Author: Danny Webster

Beyond belief – God speaks

Danny Webster Leave a comment

The planning meeting broke up and God pulled Gabriel to one side. “We’re going to need some help on this one. Not so much a pre-announcement announcement, but an announcement to warm up for the pre-announcement announcement.”

“That’s a lot of announcing,” joked back Gabriel.

“Well they’ll be someone who comes before Jesus to prepare the way on earth, but we need to soften up the ground for those who are going to give birth to Jesus and to the one who prepares the way.

“I want you to go and tell the men and the women who will bear both my Son and my messenger. But play nice Gabe, don’t freak them out too much. They’re precious souls and they need some reassurance.”

“So should I just take the one flaming sword?”

“No flaming swords, but I think you might need a couple of tricks to get Zechariah to play ball. Maybe just strike him dumb for a short while. To be honest seeing Elizabeth pregnant will be enough of a shock, I remember when we made this play with Abraham and Sarah back in the day, they took it well enough in the end.”

Gabriel started to rehearse his lines, he was also pretty stoked to be able to get back down to earth, even if he wasn’t packing and it was just for a couple of brief deliveries – it made for some variety from supervising the Heavenly Gardeners.

For Elizabeth it was the joy of bringing longed for good news, and the added bonus of some quiet relief from the infernal jabbering of her husband. He had needed some forthright persuasion just as God suggested, but silenced enforced by the hand of God made him see what was going on and the gift that God had given.

Mary. She was the stunner. Just a little slip of a girl, liable to be blown away by a misdirected wafting of Gabriel’s wings. And he did his usual ‘don’t be afraid’ routine, and for some absurd reason it worked. To be honest, he could have probably swung his swords as he entered the room and she would have greeted him with the same unnerving peace. Of course she was confused, baffled, bewildered, the whole non-sex related pregnancy is enough to set anyone wondering if mental health treatment didn’t need to rapidly advance a couple of millennia.

But Mary took it all in her petite stride. She didn’t howl and scream, she didn’t refuse the truth that was about to become her son. She turned and worshipped God.

Joseph was in a bit of a predicament, after the magnanimous actions of his betrothed he was caught either having to pretend they’d copulated already or she’d been off with another man. Or stick to the lines given him by Gabriel and become the mocking boy of Nazareth. And boy, did he man up when the time came. He stuck with her.

Gabriel headed back to his gardening duties stunned that God’s hair brained scheme might work out after all. It might not have been the way he would have done it, but God seemed to have a handle on the situation.

Heavenly strategic planning

Danny Webster Leave a comment

God called together his partners and senior advisers for the annual heavenly strategic planning session.

“Right, this year I want us to step back and going forward do some big thinking. I want us to push the envelope, get some four dimensional blue sky thinking going on. Let’s pre-prepare for a holistic incentive driven marketing plan. We need a product evangelist and some 360 degree thinking before getting this into the product pipeline.”

Some of the angels were a bit staggered by the change in tempo. Usually the annual meetings were a formality, meeting to agree that they would continue with the plan as they had for the past 400 years.

“I’m serious,” God went on, “it’s time to move things along. I’ve been watching and waiting, and the time has come for something a bit different. I’ve got a few ideas I want to bounce off you, but let’s have an idea shower to get the juices flowing.”

Michael was never one to keep quiet when given the opportunity to have a say. “We’ve got this new Roman dimension to play with. It’s been sixty years since our people lost their independence, but the Romans seem quite happy to delegate power, maybe we can work with that?”

“Maybe we just need to be a bit more proactive,” piped up Eremiel, “we’ve got one of ours on the throne, why don’t we just send some missives to Herod so he can get with the programme?”

It was Raphael who sounded the note of caution. “I know we work with all sorts of people, I can still remember that strategy session when we came up with the donkey ploy – we really got Balaam with that one. But, Herod? Really, I think we’d have to pull off something pretty spectacular to get him in line. Why don’t we try something new, find a new leader, get someone who will stand up for the people, maybe even take the throne from Herod?”

“Yes, we could really give people the freedom they want, maybe we should have backed Judas Massabaeus. This time we can go down and give them a helping hand – I’ve been sharpening my flaming sword just this morning.” It was Eremiel who remembered back to the last time the Jewish people had their freedom.

“No, that’s not how we’re going to do it. It is time for an intervention. Not just nudges and hints, the time has past for gentle shifts in emphasis. Now is the time that God comes to earth.” It was the Holy Spirit that spoke into the growing confusion of ideas and schemes.

“That’s more like it, we’re going to wield so holy might!” Eremiel was already halfway to the door to get his sword.

“It’s just me that’s going. It is time.” Jesus started towards the door and ushered Eremiel back towards his seat.

“And it’s not going to be with flaming swords. Not this time. It would be easy to win by might but it would be meaningless. We come as the lowest of the low. We come in a form unrecognised by the high and the mighty. We live to serve the world we created.” God closed down the conversation in that way people sometimes do. For now the final word had been spoken.

The deafening sound of silence

Danny Webster 4 Comments

In Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic he talks about the time when you cry out to God, when you summon the energy to convince yourself he might in fact be there, and you are met with nothing but silence. To more precise, not quite silence, more like the empty static at the end of an old vinyl record. Almost the sound of where something should be but is not.

It’s the silence that intimidates because there is a voice that should be there. It is the silence heard when a young man goes into a school and shoots a score of children, their teachers and his family. It is the silence we hear when we want something to hear.

I had the idea for this post, and the series I will post each day this week, before the shooting on Friday. But the tone would have been different. It might have been slightly hectoring against the tendency to commercialise Christmas. I might have made the point that Advent is to be a time of waiting, but in fact we spend it rushing to and fro frantically doing all the things that we do not need to do. Only to be able, for those few precious days, relax and do nothing. We precede inactivity with a frenzy rather than waiting and then moving towards action.

In a way I suppose I have done what I said I would not, even in the act of saying I am not doing it.

Silence is a funny thing. It leaves things open. I could have just not said I was ever going to discuss anything else. Any break to the silence, any interruption, changes things. When someone speaks they cannot unspeak. It’s not about hearing what you want to hear, silence isn’t waiting to get the answer you want. Silence is waiting.

Silence is pregnant. There is something about silence that is temporary, otherwise it would be unremarkable. It is a pause, a step before something is said. It is the pregnant expectation that something is coming.

Silence is hard. We want answers, we want reassurance. When there is violence and hatred, and exploitation and suffering we want someone to say everything is okay. The outpouring of grief could cause people to cry ‘where is God at a time like this’, but those voices are pre-empted by those ready to tell whoever will listen exactly where God is. For a few it is he who sits in judgement orchestrating actions to punish our decadent ways, for others it proves his absence. For some it shows he is distant, unconcerned with the tragedy that befalls us all at one time or another, but particularly acute in a corner of Connecticut this weekend. For others he is there with his arms flung around the parents grieving the loss of children that will not see another Christmas Day.

For four hundred years the people of Israel lived in the midst of such deafening silence. A God who had spoken through their forefathers and prophets appeared to have left the stage. They wanted answers.

But the attentive could still here static in the background. This was not an absent God, he had not walked away.

Silence leaves room for hope.

Newtown shooting: when the ocean between us is full of tears

Danny Webster 1 Comment

I was listening to Joy to the World as I read the news of the shooting in Connecticut.

I checked my annoyance that Newtown was misspelt in the hashtag #prayfornewton.

I wrapped up pass-the-parcels, as many layers across the three packages as lives lost in a small town today.

I prepared games for a party, knowing that for a score or more there would be no more parties.

I followed twitter, with voyeuristic attention. I listened to the words President Obama summoned to describe the sickening feeling a nation, a world, felt as lives were ended and more traumatised.

I saw him wipe away a tear or two.

