, or the genius of their strategy. What Alan Bates reminds us is that sometimes the most extraordinary things happen when someone sticks a pin in a map, or a stake in the ground, and says ‘lets do this together’. Leadership is about creating (and curating) the space for the participation of others, then standing on the edge and letting it happen.

‘A time of uncertainty’ – LLF, doubt and certainty.

Paul Bradbury Church of England, theology ,

I have been at General Synod of the Church of England this week, where the vast majority of the time was given to more discussions around same-sex relationships. I have found myself to be at the centre of a debate which feels like an argument between two sides, but which is I think in reality a conversation across a whole spectrum of opinion. I have sat and listened to impassioned speeches from either ends of this spectrum, at times feeling quite isolated in a position in the middle. But I wonder if actually the space in the middle of this debate is a fruitful space – because it is so often the space we inhabit as human disciples of Jesus – wrestling between our sense of conviction and our doubts and the challenges of living out those convictions in the complexity of the world. This seems to me to be a more realistic theological position to be honest about.

This position is to some extent articulated by the language the Bishops used in their latest document before Synod. The prayers of love and faith were consistently referred to as ‘a pastoral provision in a time of uncertainty’. Some call this heresy. Others a classic Anglican fudge. But theologically and ecclesiologically it seems to me to be a rather common position to take, a fair picture of the reality we are in as Christians between the inauguration and fulfilment of the Kingdom.

Image

This was therefore the gist of the speech I ventured to offer this week, which didn’t get given, but is offered here.

“Reflecting on the debate we had in this chamber in February, I went away asking the question: When a community of Christ’s disciples prays, explores Scripture and debates together – and yet comes to place of profound disagreement – what is doctrine? What do we mean by it? Who owns doctrine?’ And on what basis?

One theme of the Bible is of a people for ever succumbing to a tendency to fix the nature of God within their own limited perspective. And of a God who challenges his people to relinquish these fixed perspectives in the light of his revelation. Job in the whirlwind. Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones. Jonah in the belly of the whale. Jesus with Samaritan woman, with the Syro -Phoenician woman, Jesus on the cross, Paul on the road to Damascus. In each case the poverty of our doctrine is revealed through the revelation of experience. The Spirit continually invites us beyond our certainties into the wildness and uncertainty of the person of God. As John V Taylor said ‘The Holy Spirit has not read the rubrics’

So when we speak of ‘a period of uncertainty’. A space of disagreement. A space somewhere between the apparent certainty of doctrine and the uncertainty of its pastoral implications, I think ‘isn’t that the space we are always in?’ Is it not always the case that there is a space between our articulation of the revelation of God in Christ and our practical expression of that in the midst of the world. Is it not the case the doctrine must always be worked out with fear and trembling. Must always be held between hands that are on the one hand certain and on another doubt. As Leslie Newbigin said ‘Only statements that can be doubted make contact with reality’.

So I for one am grateful for the space the Bishops have offered us to inhabit. It may not be easy. It may not convenient. It may not fit with our timetable or plan. But it is consistent with the experience of God’s people. It is consistent with our task as pilgrim disciples and a pilgrim church, walking haphazardly into the Kingdom of God.

And its appropriate for the context we are in, one not unlike the exile where we have to experiment and learn again how to be the church in a culture at odds with many of our values and assumptions.  Of the exile Walter Brueggemann said that far from being an unmitigated disaster the exile ‘evoked the most daring theological articulation in the Old Testament.’

‘A period of uncertainty’ is the church’s experience of reality. It is only hardened certainties that blind us to that. So we should not be afraid of it. So nor should we seek to hurry through it. Some things are too important to do quickly. But we can and should seek to walk together in it. “

On Sabbath – and the art of living life backwards

Paul Bradbury Uncategorized

I have just returned from a 3-month sabbatical. A sabbatical is intended to be the gift of an extended time of rest and re-creation, usually once every 7 years or so, which is offered within the terms of my role as an ordained minister. I’m hugely aware precious, privileged thing a sabbatical is. Something that the vast majority of people in employment can only dream of. So in that there is perhaps a pressure to ‘make the most of it’

My employer is likewise keen to ensure I ’make the most of it’. Church employers these days recast the sabbatical as something snappy like ‘extended ministerial development leave’. Which leaves you in no doubt what this is about, and puts a certain amount of pressure on you to make sure that that is achieved. I therefore filled out the form from my own CofE Diocese with the plan I had made for how I was going to use these 3 precious months. I felt pretty happy with what I’d come up with and, having gained agreement from my Diocese, set about making arrangements.

However, an unease was growing in me. I began to feel that I was going to be just as busy in sabbatical achieving all my personal development goals as I was during my usual work. I reflected that many of the things I had planned to do, visits here and there to explore ideas with people, were things I might justifiably be doing in my normal working time. What is a sabbatical? Is it just that time where we catch up on all those important/non-urgent things we might do but didn’t have time?

So I ditched the whole thing! (Sorry Bishop!) And, following a conversation with my spiritual director, decided that my sabbatical was fundamentally about walking into the wilderness. It was about letting go of everything and putting myself quite deliberately in a place of desolation and need. Within that space my diary stopped its insistence that I was clearly doing useful and important things by the nature of its clutteredness. Within that space I sought only to attend to what God might offer – how God might lead me through the wilderness and out the other side.

Image

The root of sabbatical is of course Sabbath. A sabbatical is an extended Sabbath. It is a rest from the agenda of work. And from the personal agenda and agency of work. Let’s face it, those of us who minister as a profession like to think we are doing the Lord’s work, but how much are we really just doing our own? I guess part of the gift of Sabbath (and it is primarily a gift in creation) is in finding out the extent to which we have made ourselves little gods and put our own agendas in place of God’s. Sabbath is about reacquainting ourselves with the ‘God who is God’.

But I think this extended Sabbath has been for me an invitation in a deep truth that God is the God of time. Modernity wrested time out of the sacred and put it to work. Clocks moved from the monastery to the marketplace. Time moved from a being a creature to a commodity. The accelerated nature of the modern world has made our diaries/digital planners etc. the keepers of time. And so life is lived forward within a fierce framework of time laid out for us by our agenda and schedules, and the agenda and schedules of others. Common to both is a underlaying value in the precious resource of time, which must be spent wisely. Time must be made to count. We must measure our days. Time must not be wasted.

There were times during my sabbatical when I felt guilty about my lack of agenda, my lack of plan. A deep sense I was wasting time. But into the wilderness a path began to emerge. Encounters with people. Invitations to stay at places and meet people I would not have done otherwise. Connections were made and themes emerged from conversations and experiences which could only have done so in such an unplanned space. Providence took the lead. Incidences of ‘serendipity’ became common. And as I emerged from the wilderness I looked back. I spent a morning prayerfully reflecting on all that had happened. I tried to describe its richness and gift – to give shape and form to my experience. All of this was gift. Surprise. Grace. And I found myself asking, what if we lived more or our lives backwards? What if life was less planned and more ‘found’? What would a diary look like that trusted in the God of time? That trusted the fruit of our ministry as not so much in making things happen, but giving space for the kind of happenings that are the life of God?