Article in the Cleethorpes Chronicle  - 29.10.2009

There was a stark contrast between some of the views being aired on last Thursday’s BBC Question Time and the gathering of the Normandy Veterans Association in Westminster Abbey last weekend.  During Question Time we glimpsed the sort of extremism which feeds on demonising a particular group of people and, in contrast, on Sunday the veterans remembered the enormous human cost of combating extremism once it takes hold of power.  Extremism, whether it is political, economic or social, brings in its wake human suffering and misery – how little we learn from history.

The essential feature of the extremist is simplicity.  Simplistic answers to the problems of the age.  In a democracy it is seductive stuff because the simplicity of the extremist offers quick and easy remedies.  In Germany in the 1930’s it was the Jews who were blamed for all the problems and finding a final solution to the Jews would ensure that all would be well.  Tragically there is a long list in modern history where the simplistic answers of the extremists have led to appalling violence, genocide and ethnic cleansing.  In fact I cannot think of any situation where extremism has led to human happiness and flourishing.

The problem with extremist views is that they are cloaked in sounding plausible. Yet they have to distort the truth because they actually have no ability to answer the deep problems of society.    So for the extremist, all asylum seekers are ‘bogus’, people living on benefits are ‘scroungers’,  unemployment  is cause by immigrants and if only we could get back to the purity of the indigenous English people, then all would be well.

What utter nonsense it is, yet it is seductive because at elections we want to give power to those who are going to sort things out.  If only life was like that.  Yet as those D-day veterans know only too well – give power to an extremist and it has to be wrestled from them at great cost.

The Normandy Veterans gathering begins this season of remembrance leading up to 11^th November.  Once again I will be thanking God for the sacrifice of so many in wresting power from the extremists, whilst praying that we will never again be seduced by their simplicity – for it masks the dark side of human nature which is crucifyingly costly to defeat.

Article in the Cleethorpes Chronicle  - 14.08.09

The name and memory of Peter Connelly, known for so long as Baby P, joins a sad and far too long list of children who have died at the hands of those whom they could have expected to give them the love, protection and security which is surely the right of every child.  This week the release of Peter’s name, along with the names of those who were responsible for his wicked injuries and death has brought Peter’s short and tragic life back to public attention.

There can be no excuses for Tracy Connelly, Stephen Barker or Jason Owen whose actions and inactions caused and allowed Peter to suffer so much.   Once again we are reminded that the vulnerable – whether they be young or old – are at the mercy of those who have them in their care.  Yet vulnerability is at the heart of being human for it is the stuff of our early years, of our old age and, for some, it is their experience throughout life.

A symptom of a healthy family is the care and attention it gives to its most vulnerable members and the same is surely true for a community.  It is how we invest in and support the most vulnerable in society which reveals the quality of our communities.  As we reprioritise our public spending in the wake of the current recession, we must be wary of those politicians who would look for savings in our support for the vulnerable, the sick and the casualties of modern life.  As I see it, their care, through the work of the social services and other agencies, is a good gauge of the health of our nation.

Jesus said “By their fruits you shall know them” and that remains a good measure for many things, not least in our attitude to the vulnerable.   Baby Peter is a sad reminder that when the strong take advantage of the vulnerable – then pain, suffering, misery, death and wickedness are ever present.  The only remedy is for the strong and capable to be vigilant and to demand that the vulnerable are supported and protected.  Another phrase of Jesus comes to mind: “whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me”.

The ordination at St James Grimsby yesterday morning was full of excitement, anticipation and celebration.  The four new deacons ordained in the north of the Diocese of Lincoln yesterday bring to the church a depth of gifts and competencies which bode well for the future.

Frequently I find that conversations with congregations seem to suggest that the quantity of those coming into and available for stipendiary ministry is the important issue.  I think, however, that it is the quality of those coming forward which will resource the church most effectively in God’s mission and ministry.

As the cost of employing priests increasingly depends on the generosity of congregations, we need to ensure that those in stipendiary ministry bring a quality and competancy  which supports such generosity.  At the same time, the church needs to ensure that it is using all vocations to ministry in such a way as to honour the gifts and talents of those call by God not only into the ordained ministry but also into Reader and other lay ministeries.  Justin Lewis-Anthony recent book – “If you meet George Herbert on the road, Kill Him” challenges the Church of England to rethink how we unfold the practice of priestly ministry.  As the resource of stipendiary ministry reduces, it is time for us to understand how best to use the gifts and talents of those who respond to the call of God.

Just repeating pattens of ministry from the past by stretching the resourse of the stipendiary ordained ever further is a questionabe strategy for mission and ministry.  Lewis-Anthony asks pertinent questions and it is down to us  in the local church, in deaneries and in parishes to respond creatively – if we are to use the gifts and talents of those ordained yeasterday effectively in the cause of the Gospel.

Writing in the Church Times in May, Bishop John Bickersteth raises the question of the number of Suffragan Bishops in a Church with few clergy.  He argues that their function could be carried out by archdeacons and cost saving achieved.  His approach is based on the ASB service for consecrating Bishops which puts the emphasis on the main responsibility of a Bishop being the care of the clergy.

I scribbled the following reply to the Church Times:

“The Rt Revd John Bickersteth raises an interesting issue when he asks “Why not cut some Bishops”?  Yet his argument focuses on cost and function, rather than leadership and mission.

In the introduction to the Ordination of Bishops we are reminded that “Bishops are ordained to be shepherds of Christ’s flock and guardians of the faith of the apostles, proclaiming the gospel of God’s kingdom and leading his people in mission.”

A reduction in the number of suffragan bishops would inevitably result in the remaining bishops becoming increasingly inaccessible both to the Church and also to the wider community.  In an age of connectivity, networks and subsiduarity we need to ask how encouraging such rarity would assist in leading people in mission.

The fundamental question raised by Bishop John Bickersteth, but not addressed, concerns the nature of leadership needed for a Church committed to mission in the twenty-first century.  Resolving this question applies as much to incumbents, as it does to bishops   Models of oversight and leadership from the past may not always be helpful in determining what is right for the present.  Yet the relationship between leadership and mission is well established.

Quoting clergy numbers and ratios of bishops to clergy is to ignore the changing nature of the church.  In my area we have over 350 laity who have undergone training to equip them to unfold various aspects of ministry and to become part of the public face of the church’s ministry.  Relating to them, maintaining a mission mindset and ensuring that their gifts of ministry are well used, requires a different approach both from their priests and also from their bishops.

In the same way, parish priests are taking on significant complexity as their ‘cure’ encompasses increasingly diverse communities.   Supporting, encouraging and pastoring the clergy requires a far more informed understanding and involvement than may have been needed in the past.

Cost and function are pertinent, but the nature of leadership and appropriate shapes for that leadership are perhaps prior questions.”

With more and more Vicars/Rectors being asked to take on more parishes or even another multi-parish benefice into their ‘cure of souls’, I have written a paper about how the model for being an incumbent needs to be revisited.  It is a discussion paper to stimulate thinking and it can be found on this site at:  Incumbents and Extended Oversight

I have been trying to put my finger on why I feel so outraged at what we’ve learnt about those MP’s who appear to have abused their expenses. Set against so much wickedness in the world, their behaviour is certainly wrong and needs to be addressed, but it needs to kept in proportion when we live in a world where daily there are stories of abuse, violence and criminality which destroys people. Why is it that so many of us feel outraged as this story about the MPs unfolds?

Is it because this isn’t just another story of expenses being fiddled, but is far more about the trust which lies at the heart of the British democratic system being abused? When we go and vote, we trust an individual to represent our best interests. We give power through the ballot box and we trust those who represent us (even if we didn’t vote for them) to be worthy of the power which they have been given. I think that I am outraged because, in a healthy society, power and trust go hand-in-hand. When the trust is abused, then what about the power?

How people use power is a moral question. The Christian faith is founded on an individual whose power was to be found in vulnerability and service. Because of our history, the Christian story has shaped the British approach to politics – vulnerability to not being re-elected and election being to the service of all  people and not just your supporters. It is an approach to politics which is so different to those worst expressions of politics, where power is taken for self-interest and is used against one section or group.

I think this why I feel so outraged at the expenses fiasco – because floating duck nests, moat clearing and non-existent mortgages do not reflect vulnerability and service. They undermine the trust which is so central to British democracy. We have to be able to trust those we vote for to use their position for the good of each and every section of our society no matter who they are, who they voted for, where the come from, their colour or their creed. Essentially, we have to be able to trust those we vote for to be moral in what they do once elected, trust them to use their power in a moral way and to be worthy of our trust – then they can be described as ‘honourable’.

First published in the Cleethorpes Chronicle May 2009

Recently whilst visiting a school I was in a class which had been given the task of imagining and designing an island. In pairs they had been given a blank sheet of paper and asked to put in the features needed to shape the future of the people living on their imaginary island.   I was fascinated by the way in which all the islands ended up with similar features – mountains, rivers, fields, villages and towns.  All had roads and most had railways, some had an airport and most had docks, some had reservoirs and one had a rubbish dump – but none had wind farms, none had hydroelectric power stations and none had solar panels.  What was common to them all was that they imagined the future in terms of what they had already experienced – their future was a reflection of the past and I suspect that many of us, given the same exercise, would have done the same – imagining the future as a reflection of the past.

To Christians, the Easter story is an invitation – an invitation to become involved in shaping the future – our own and for our society.   An invitation to glimpse what is possible when we allow our imagination to be fed by the possibilities of God and his transforming love; an invitation to re-imagine our future, not as a reflection of the past, but as a new landscape of life and love.

We celebrate Easter this year when the world is experiencing remarkable changes and uncertainties.  The global economy is undergoing a fundamental readjustment, the recession is teasing out the viability of businesses leaving in its wake the unemployment which makes the future so uncertain for millions of people.

We celebrate Easter with the growing spectre of climate change and the continued threat of terrorism contributing to a general texture of uncertainty and, as ever, we celebrate Easter against the backdrop of all the ongoing joys and sorrows of life, from the joys of new birth to the heart rending plight of the Italian earthquake victims.

It is a troubling picture and it is far too simplistic just to say that Easter and its message of hope is ‘the’ answer to all the problems of our times.  The key to understanding Easter is the image of Jesus dying on the cross. The pain and suffering of Jesus tortured to death on the cross is transformed not avoided.  The hope which Christians celebrate today is not about making everything all right again, but how we can re-imagine the future.

As we wrestle with the future, it is understandably tempting and attractive for politicians to offer a future which is a recovery of the past good times, but what’s the sense in that?  More of the same will bring us to exactly where we are now – I think that it is called boom and bust.

It is too easy to jump on a bandwagon of blaming the bankers for all the economic problems we are facing.  We need to remember that they were operating in a system of values which we endorsed as we enjoyed the benefits of a buoyant economy, but those values had no substance, for they were not about shaping the future but exploiting the present.  A target driven world can be a world that sacrifices wisdom for the short term gains and approval of meeting the targets.

So do we really want to go back to that?  Or, if given a blank sheet of paper and asked to re-imagine the world, what features, what values would we draw in to shape the future for our world. The message of Easter invites us to draw in life and love, peace and justice, hope and goodness as foundational features for shaping the future.  These features are not exclusive to Christians – life and love, peace and justice, hope and goodness are universal and a commitment to them would be future shaping.  The Easter story enables us to glimpse that when these things are lived out to the full, then there is a flourishing of life which even death cannot destroy.

Over-to-you  BBC Radio Humberside  10th April 2009

I suspect like many children and probably quite a few adults I was always confused about Good Friday – what was ‘good’ about it?  It is the day in the year when we mark the story of Jesus who, having been betrayed by Judas Iscariot, arrested, tried before the ruling powers and condemned to death by the Roman governor, is nailed a cross an left to die in agony.  How can this possible be called ‘good’?

Well, the explanation for why it is called ‘good’ is either that it became known as ‘God’s Friday’ which through usage ended up as ‘Good Friday’, rather like our phrase ‘Goodbye’ has its origin in the phrase ‘God be with you’, or the alternative explanation that it was called ‘Good Friday’ because it is the day on which we remember the powers of Goodness triumphing over the powers of evil.  Either way, the significance of the day is to remember the suffering and death of a young man who offered a new and fresh way of knowing and understanding God.  In churches around the world there will be services to mark the event of Jesus’ death and its meaning.

That battle between good and evil was understood as a very real and spiritual battle in the time of Jesus.  Down the ages and still today for many that spiritual battle rages on – to Christians the victory in that battle was won by Jesus through his death and resurrection, but we are still engaged in ‘mopping up’ operations as units of evil refuse to accept their ultimate defeat.

In our modern world such imagery has less and less hold on our culture.  But we are still very alive to evil and will quickly adopt the phrase to describe those whose acts and behaviour we find unacceptable or which we cannot understand.

Trying to understand evil has been the subject of much philosophy, theology and psychology, but in the end it is a difficult concept to capture.  At its simplest,  evil is the consequence of excluding God – in which case there is a lot of potential for evil around.  Whilst in a more complex analysis, the term evil is adopted to justify the punishment of wrong doers and I think that’s why it is quickly adopted as a term by the tabloid press to describe criminals, even young children, as though the use of this word can capture the complexity of those who resort to violence and perversion.

The reality of evil is however all around us, as we encounter the ways in which human flourishing is undermined by violence, abuse and poverty. Whilst we may use all the force of the law to curb evil, Good Friday reminds us that the only way to overcome evil is for goodness to prevail.  In the face of evil we all need to become do-gooders, lest we become part of the problem ourselves.

Over-to-you.  BBC Radio Humberside 8th April 2009

There just seems to be so much news around at present that there is ever the danger that you miss the really interesting, but less sensational, stories.  This was particularly true yesterday, all the international attention was on President Obama’s visit to Iraq and a story from the Iraqi Appeal Court received little attention.  But the court ruled that the sentence given to c the journalist who hurled his shoes at President Bush, had been too severe and it was cut from 3 years in prison to one – which is still a long time for him to ponder the wisdom of his acts.  Zadai claimed that had thrown his shoes, a grave insult in Arab culture, as a protest on behalf of  the Iraqis who had been killed, orphaned or widowed since the US-led invasion of their country and in President Bush’s own words “it is one way to gain attention”.

It  raises the question – how do we gain attention when we feel that everything is going wrong? It comes as we absorb the concerning video footage associated with the death of Ian Tomlinson at last week’s G20 protest, scenes which ask serious questions about police behaviour.  When the powerful stop listening, how do we gain their attention and make them aware of our disquiet?

One of the stories about Jesus, which we read during these days leading up to Good Friday, is about him wreaking havoc in  the Temple, turning over the tables of the money changers.   It is a story of protest, a violent protest and Jesus’ actions were every bit as insulting in Jewish culture as an Arab throwing his shoe. Yet Jesus had found that the powerful had stopped listening and as the story unfolds it has a very modern feel, for the powerful used all the apparatus of their power to resist the truth Jesus was expounding.  The nature of Jesus’ protest against the abuse and corruption of truth becomes increasingly silent and the authority of his protest becomes greater as he offers a contrast to the anger, threats and violence of those who seek his death.

I think that to protest is to exercise our God given freedom to use our minds, to have an opinion and to speak about how we understand truth in this world.  Yet like all freedoms, there has to be responsibility and those who protest have to keep a fine balance between on the one hand making the powerful listen to their views and on the other becoming so forceful that the powerful have an excuse not to listen.  Over the years there have been many protests at the G8 meetings about the way the world economy was being run – they became very violent and the violence ensured that the protesters were not listened to by those with the power to change the economy.  As we now live in the grip of a terrible recession which is wreaking havoc in the lives of so many people, we may well feel that wisdom was actually found to be with the protesters, for it is painfully clear that the powerful who ran our economy  got it very wrong.

Over-to-you  BBC Radio Humberside  Tuesday 7th April

Yesterday, high above us in space, the European Goce Satellite switched on super-sensitive instruments which will make ultra-fine measurements of the Earth’s gravity.  The purpose of the Goce mission is to study the oceans – to understand better how gravity pulls water and heat around the globe and thus improve our understanding of climate change.  The satellite is an amazing feat of science, technology and engineering which will enable us to understand more about earth our home and the gravity which keeps us on it.

It was a tragic irony that on the day on which these super-sensitive instruments were switched on, miles below the residents in and around  L’Aquila in Italy were woken by the devastating effect of our globe’s most destructive force. The tectonic plates, which relentlessly grind together around Italy, moved suddenly causing an earthquake which brought devastation and destruction to the town and the power of gravity wreaked death and injury to the citizens of that region as buildings and infrastructure collapsed around them.

Our hearts go out to those who are caught up in this devastation – the bereaved, the injured and the homeless and we wrap them in our prayers along with those who continue to search for signs of life amidst the rubble and recover the victims of this natural disaster.

Science enables us to understand more and more about our planet and the life it sustains, with projects such as the Goce satellite extending that knowledge.  Already there are questions about why the scientists were not able to give any warning of this impending disaster as the energy built up under the epicentre of this earthquake.  Yet in the end we live on a living planet with the movement of the continental plates being part of the 4.5 billion year history of our world.  The victims of yesterday’s earthquake are tragic victims of this reality.

There are ever those who want to drive a wedge between science and religion. Artificially introducing conflict where there is none.  Science gives us an understanding of how this world works and how life is sustained; religion gives us an insight into the human dynamics of life, the purpose of life and the preciousness of each and every life.  As we wrap the victims of yesterday’s earthquake in our prayers we can do something which science can never offer, nor should it, we can for a moment become involved in their suffering and grief – we can’t change it, nor can we remove it – but in our prayers we avoid being indifferent to their plight – in prayer we are drawn into it.    That’s what makes us human and God makes possible – an ability to relate to each other in a way that science can never measure, no matter how super-sensitive its instruments may become.