I felt the anger of those calling for gun control laws.

And the heartbreak of those wanting to postpone the politics until another day.

The aromas of the Christmas cake baking in the oven wafted through my flat, as I wondered whether there could be joy in this world. As people quoted the West Wing as the source of solace far removed from reality. A world where Presidents can quote scripture and it leaves tingles on your forearms and not tears in your eyes.

When ‘joy cometh in the morning’ is a scriptwriters gift and not a statement confounded by reality.

I have no children to hold a little closer tonight. But the fragility of life is closer than before.

Somehow, I try and and remember that joy to the world is not just a neat lyric in a carol we sing at this time of year.

Somehow.

Unity for the love of God

Danny Webster 6 Comments

Yesterday was not a great day for Christian unity. But sometimes good things come out of not such good days. I hope it was one of those.

Under the gaze of intense public scrutiny, from both Christians and the mainstream media both UCCF and Bristol CU changed their positions yesterday. And they did change, even if they were presented as clarifications. Bristol CU moved from a position of only allowing women to speak in certain rather restrictive circumstances, to now committing to open up all their speaking engagements to men and women. For UCCF a former position of not having a position seems to have morphed into something more robust, stating that it would be “wholly against the UCCF basis of faith and the advice of UCCF staff” if a CU devised a policy not to have women speakers for some or all events. That’s not the same as not having a position, and while I welcome the change, let’s be frank and call it what it is.

**Update** All is not as simple as this! Pod from UCCF has been in touch and defends the absence of a change of policy. UCCF have always held that the Basis of Faith as the only requirement for speakers, and for CUs to prevent a speaker on other grounds goes against the unity at the heart of the basis of faith. From the sounds of it, rather than a formal change in policy, it is a more robust application of it. **End of update**

A lot of talk went on yesterday and most of it was fairly respectful and gracious, most of it was from people committed to the witness of the church as well as the full use of all people and their gifts and talents. I think there is a place for public debate, and I don’t think all church matters and discussions of theology and practice should be decided behind closed doors or in private. Light is brilliant and shows up what might be wrong and we should not be afraid of the light.

Even so, I worry that as the world looked on yesterday, as the papers ran their stories and journalists sought out a fresh angle, what was shown was not a body of believers committed to working together for mission but a gang of factions, each desperate to get one over another.

And I spent a lot of time thinking about unity. Thinking about what unity looks like, what it requires, and what it is for.

What is unity for?

Unity is for mission, it is so that the world may see. It is not to provide a warm and cosy feeling. It is not to impress the world. It is not to do away with differences. It is not to suggest that all roads lead to God.

It is so together we can present Jesus to the world.

What is unity?

Unity is not being a doormat. It is not compromising on everything in some false attempt to keep everyone happy. Nor is it an attempt to sideline secondary issues in order to focus on core doctrine and mission, because that logic leads to a lowest common denominator when those who are most conservative or keen on the status quo win out. Take for example the issues of women speaking or the exercise of spiritual gifts. The logic that all are happy receiving teaching from a man but only some are happy with a woman teacher, so we’ll just have men, is a false unity. So to is the idea that because we all agree that the Holy Spirit enables us to understand and receive the teachings of the Bible we’ll stick to just that because some might not agree that the Holy Spirit speaks today through prophetic revelation.

Unity is tough. It is being fully aware of our differences and agreeing to work together. It is loving each other more than we love our own doctrine.

Unity is not about creating or maintaining a monopoly. That’s another thing that sometimes bugged me with the CU when I was at university, the idea that they were the bastion of unity and everyone else were dissenters and trouble makers. Maybe I put it a bit strongly, but a strong idea of unity does not try to take over or incorporate those who think and operate differently. It finds a space to exist together and work together.

What does unity require?

Unity would not take any effort if we all already agreed. And if would be nothing more than a saccharine soaked beauty-pageant-esque call for world peace if it had nothing to unite around.

