Pete Greig's Blog: Scrambled Greig, page 3

Aidan's Way Pilgrimage

In October 2021 I walked 300 miles on my own from the Scottish island of Iona to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in the footsteps of the 7th century Celtic saint Aidan. Honestly? It was… life changing.

My publisher asked me to do it again, but this time to let others share in the journey.

And so right now here I am back in the Highlands of Scotland on Aidan’s Way, but this time with two friends: Charlie Kang - a photographer for the book which will come out next year, and Rich Dawson - a sound engineer who’s putting out #Lectio365 devotionals and #ThePilgrimPodcast daily from the road. (I’ll be posting the podcast here.

We’re having a lot of fun!

Whoop!

This is just so encouraging. Writing a book is a lonely business. You tap away at the keyboard for weeks on end, never really knowing whether ithe things you’re saying make sense. So it’s just lovely to get moments like these when you dare to believe that the things in your heart and your head have somehow connected with the hearts and heads of others through the mystery of of writing. Grateful.

This is just so encouraging…

A Blessing for Christmas Day

May the extraordinary love,

by which the Father sent his Son at Christmas,

embrace my family and friends, my heart and my home, this day.

And may the astounding sacrifice,

by which Jesus was born in Bethlehem,

mark all my attitudes, actions and interactions this day.

And may the irrepressible joy,

by which the Spirit conceives and breathes new life,

fill me with the holiness of heaven’s happiness, now and forever more.

Amen

A Christmas Blessing

May the extraordinary love,

by which the Father sent his Son at Christmas,

embrace my family and friends, my heart and my home, this day.

And may the astounding sacrifice,

by which Jesus was born in Bethlehem,

mark all my attitudes, actions and interactions this day.

And may the irrepressible joy,

by which the Spirit conceives and breathes new life,

fill me with the holiness of heaven’s happiness, now and forever more.

Amen

Vineyard Anaheim Statement

Many people have asked me to explain my role in Vineyard Anaheim’s decision to withdraw from Vineyard USA, and particularly my subsequent resignation from its Board. This statement is personal. I am not speaking on behalf of Vineyard Anaheim’s Board, nor of its Pastors, Alan and Kathryn Scott who have already issued a statement here.

 

I am choosing to speak now for three reasons: Firstly, the depth of pain and confusion that this decision has caused has broken my heart. I love Alan and Kathryn. I also love the Vineyard movement which has shaped my life profoundly. I have many friends within the worldwide Vineyard family to whom I owe an explanation.

 

Secondly, there is a great deal of misinformation and unhelpful presumption circulating, and I believe that this is contributing to the current confusion and pain. I hope that by speaking up I can bring a little more clarity.

 

Thirdly, the 24-7 Prayer movement is committed to Christian unity. I recognise that my words and actions have a bearing on thousands of people who are actively and wonderfully engaged in 24-7 Prayer globally, some of them members of Vineyard churches.

 

A painful process

I attended my first meeting of the Vineyard Anaheim Board on January 19th, having accepted an invitation to visit twice a year for two years in order to bring an external perspective. I had made this commitment because Alan and Kathryn are friends, and because Vineyard Anaheim is a church I have deeply admired for many years.

There was no mention on that visit of any plan to leave Vineyard USA (VUSA), and neither had this possibility been raised with me previously. I have subsequently learned that it had been discussed in other contexts prior to my arrival, and was the subject of active discernment at that time. Had I known this, I would not have felt able to join the Board.

When Alan and Kathryn sensed that the time was right to leave VUSA at the end of February, they requested the Board’s support (although technically, under the terms of the bylaws established by John Wimber, they did not need our permission to do so). I did not give my consent because this came as a complete shock and there did not appear to have been any due process. Instead I urged Alan to slow down. As a result, on Sunday February 27th, he publicly acknowledged ‘mis-steps in… communication’, and announced his desire ‘to host a further conversation.’ 

I then met with Jay Pathak the National Director of VUSA in Denver, and strongly encouraged him in his desire to engage the Scotts in a meaningful process of dialogue and mutual discernment.

On Sunday March 6th I attended a Vineyard Anaheim Board meeting at which a plan was made to meet with members of the VUSA Board for off-the-record discussions. At this point I resigned from the Board because I felt that I had played my part in brokering better communication between the two parties and because I could see that the reputation of 24-7 Prayer was being damaged by the public perception of my continued involvement.  

In the eleven days between the Scott’s initial announcement and my resignation I spent many hours, much prayer and a few tears, trying to leverage my position on the Board for the sake of peace and grace between people I love and ministries I continue to admire. I held my peace publicly during this time - and until now - out of a desire to help facilitate dialogue. I did not want to say anything that could be construed as taking sides which seemed to me, both then and now, to be unhelpful. I am truly sorry for any confusion and hurt my choices have made, both amongst those who wish I had not resigned, and those who wanted me to offer an explanation like this sooner.

I am deeply aware of the shockwaves this decision has sent through the Vineyard family worldwide. God knows I have tried to help.

Posture

I do not wish my resignation, or this statement, to be weaponised in any way against the Scotts.  They, along with the whole Vineyard Anaheim Board, have been consistently gracious and godly towards me. I have never once heard them speak a bad word in private or public towards VUSA. They have served faithfully and fruitfully within Vineyard for decades and are truly people who listen diligently to the Lord and simply seek to obey. It grieves me to see the animosity unleashed against them online. I understand the pain behind such comments but the language used is not appropriate within Christ’s family.

Likewise, Jay Pathak is a remarkable and brilliant leader. I believe that he has been raised up by God to lead VUSA for such a time as this. Long before this dispute arose I invited him to speak at our Wildfires Festival in the UK next month, and I am pleased that he is still fully intending to come. I have made myself available to Jay as well as to the Scotts to help in any way I can in an informal capacity.

I acknowledge the sense of bereavement within Vineyard and of bewilderment within the wider church triggered by this sudden separation, and deeply regret my inability to get both sides talking. The process has not been good. I’m sure that some people will continue to be angry with me, not least because this statement fails to address certain questions which can only be answered by the two respective Boards. However I do continue to pray for both VUSA and Vineyard Anaheim, that all concerned will flourish to the greater glory of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom we are one, confident that we shall one day:

‘all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.’ (Eph. 4:13)

  

Pete Greig

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Contemplative Prayer + Popcorn - a user's guide to the meaning of life

Contemplative prayer is a journey that tends to passthrough three phases, from meditation (me and God) to contemplation (God and me) to communion (only God). This may sound pretty heavy but I guarantee you do it already, and with a little practice you can go deeper and learn to enjoy God’s presence in prayer more than ever before.

1. Meditation—the “Me and God” Stage

As it says in the very first sentence of the first Psalm: “Blessed is the one who . . . meditates on [God’s] law day and night” (verses 1-2). Contemplation begins with meditation—fixing your thoughts on a picture, an object, or most frequently, on a phrase from the Bible. Sit quietly, reflecting on a verse, exploring it from every angle in your mind. Whenever you get distracted, bring your thoughts back to focus again on this simple, single phrase or sentence. Meditation takes effort, but it does get easier with practice. “No other habit,” says pastor Rick Warren, “can do more to transform your life and make you more like Jesus than daily reflections on Scripture.” Poet Mary Oliver says that we have only to “pay attention” to the wonder of the world—even its less beautiful bits—to step through the doorway into that contemplative “silence in which another voice may speak.”

Praying –
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

As we enter into contemplation through the gateway of meditation, we may well find that particular concerns begin to knock at the door of our minds. When this happens, the contemplative approach is neither to shut them out nor to start interceding about them, but simply to welcome them as guests and lift them to the Lord in silent prayer. We acknowledge the situation that is troubling our minds or the person who is weighing on our hearts and lift them to the Lord.

“Intercessory prayer is not primarily about thinking that I know what someone else needs and trying to wrestle it from God,” suggests Ruth Haley Barton. “Rather, it is being present to God on another’s behalf, listening for the prayer of the Holy Spirit that is already being prayed for that person before the throne of grace, and being willing to join God in that prayer.” Referring to the apostle Paul’s description of the Holy Spirit interceding for us in groans beyond human vocabulary, she continues: “As I enter into the stillness of true prayer, it is enough to experience my own groaning about the situation or person I am concerned about and to sense the Spirit’s groaning on their behalf.”

2. Contemplation—the “God and Me” Stage

As I meditate on the Lord and become aware of his presence, my center of gravity shifts from “me and God” to “God and me.” He takes center stage. I’m no longer slogging away, trying to fix my attention on him, using that logical left hemisphere of my cerebral cortex, because I can now see that his attention is already fixed on me! “Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage,” teaches Jesus. “The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.” Words become less necessary as prayer becomes no longer something I’m doing but something I’m being in the presence of God. “The discovery at the heart of contemplation,” says Bishop Stephen Verney, “is not that I am contemplating the divine love, but that the divine love is contemplating me. He sees me and understands and accepts me.”

3. Communion—the “Only God” Stage

Sometimes it’s possible to become so absorbed in God’s reality that I forget myself completely. I am no longer consciously praying or worshiping. Words would be inadequate and even inappropriate. It’s as though time has stopped and I’ve somehow stepped into eternity. Anthony of the Desert described this experience more than 1700 years ago like this: “Perfect prayer is not to know that you are praying.”

You may be surprised to learn that you probably embark on precisely this kind of meditative and contemplative journey every time you go to the cinema. First, at the start of a movie, it’s “you and the movie.” You are eating popcorn, working hard to pay attention, tutting at anyone who’s chatting, trying to get into those all-important opening scenes. But then, if the movie is good, it starts to affect you. It draws you in. You laugh and cry. You find yourself caring about the characters, forgetting that they are actors. You no longer need to work at getting into the film because the film is getting into you. Meditation has turned into contemplation.

If a movie is better than good—if it is truly great—you will eventually get completely caught up in its plot, utterly absorbed and deeply affected. