Accepting God's Call

This is the text of what I shared with my church, as I had the emotional task of telling them that I and my family are moving on.

We are called to accept one another as Christ accepted us. Sometimes, we are called to accept one another’s decisions.

As Christians, I think that we should be constantly asking the Lord if we are walking in his will, and serving in the place that he wants us to be. Last year, I spent much time in prayer and through retreat days, asking God if here at Park Road was where he wanted me to be. To be honest, I really didn’t know what he was saying, but whatever it was, I wanted to be obedient. With that in mind, I decided to talk to some other churches to see what God would say, seeking either a renewed call to be minister at Park Road or a new call to serve elsewhere. One door in particular kept opening wider: through a meeting with a pastoral search team, and a meeting with deacons, and a visit to preach and meet the church, and then, last weekend, an invitation to preach with a view. After a special church members’ meeting last Thursday, that has culminated with a clear and decisive call to be minister and team leader at Newbury Baptist Church. So, in the summer, the Edworthy family will be leaving Peterborough to go to pastures new.

We love this church, and since you are the church, that means we love you. We have shared with you through life’s joys and sorrows and, thankfully, the joys have come out on top. We can think of many reasons not to leave Peterborough: among them, the exciting things that are happening here, our friendships here, our children’s education, Wendy’s job. One thing outweighs all of those things, and will always outweigh them – that is … God’s will. We believe that God is calling us to Newbury and from Newbury, because He is already there! I recognize the implications of our departure from here, but I know that God has his plans for this church and this city.

Discerning God’s will is not always easy, and Wendy and I have agonized through this process of what God has and hasn’t being saying to us. However, a friend reminded me that living in God’s will is the best place to be. I feel completely at peace about accepting the call to Newbury, and believe this to be God’s will. We ask your prayers for us as a family as we plan to move, and your prayers for Newbury Baptist Church as with them we enter into a new sphere of ministry. We shall continue to pray for you, not least as we have four more months of ministry to share, and as the future unfolds.

With love in our Lord Jesus Christ.

18^th March 2012

Easter Cross

Here is the painting 'Easter Cross' mentioned in my last blog. It's a bit bigger in real life!

On being an art critic!

I can't really tell one end of a paintbrush from another, but I am feeling quite arty at the moment!

Firstly, the local Street Pastors' management committee, which I chair, has been involved in an art project over the past 12 months or so. We had to choose from several different proposals and went for the one that we felt would give us the best publicity. That choice was for Grennan and Sperandio, artists who work on opposite sides of the Atlantic, but who collaborate together. Simon Grennan went out with local street pastors on a number of occasions, taking photographs and asking questions, before retreating to the studio (or more likely these days, his computer) to develop the project. And so, a comic strip series was born to be published in our local Evening Telegraph on 15 consecutive Fridays. The cost to us has been nothing, except a little time, and we hope that our profile will be raised in both financial and recruitment terms. The first in the series is above. I think it's rather good! There is more to come, and perhaps I'll post them - watch this space!

Then, today, I spoke at the Cathedral on the theme of 'The Glory of the Cross.' The Wednesday at One series for the season of Lent is based upon an exhibition of paintings entitled 'Rejoicing in the Cross. My given painting was 'Easter Cross' by Karola Onken. I can't manage to get it posted next to this text, so please see it in the next blog!

Two very different pieces of work, but both with a story to tell!

In like a lion, out like a lamb!

This is a copy of my church magazine article for March 2012

Popular wisdom says that ‘March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.’

Of course, that proverb refers to the weather, and I guess it’s true that the month often begins with gales roaring in, and ends much more gently.

It got me thinking about the lion and the lamb. We know that the lion is pretty much at the top of the food chain, and the lamb would be fair game! When the boy David went to King Saul and offered to fight Goliath, he told the king of his qualifications for the job: ‘Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it’ (1 Samuel 17:34-35). It confirms what we know: left to their own devices, lions will kill and eat lambs! It points to a reality in our world: that the powerful tend to take advantage of the vulnerable, the rich becoming richer and the poor, poorer.

Yet the Bible points us to a different vision of how things one day will be! The prophet Isaiah speaks the word of the Lord: ‘Behold I will create new heavens and a new earth’ (Isaiah 65:17). As the chapter unfolds, we find that this re-creation involves fruitful and peaceful lives for all, and that lamb and wolf will lie down together, whilst the lion will eat straw like the ox. What we call the natural order of things will be overturned! One day!

I think that God calls us towards that vision now. He calls us to reduce the disparity and bridge the gap. One organization seeking to do that in Peterborough is ‘Hope into Action’. Their director, Ed Walker, will be sharing with us on 11^th March about how they are providing homes for ex-offenders and homeless people. We will find out how we can be a part of that. Another organization is our own Inspirations Studio, seeking to provide opportunities and support for young people in the city of Peterborough. Stuart Mathers would be glad to receive your offer of help with that.

What more of the lion and the lamb? Revelation 5 brings the two together. The risen Christ is both Lion and Lamb. He is fierce and gentle. He overcomes the disparities that exist in the world by his atoning sacrifice. He is God’s chosen instrument of re-creation.

Perhaps lion and lamb, fierce and gentle, is what we should be in serving God in His world? We should be confronting injustice and inequality, but doing it tenderly and with love!

Be fierce and gentle for Christ!

Spirit Break Out (Part Two)

A couple of good points from my visit to last week's 'Spirit Break Out' event:

1. Tim Hughes reminded us that we should aim to shape culture rather than be shaped by it. I agree!
2. Tim suggested that we are a generation with more ways to communicate than any before us, yet we have less to say. Again, I agree! Perhaps it is a case of the medium not only obscuring the message, but replacing it too? Beware, Christians, the danger of being so shaped by our culture of communication that we obscure the Living Word who has communicated himself to us!

Spirit Break Out!

Last evening, I went to the latest leg of the Spirit Break Out tour. The tour emanates from Worship Central, which has close connections with Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, the home of the Alpha Course. The evening was led by Tim Hughes (writer of such songs as ‘Light of the world’ and ‘The greatest day in history’), assisted by three other solo singers and the usual array of musicians.

It was a good evening, attended by 1000 or so people and yet I felt curiously detached from it. Before you ask: yes, I was there to enjoy worshipping God; yes, there almost certainly is unconfessed sin in my life (isn’t there with all of us?), but none I could call to mind! So I was there without any particular baggage.

In fact, I spent much of the evening comparing the experience with my last visit to see U2 in concert in August 2009! I decided that I was more aware of God’s presence there than at yesterday’s concert. Lyrics such as ‘I was born, I was born to be with you’ (Magnificent), and ‘You heard me in my tune, when I just heard confusion’ (All because of you) spoke to me more than those of Tim Hughes et al. I was more caught up in worship (or emotion?) with 50000 other U2 fans than with the 1000 worshippers. At the U2 concert, perhaps 5% of the crowd had a Christian faith. Last might, one assumes it would have been at least 95%.

So why did the U2 concert allow me to worship more freely? In no particular order:

• AtU2, I knew the songs – pretty much word for word! Last night, I knew perhaps half of the songs. My own church is not exactly on the cusp of the latest worship songs, but we do use some newer ones! However, I think churches often over-estimate the ability of a congregation to learn new songs. I usually work on the rule of no more than one per service, if that.
• U2 did not have to pretend that it was a rock concert! They, and we, knew that it was. ‘Spirit Break Out’ tried to take on the attributes of a rock concert, with light show, dry ice and seven lampstands (I wondered if there was going to be any significance in that?). For me, there was a sense of hype being generated so that the Spirit would come!
• U2’s lyrics are more nuanced and thought-provoking e.g. ‘Yahweh, Yahweh, always pain before a child is born’. Today’s writers of Christian songs tend to fall into religious cliché, and even to reclaim clichéd lyrics of the past. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that – we are comforted by the familiar, and our beliefs are reinforced – but there is often no sense of anything new in today’s worship songs.
• The U2 concert was more evangelistic, though I doubt it set out to be so! Like ‘Spirit Break Out’, it was there for the fans. Unlike ‘Spirit Break Out’, many of those fans were ‘unconverted’ to Christ. They came with many questions about life, where Christians tend to come with many answers. Yes, I believe that Christ is the answer! Yet I believe that we must all be allowed space to ask our questions and express our doubts about life, the universe and everything! Maybe a U2 concert is a more effective place for that?

I can’t deny that most at last night’s concert were engaging with God in worship. I’m just thinking that worship is so much more than we sometimes make it.

Keep on running!

This is a copy of my February church magazine article

Last month I spoke about our motto for 2012, and I want to return to it again this month:

‘I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.’ (Philippians 3:14).

As I said last month, the apostle Paul is picturing an athlete in a race, always looking ahead to the finish line and straining every muscle and sinew to reach it. There is one problem that I find with this verse, which is that it can be read in a very individualistic way. ‘”I” press on to win the prize……’, as if only one person can win and it is each for themselves.

I don’t think that Paul intends it that way. He is encouraging the church at Philippi with his own example. Then he says to them, ‘Join with others in following my example, brothers and sisters …’ (v17). Perhaps he had in mind the Ancient Olympic Games of his day, which he would have known about and may well have encountered as he went on his missionary journeys. Like our modern Olympics, the crowds would gather to cheer on the athletes and inspire them to greater endeavour. I suspect that Paul would say to us, ‘Don’t just be a part of the crowd, watching others, but join in!’

Perhaps the race that best fits the description of our church motto is today’s marathon. I thought that the marathon was an ancient race revived for the modern Olympics. It turns out that it wasn’t, although it does have its origin in ancient Greek history. A Greek messenger named Pheidippides, was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated. Legend says that he ran the entire distance (roughly 26 miles) without stopping and burst into the assembly exclaiming ‘We have won’ before collapsing and dying! The end of our lives may not be so dramatic, but we can know that we have won the prize before we die. It can be so because God in Christ has already won the victory over sin and death. When we believe in him we achieve the promise of the prize. I believe, however, that the Lord does not wish us merely to coast towards the finish line, but to press on through thick and thin, serving others and serving him.

Let’s encourage one another in this as we run the race together as God’s people!

Keep on running!