Unity is also not the same as working together. I am willing to work with just about anyone, and I think churches and Christian organisations should show willingness and initiative to do so. I work with people whom I disagree on many things but we come together for a common cause. We come from different places, and ultimately our goal is different, but for a segment of the journey we can help each other out. To give it a technical term, it’s called co-belligerence.

Unity requires a common goal, but it also requires a common cause behind reaching that goal. The UCCF Basis of Faith is similar to the Evangelical Alliance’s, but with a couple of important differences. Probably chief among these is the commitment of UCCF to the infallibility of scripture compared to a concept of the Bible as supreme authority and fully trustworthy for faith and conduct in the Evangelical Alliance’s basis of faith. The challenge for UCCF is that not only is it an evangelical organisation, of which it should be proud, but it requires a standard for unity that some evangelical Christians might not agree with.

The question, and the challenge, is what level of core agreement is essential, and what draws too tight a circle? At what point do we stop working together because our differences have become too great? And who judges if and when those differences become too great?

It is easy to say that mission is our common cause, but that is hard to do. I have seen on the ground the challenges of churches working together in evangelism. What happens when people commit to following Jesus, which church do they go to? I’ve seen jointly run Alpha courses run aground because of differences about baptism.

Unity requires a humility that this is a hard road to walk and we haven’t worked out all the contours. It requires a humility to accept when we get it wrong, often when we are too eager to prove that we are right.

Why unity?

We work together because the church is the bride of Christ. We commit to overcoming but not dismissing our differences because we are called to be united. We are committed to unity because we want the world to see Jesus, and to see the difference He makes. And that makes it worth the effort. It makes it worth the heartache, the headaches and the disagreements, it even makes it worth the rather messy and not always wanted public disagreements.

It is hard, it is challenging. It will frequently be frustrating and we will often get it wrong.

And when it all goes wrong, when we want to tear each other apart, instead we fall over ourselves to serve one another out of a love for God and a commitment to make Him known.

Bristol CU and finding grace in hard places

Danny Webster 7 Comments

Ten years ago I was a fresher at university. I arrived fresh from a charismatic church environment heavy on the use of spiritual gifts and where my younger sister sometimes spoke at our Saturday evening youth church meetings.

Three things caused an immediate dissonance between my experience of church and what I encountered with the Christian Union. One was the absence of any practice of the spiritual gifts, no prophetic words, speaking in tongues or prayer for healing. Secondly was the friction which later become outright hostility between the CU and Fusion which I had been introduced to and had expected to be the predominant feature of my spiritual life. Thirdly the bar on women preaching or serving as president of the CU.

I had a minor leadership role within the CU during my second year and argued fiercely against the position vis-a-vis Fusion. And when the elections were held to confirm the nominated committee I spoiled my ballot, I believe only witnessed by one other. The election was a formality, the people filling the posts had been chosen by the previous year’s committee – a process which enshrined the conservative position.

I also found the position around women speakers nonsensical, Damian Thompson alludes to this in his Telegraph article on the current furore. When does teaching become teaching, for example women were allowed to give evangelistic apologetic talks but not speak at the evening main CU meetings. Leaving Fusion to one side for now, the justification behind the CU’s position on women and spiritual gifts was that these were secondary issues not foundational to the Christian faith, and therefore to take a position on these would damage the unity of Christian witness on campus. To some extent I got their logic, I didn’t want to see a charismatic CU, a conservative CU, a CU that had spiritual gifts but not women speakers, maybe one backing infant baptism and another supporting adult immersion. However, the logic was also flawed because it defaulted to a conservative position that kept those against various things happy and those wishing to see a missed aspect feature alienated.

I also sat in on the university council meeting where someone brought a motion to disaffiliate the CU because of its positions, I can’t remember the details, I suspect it was either around not having a women president or its views on homosexuality. The details are not important. What was important was that a body separate to the CU felt they had the right to decide what was or was not a legitimate aspect of Christian belief.

I know different CUs take different approaches, some are charismatic, some have women speakers, some work alongside Fusion in relative harmony. I think there are two massive challenges here that are worthy of note, firstly CUs are good as organic student run societies led by people who know the community they are reaching. But this means those in leadership will often be relatively inexperienced.

Secondly, CUs are not churches, but operate and exist as quasi-church entities, that means that for students they are often the place where most of their spiritual interaction and input occurs. For this to work and not displace the primacy of the local church it requires local churches to support and guide the work of student led ministries. It requires local church unity. It means that they don’t try and place their style of worship above another, or use a default conservatism to maintain a status quo that actual does damage the unity of Christians on campus for mission.

I don’t know what’s going on at Bristol CU at the moment, but I know plenty involved in CUs who have got caught up in student media storms, or pressures from the student union. I think they need our prayer as a matter of urgency. I think they need the support of the local churches, I think they need wise counsel. And I think they need our grace. I think they have tried to handle a difference of opinions in the best way they felt they could. It maybe that they’ve got this wrong, but don’t we all from time to time?

Fake it until you make it

Danny Webster 5 Comments

Two types of posts get read a lot on this blog. Those about relationships and those addressing current political or church issues. So when I write about dating or singleness or Mark Driscoll or women bishops my stats page is suitably satisfied. When on the other hand I take a more rambling approach to writing, the readers do not come flocking. I suspect this is one of the latter.

It is also probably worth explaining at this point what happened to the endeavour I had provisionally titled ‘The centaur and the heir’. It was my attempt to write a novel in 30 days, 50 000 words from scratch onto the keys and into some semblance of a novel. I could try and sugar coat it and put it in diplomatic fashion but basically I failed. After ten days I was a few thousand words behind schedule and with a mostly free Sunday ahead of me I could have spent all my free time writing and given myself a boost. I had also rather shamefully posted the first two chapters of the work so instead of clarifying my abandonment I slipped quietly into the night. I decided I had other things I wished to do with my time. I took the choice to fail. It’s not often we make a choice so consciously as that, but I realised that while I was deciding to fail, I was still not entirely sure what is was I was failing at.

My novel would never have been published, not even in my most remote and wildest dreams. It was a work of fan fiction, an effort to hark back to the Chronicles of Narnia and explore what became of Susan Pevensie after her family’s death. I had lost the plot quite literally, I had no idea where it would go next, a vague concept I wanted to pull through the whole story but the characters were weak and they asserted no direction on the page. I had a handful of readers who had taken in the first two sections, but their engagement was not enough to keep me going. Nor was the brute stubbornness that had propelled me through the same endeavour last year enough. I had proved I could do it, proved I could write an inordinate number of words that made very little sense, read by even fewer and done so at a particularly busy period of work.

I simply had no reason to go on writing.

And sometimes that can be a lesson we face in so many parts of life. We want something to whisk us up and propel us forward. We want the glorious crusade, the righteous campaign, the infusion of meaning into a life otherwise droll and predictable. We don’t want to just carry on because we think we ought to carry on.

Sometimes in church life it can feel like a massive effort to keep with the programme, to show that you are on the same page as everyone else. Sometimes it can be a spiritual equivalent of keeping up with the Jones. We want to be as mature as everyone else, we want to have the same experience as everyone else. When we see others having prayers answered we wonder why ours are going unmet.

I see the doubt in my own mind and think others are plagued by the same lingering thoughts. But there is one particular doubt I want to zero in on. I doubt that there is purpose and meaning behind what I am doing. In the world in which I spend most of my time much is made of calling and vocation: of what you are doing with your life to serve God. And I feel I have none. I can scrabble around and cobble together something approaching a spiritual sounding narrative, but it is really little more than a projection of where I have come from and where I am currently at. It is all I have.

I hear exhortations to have plans and goals, and strategies, ideas of where you want to be in ten years time – and this is in church not a job interview. I hear the calls for a vision of what your sphere could look like if the kingdom of God was to break in. Except I don’t know what my sphere is and I don’t have a vision of what it might look like.

I sometimes think, if only I had something to commit myself to, a passion to throw my weight behind, a mission to get lost in, a conviction that it is this (whatever this might be) to which I am to spend myself. But I don’t and therefore I leave myself with two options. Well three if I include giving up. But unlike writing a novel in a month this isn’t something I want to pack in. At least, I hope not. So my options are either to fake it until I make it, to conjure some vision out of thin air, construct it on the back of what I do and what others might expect me to be passionate about. Or alternatively to get back to basics.

When I put it like that it seems like a no brainer, of course the basics should win over being a fraud, but I’m not so sure it’s that simple. Maybe part of the going back to basics is doing what I am doing right now as well as I possibly can. Going back to basics means not over complicating life. It means not looking for something that isn’t there. It also means stripping out the extraneous elements that combine together to create a noise through which we cannot hear the movements and melodies that lie behind our lives.

It means for me I need to stop worrying about not having a ten year plan. It means not being ashamed by what I am doing or not doing. Rescinding the relentless rhetoric towards bigger and better, onwards and upwards, letting go of the need for validity and worth in what I am doing or where I am going. There is a lot that I can do, or stop doing.

And I want that to be the focus of my attention, but there’s also a slight critique I want to make of the language, tone and rhetoric used in churches. I get the desire to cast vision, to get people caught up in where you are going, to inspire them to hear their own call. But does it run the risk of encouraging people to fake it until they make it? They see something that looks good so present themselves in a spiritual light and hang a personal vision off that prefabricated script? Does it lead to a conformity with the corporate vision by accident rather than design? Does it stifle innovation while actually seeking to unleash it? I don’t know. But I’ve felt the pressure to conform, and to find something which I do not at the moment have.

It’s a concern I have with all areas of the Christian life, if we place the expected and modelled level of behaviour high without an equivalent modelling of grace, we run the risk of encouraging a fraudulent faith because the fear of not performing up to the expected standard becomes too strong. And when faith comes down to performance it may be time to bring the curtain down, send home the cast and rewrite the script.

I don’t want to glorify messing things up or not having a clue. I don’t want to privilege doubt over faith. But I want to be honest that all these struggles exist and not present too perfect a picture.

Women bishops: a view, an analysis and a reflection

Danny Webster 4 Comments

Yesterday evening at about 6.20 I was poised outside Kennington tube station. I was on my way out for the evening and furiously refreshed twitter to bring me the results of General Synod’s vote on allowing women bishops. As soon as I saw the numbers my heart sank. I knew 134 was not twice 74, down to six votes in the House of Laity the measure fell and it was decided women would not become bishops in the Church of England any time soon.

All evening I kept half an eye on twitter and getting in past midnight started reading through the comments, blogs, news articles and more posts on facebook expressing distress bordering on outrage at the decision. And here’s what I have, firstly a view I kept out of Monday’s post, followed by an analysis of what the vote means, and finally a reflection.

A VIEW

I wanted the General Synod to support the measure to allow women bishops. Part of the reason I kept quiet was because it is not my church and I do not want to tell another church how to do their business. I was also aware of friends in the Church of England who do not agree with women in positions of church authority.

As I descended underground and out of twitter’s reach a sadness dwelt in me deeper and more profound than I had expected. This was not a technical decision or an abstract theological debate. This was a choice to marginalise the ministry of many. I also cannot agree that this was a vote in favour of unity over division: around 7 per cent of parishes would opt out of the episcopal authority of a woman, this decision helped those groupings stay within the church, but it alienated a far larger number who saw the settled will of the Church of England as supporting women bishops. Unity is not maintained by changing nothing. A small blocking minority cannot be the guarantors of unity.

One final view point, I utterly reject the labels being placed on the Church of England by commentators in the press and politicians in parliament. They are seeking to hoist the church onto a petard they devise through a litany of pejorative labels. It is not the role of the church to succumb to every popular pressure, and were it the right thing to do, I would completely support a measure that saw the church become more unpopular in the eyes of the world. However, this is not such a move.

AN ANALYSIS

Ultimately I think those opposed to women bishops, the Anglo-Catholics and those labelled as conservative evangelical (a label I will not use because it suggests such a view is a necessary feature of conservative evangelicalism), will lose out because of yesterday’s decision. They won the vote yesterday and some of their glee at protecting their protectionism was deeply unedifying, but if they think this has solved their problems I suspect they will need a strong cup of coffee.

Those making this point in the Synod debate sounded a little threatening but once I stood back and analysed the likely trajectory of this issue I was inclined to agree. The way and margin by which they won, as well as the overwhelming support for women bishops from the leadership of the Church of England, means the result will cause a large amount of resentment for the way a tiny, and I think it is fair to describe 7 per cent of parishes as tiny, part of the church has blocked a decision which in principle has been agreed. What is most distressing from an external perspective, and which makes me most likely to see the governing structures as not fit for purpose, is that a view taken and agreed by the church cannot be implemented.

After the introduction of women priests, and because of the direct impact it had on them, those who opposed women as either priests or bishops, and wanted assurance their theological convictions would be respected got organised and ran for synod, in 2010 it was reported they had a blocking minority in the House of Laity. Perhaps because of the wider view of the church and the general public this was not given serious consideration, but it was evidenced last night as true. This present vote will galvanise supporters of women bishops, and I suspect especially those from evangelical churches who have largely ignored the structures of the central church because they have been busy doing local parish ministry.

We will likely not reach the point we were at yesterday for about five years, in 2015 when the next elections for synod take place I expect a vibrant campaign in favour of women bishops, and then an expedited process to bring the matter to a final vote once again. And here is where I think those celebrating today should take careful stock of the situation. For many supporters of women bishops the delegated authority which a woman bishop would have to provide was a slight on her status and an indication that she was a second class bishop. There is no guarantee that a future measure would have the same strength of protection, or the same good will among the church to accommodate, those opposing women bishops.

It may be that item 501 was the high point for the provision of those unable to accept women in church authority.

A REFLECTION

But step back for a moment from the politics of the decision, try if you can to soothe the sores caused by rejection.

We don’t live for a kingdom defined by titles and preference. We don’t serve a king elected by popular mandate or blocked by a dissenting highly organised minority. As a contributor said yesterday in the debate, we don’t serve a God who went for bronze, silver or gold, we serve a God who went for wood and nails. I don’t know who @batesjen26 is, but saw this tweeted this morning:

The life of the church will go on. As a non-conformist that might be an easy thing for me to say. There will be worship to God that inspires and encourages, there will be teaching that uplifts and educates. There will be service that humbles and cares, and leadership that stoops low to avoid being cut down. And it will be done by women in the same way as men.

The value that we give to people should not be defined by the labels they wear or the office they hold. I believe that today more than any other we must remember those who serve without ever seeking promotion. This is less about the delayed ordering of female purple clerical vestments, and far more about what it says to women and girls, as well as men and boys, about the value we endow each other with. It also cannot be easy for those committed to a church that seems incapable to carrying out a decision it long ago determined as the right course to take. But while the governance of the church may be in crisis the work it is doing in cities, towns and villages across the country continues to thrive.

Today we pray. Today and tomorrow we love one another and seek to love more those for whom it comes hardest.

50 shades of purple – should women be bishops?

Danny Webster 2 Comments

Sometime conflict is essential. Sometimes it is even healthy. It can lead to better solutions, and in the debate and discussion it can occasionally bring people together. I blogged last week about the conflict in Gaza, as well as the way it was reflected on twitter. Hot on the heels of this conflagration comes another, this time a little closer to home and thankfully without violence.

Tomorrow the Church of England General Synod decides whether women can become bishops. I wasn’t going to get drawn into the conversation, I didn’t want to be just another voice either calling for one thing or another, or join the chorus of drowned out pleas for peace and good will.

I’ve been a part of churches where women are encouraged to be full part of every area of ministry. And I’ve been in others where certain roles are considered to be the preserve of men alone. I’ve also been in churches which said one thing in theory and the practice looked very different. And to top all that one of the most revolutionary moments in the life of the church I grew up in as a child was the decision that women didn’t have to cover their heads in meetings. That was over twenty years ago.

I’m also not a part of the Church of England, for just under a year I was part of a Church of England church, but I never settled and the bits I liked least about it were the few times it adhered to it’s more Anglican aspects.

The combination of this background, an aversion to arguments, and the fact I work for an organisation that represents churches on both sides of the debate helped me keep my thoughts to myself.

This isn’t really about the question of whether women should become bishops, and the debate tomorrow isn’t either – although if you chose to tune in you will certainly here their proponents vocally making the case. There is a strong majority within the Church of England backing the move so the question at the heart of the measure to be decided is how to allow women to the episcopate while ensuring that those who have theological objections to women holding positions of church authority are able to continue with good conscience in the church.

The problem is both groups think they are right.

And that’s where arguments and discussion, and the most delicate of negotiations fall down. Because those who want women to be bishops see this as an issue of justice, of fairness, of faithfulness to scripture, and those who don’t cite the biblical arguments with equal abandon. It does little for the way the world looks at the church, and more importantly, little for the words we say for the authority, clarity and perspicuity of scripture.

There are two arguments put forward, one for equality and one for difference between the genders. Those two don’t have to contradict, in fact I would fully subscribe to both. They are therefore canards in this debate. Both claim that they are right, and moreover that they have divine backing for their views. This is a route that gets dangerous pretty quickly.

The challenge facing the Church of England is whether they are prepared to work to sustain a broad church with bishops, clergy and congregations who hold significantly different understandings not only of the role of women but their understanding of scripture. Because while this is the presenting issue it is not the only division within the church. Nor is it that those opposing the change are the only ones that take scripture seriously, many backers of women bishops would argue that it is their opponents who misuse the texts they quote to support their backing of the status quo.

If the unity of the Church of England is vital then it is important for all those who disagree to give ground and accept that for a solution to be found that succeeds in maintaining unity no one is going to get everything they want. But that’s life. It really is. If you bring any group of people together to work at a common cause there is a need for compromise and negotiation. The difficulty in the church is that for so long it has been a recluse of unity from a world of divergence. It has clustered closer and closer around what it agrees on and lost sight of the many differences that are conveniently ignored.

I pray that the church would be as one. And be as one so that world would believe. I pray that the Church of England, and the wider church, will make it through their deliberations and the fallout, however it may fall, with a commitment to work together for the sake of the gospel. And to be honest, you could have skipped the rest of this post because that is all that really matters.

Beauty, attraction and modesty – a five act thought process

Danny Webster 5 Comments

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A couple of weeks ago I went to Scotland and it was beautiful.

It is as easy and natural as that. The description of beauty was done without any further thought or consideration.

Last night I went out and met a beautiful girl.

Well actually I didn’t, I stayed in on my own and watched a couple of episodes of The Pacific. If I had used a real life scenario it would have suddenly become awkward. And that’s my point. When we talk about beauty and it relates to some feature of nature or a work of art it does not provoke the same array of inquiries as to its meaning or subtle squinting of the eye to work out where the statement in question originated.

If I say a girl is beautiful it is taken to mean something more than just a factual observation. In short you’d probably assume I was interested in her romantically. And I might be: because I’m a guy and have been known to be interested in that sort of way.

But it’s also far too reductionist and it takes a whole swathe of compliments out of use. While I am sometimes attracted to a particular girl because of her beauty, that does not mean I am attracted and seeking to romantically pursue any girl I consider to be beautiful. Continue reading →