Team Ministry

The clergy can sometimes feel very isolated. Perhaps you are the only clergy-person in your benefice. 

And maybe your curacy was in a larger church with a staff team. After your induction, you found you could give yourself some photocopying to do in your study. Suddenly there was no training incumbent, administrator, youth and children's worker. You had to be all those things. Or get someone else to do them, which sometimes seemed impossible or harder.

Working towards a team ministry is vital.

(1) A team within the local church

How can you build an idea of shared leadership and responsibility?

Is there any chance of an ordained colleague?  

Can you promote a culture of every member ministry? Yes, of different roles. But not just me liturgy, you gutters. Every Christian is a disciple with gifts who can serve others. Most people could say a prayer with someone (perhaps silently in their head). Many people could give a tract, or a brief word of encouragement. Or lead a Bible study. Or share the Word one to one. Maybe you could help turn up the theological and spiritual temperature just a little for everyone.

People sometimes have bright ideas for what others should do. Maybe you can encourage a shift from "you should" to "perhaps we might / could we". It's not and can't be a one man band. We're all in this together as fellow workers. 

(2) A team beyond the local church 

What support is there from your Chapter?

From the Rural Dean? Archdeacon? Bishop?

Other local ministers or churches?

Is there something you could do together?

Is there someone you could meet with say once a fortnight in term time to pray with?

Do you ask for help?

What would you like the wider church to do for you which someone might do?

Are there any quick easy cheap wins or first steps you could be proactive about?

Maybe there is some training or support you could seek at your next MDR?

(3) A team through time

Our church buildings go back to the 13th Century and they look set to be here after we are all dead and gone. Perhaps this adds to our sense of responsibility. We don't want all this (the multigeneration family business) to fall apart on our watch. But maybe also it is an encouragement that we belong to something bigger, deeper and ancient. We are responsible just for our little bit for these few years and for the circumstances and resources given to us. The baton was handed to us and we seek to hand it on. 

It is a Relay race. So is there someone who could be a reliable person you could hand something on to? Could you plot for your retirement and redundancy by always trying to do stuff we a co-leader who perhaps might one day step up and maybe train others?

(4) God as the ultimate team leader

Maybe it is right to think that in some ways the buck stops with you. You are The Leader. You are responsible. But you are not the Messiah or the Lord! Jesus will build his church. You are an under-shepherd. Seek his grace to do your bit for a time. Ultimately God is responsible for his work. Look for his well done my good and faithful servant, but don't burden yourself beyond the call of God. As the ordination service rightly said, you cannot bear this very great burden alone. Look to the team!  

Clergy resilience

 I have seen it suggested that perhaps the greatest need for an effective long term clerical ministry is resilience. 

I think there's a great deal of truth in that. 

The life of a minister has its compensations and demands. There are very often pressures, internal, external and spiritual. In a week there might be a couple of funerals (perhaps one especially tricky or emotional), meetings about buildings and finances, which are always a problem, an out of hours call to a bedside, some wedding prep and more. The Vicar is in a public role and people will voice criticism or helpful suggestions. Many will have a vision for what you ought to do. But there may be a lack of time, or money, or support. And the diocese and national church probably have an initiative with which they would like you to engage. Have you done your fees and your statistical return? Where are you on the carbon net zero journey? But you'll also have to drop everything for a safeguarding concern. The school would like you to pop in when you have a moment. And....

There can be resilience good and bad. 

The Vicar is a professional with boundaries. 

But she is also a pastor who loves her people and is called to share not only the gospel but her life with them. She is to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. She is a human not a machine.  

So we do not want clergy who are jaded, indifferent, impossible to reach. The Teflon Cleric is not ideal. 

So what are the sources of resilience?

Humanly, some space and rhythm in the week. A cuppa. A dog walk. A piece of music. A day off. Holidays. The support of family and friends. 

Spiritually, prayer. A secret inner life in which grace is received. A heart of thankfulness that offers up life to God with praise. God accepts what we bring and gives it back to us transformed. God loves to heal sick sinners. He delights to use the weak. His power is sufficient. He must pause and think and breath and pray. Some silence may help. Remember God! Remember the gospel! Remember your vocation! You are not an administrator or a fundraiser or.... but a pastor-teacher steward of the mysteries of God, a herald of good news, a watchman for the coming Kingdom.

Nothing can ultimately harm me. Not because I am insensitive and don't care. But because my life is hidden with God in Christ in the heavenly places. 

First I am a child and heir of God by grace. I am held in covenant love. 

My ministry and what I do and all I must absorb or face to day is secondary. 

Let us so look and cling to things eternal that we can pass through temporary trials if not unscarred but still heading for heaven with a measure of hope and joy even amidst the ARRGGGHHH!s and the tears. 

May God be kind to us and help us. 

And may we give ourselves and others a break!

* * * 

I forget what it says now but I'm sure The Revd Dr Kirsten Birkett will have useful and interesting things to say here: Resilience: A Spiritual Project: 84 (Latimer Studies) - 2016 - https://www.latimertrust.org/product-page/resilience-a-spiritual-project

Ritualism

19th Century evangelical Anglicans were often opposed to what they called "Ritualism". Rightly or wrongly, what might be meant by the term and why might one object to it? 

These days we are perhaps more aware that ritual is inescapable. Saying hello and shaking hands and a few rules of conversation constitute the rituals of polite social interaction. 

And there might actually be ritual where it is not always recognised or owned. If our church service begins with a Bible verse and a prayer and then we stand to sing a hymn and then sit for another prayer, and so on, this is a kind of ritual. 

Some might object that ritual is Old Testament. Perhaps the New Testament might be claimed to be simpler. Or more spiritual. Or more Word or Faith Alone. 

Versions of the Regulative Principle of Public Worship might be thought to rule out certain rituals. Is there an explicit New Testament command for clerical vestments? 

Ritual might be rejected as foreign. 

Or as alien to Reformation Anglicanism. 

Or as contrary to law. Or the formularies. 

There could be guilt by association arguments. The French are Ritualists. Papists are Ritualists. 

Ritual might be associated with a negative kind of clericalism. 

Or with fussiness. 

It might be seen as a barrier to evangelism or connecting with the young or working class or.... 

There might be objections to particular rituals. For example, Eastward facing Communion might be seen as emphasising an offering made to God rather than a gift of grace received. 

Some might be tempted to depend on some particular ritual for salvation. 

A Trinity Sunday Prayer for Preachers

 

A prayer of St. Hilary of Poitiers suitable for the preacher on Trinity Sunday:

 

O Lord, "we look to Your support for the first trembling steps of this undertaking, to Your aid that it may gain strength and prosper.

We look to You to give us the fellowship of that Spirit Who guided the Prophets and the Apostles, that we may take their words in the sense in which they spoke and assign its right shade of meaning to every utterance.

For we shall speak of things which they preached in a mystery; of You, O God Eternal, Father of the Eternal and Only-begotten God, Who alone art without birth, and of the One Lord Jesus Christ, born of You from everlasting.

We may not sever Him from You, or make Him one of a plurality of Gods, on any plea of difference of nature. We may not say that He is not begotten of You, because You are One.

We must not fail to confess Him as true God, seeing that He is born of You, true God, His Father.

Grant us, therefore, precision of language, soundness of argument, grace of style, loyalty to truth.

Enable us to utter the things that we believe, that so we may confess, as Prophets and Apostles have taught us, You, One God our Father, and One Lord Jesus Christ, and put to silence the gainsaying of heretics, proclaiming You as God, yet not solitary, and Him as God, in no unreal sense."

On the Trinity, 1:37-38.

Homily for Trinity Sunday

 

 

Psalm 8 (p546)

John 16:12-15 (p1084)

 

In the Name…

 

Trinity Sunday.

I don’t know if the clergy or the congregations find it more terrifying!

If the Vicar is good, he knows heresy lurks on every side.

 

And the people perhaps expect to confirm that the Vicar is rather like God:

Invisible six days a week and incomprehensible on the seventh.

 

So it is tempting to wax eloquent about how difficult the doctrine of the Trinity is.

We could perhaps all nod wisely about that.

Or I could try to find another cheap joke.

 

But what I want to invite you to do today is to adore the Mystery who is God himself.

Is it not wonderful that this God is revealed to us?

Of course not completely but truly.

Just pause to think about that for a moment.

You and I can really know Almighty God the Creator of all things as he really is.

 

And who is this God?

The One God is Father, Son and Spirit.

Glory!

 

It is inexhaustible and wonderful.

But you can also teach it to a 7 year old.

 

Let’s just consider our marvellous readings for a few moments with Trinity Sunday in mind.

 

Notice the majesty of God in our Psalm.

It helpfully begins and ends with that so its hard to miss.

Yahweh, the personal living God of the Bible, is Lord of all and his name is majestic.

He is the great king – glorious above all.

 

The glory of the trooping of the colour, or the state opening of parliament, or a coronation or royal wedding are faint pictures of this all surpassing glory.

The power of the greatest human empires are weak and fleeting compared to the potency of God.

 

Think of the heavens, the skies, the glory of the sun and moon and stars.

Go and look at them today or tonight.

Get yourself when you next can to the sea or the downs or the back garden.

Look up some science about them if that’s your thing:

The temperatures, the distances.

It is all amazing beyond our comprehension.

 

Or look at the art or listen to some music which reflects on creation.

 

Isn’t the glory and beauty of it too much for you sometimes?

 

Ah, Sussex in the sunshine!

Call me a sentimental Welshman but as I walk the dog around the same block or through the same field yet again I’m often astounded by the glory of creation – and therefore by the glory of the creator.

If we lift our eyes and open our hearts, we can agree on that, I think.

 

Just look at the world, the cosmos.

What a great and powerful and good God there must be.

 

He is high and exalted.

 

But he has ordained praise from the lips of children and infants.

And even from little old you and me.

This infinite God thinks of humanity.

Thinks of us.

This God cares about us and about the last and the least.

 

This down to earth God stoops.

He loves to hear the babble of the toddler who praises him.

 

No doubt he also accepts the praise of Bishops and Professors and so on.

But he has ordained praise from little children.

 

And he has made human beings a little lower than the angels but crowned them with glory and honour.

 

Human beings too are both strangely lowly and regal.

We are flesh and blood.

And we have to sleep and eat and go to the loo.

But we can split the atom.

And write King Lear.

Or play Bach.

Or paint like da Vinci.

Well, some of us can sometimes.

Or…

Pick your art form or sphere of human endeavour.

 

We can walk on the moon – but we can’t get rid of the mud, and blood and vomit.

We are capable of great wonders and of terrible horrors.

 

Can these paradoxes be resolved?

 

The answer is YES!

In Jesus, the down to earth God.

The one whom angels worship was made a little lower than the angels.

Not that he ceased to be God, who is above all and ever to be praised.

But rather that precisely this God came down.

He who built the stars lay in a manger.

The Word was made dumb.

The Omnipotent was fragile.

 

Jesus came to share our blood, sweat and tears, whilst remaining Almighty God who fills and rules all things.

 

Jesus shows us all that God the Father is.

He is God the Son, the same being or essence or nature or substance as God the Father.

Really truly God with a capital G.

God from God.

Light from light.

True God of True God.

 

The carpenter’s son turns out to be a chip off the old block.

He is not Joseph’s son (biologically speaking), but he is by eternal generation God the Son.

All the fullness of the deity dwells in him in bodily form.

Like Father, like Son.

But not only so:

Jesus is the Same God, not just a like God.

 

These things are rightly too wonderful for us, to lofty for us to attain.

 

And that is as it should be.

A God I could comprehend would be no God at all.

I am often stupid and sinful.

Of course I cannot grasp this God.

But he reaches out to me.

 

And even better, the Spirit takes all that the Son is, who is all that the Father is, and makes them known to us.

The Three in One invite us in.

 

We can have learned chat over coffee about eternal generation and spiration or inseparable operation if that would be fun for you.

But let us be silent and adore the speaking, revealing, saving God who is over all and in us all.

 

And so to God the Father…

Goliath and Golgotha

 

From The Rectory

 

We recently had BBC comedy writer and stand-up theologian James Cary come and perform his excellent show: God, The Bible and Everything in 60 Minutes. jamescary.co.uk/ Of course we didn’t do any of those three components exhaustively in an hour. But because the Bible (written by about 40 human authors over hundreds of years) has a single divine author, it is possible to speak of its plot and a single coherent message.

The good news of the Bible is first proclaimed in chapter three of book one. Sin enters the world via the snake in the Garden of Eden and in Genesis 3, God mercifully promises that the seed of the woman (a human child) will crush the head of the Satanic-serpent. That is, a human being will triumph over evil and the great Enemy of God and his people. Sin and judgement will not have the last word. Victory and deliverance are coming. The Fall of humanity will be overcome. The rest of the Bible is the search for the Serpent-Crusher.   

And of course Jesus, the God-Man, born of Mary, proves to be that Serpent-Crusher. But as James pointed out, Jesus is cleverly foreshadowed in his great ancestor, King David of Bethlehem. You know the story: unlikely lad kills the giant.

In the Bible, Pharoh, the king of Egypt who enslaves God’s people, is snake-like (check out the picture). And David’s terrifying opponent Goliath is similar. He wears scaley armour (1 Samuel 17:5), like that of a fish or snake. The Hebrew word for bronze, nehoshet, sounds like the word for serpent, nehesh. David crushes Goliath’s head with a stone from his shepherd boy slingshot and the threatening warrior falls dead to the dust in which the serpent had been condemned to crawl way back in Genesis 3. David cuts off Goliath’s head and takes it back to Jerusalem (1 Samuel 17:54).

What became of that scull? Who knows, but maybe it would have been put up on a pole outside the city, rather as the heads of traitors would be displayed in London. And then perhaps that unclean head of the foreigner might have been buried in that marginal place, without the city wall. This is speculation, but maybe the head of Goliath of Gath might have been buried at Golgotha, “the place of the scull”, Mount Calvary, where Jesus was crucified.

Jesus is the nahesh nahoshet - the bronze serpent of John 3:14 – lifted up on the cross. And all who look to him will live. For he has crushed the serpent’s head, died and risen.

Isn’t the Bible a weird and wonderful book? It deserves your time and attention. Jesus is patterned, pictured, prophesied and predicted in countless ways in the Bible. We can never exhaust it or him. But its one great message can be summed up quite simply like this: look to Jesus (crucified and risen) and you can know wholeness and life everlasting. One glance to Jesus, with faith, with trust, dependence and the spark of a desire to take him as your Lord will save and transform you for ever. Take a look! And perhaps reflect on John’s Gospel chapter 3.

See further the work of Dr Rick Shenk at: bcsmn.edu/david-and-goliath/

The Revd Marc Lloyd

Psalm 97 - a handout

 Look away now if you are coming to church this morning or prepare!

Psalm 97 p603 (John 17:20-end p1085)

THE APPEARING OF GOD, RESPONSES & RESULTS

 

The appearing of God in the Bible e.g. to Abraham (Gen 15), at Sinai (Ex 19-20)

 

-          God has appeared supremely, definitively in Christ

 

-          God is appearing in the preaching of the Gospel – God speaking and made known – you are encountering him now!

 

-          God will appear fully and finally at the Second Coming of Christ

 

(1) The majestic appearing of the LORD the glorious King of the whole earth (vv1-6)

 

-          V1 – even remote coastlands / islands

 

-          Cloud, darkness, fire, light - power, glory, righteousness, justice, somewhat hidden – holy! – awesome or awful?

 

(2) Responses to and results of God’s appearing (vv7-12):

 

(a) for those who worship false gods (v7a): public humiliation, clear utter failure (cf. v3 God’s enemies consumed)

 

(b) for God’s people – even the most insignificant - the capital Zion (Jerusalem) and the daughters (villages) of Judah (v8)

 

Ø  Rejoice and be glad (vv1, 8, 11-12)

 

Ø  Love God and hate evil (v10)

 

Ø  Trust him for deliverance (v10)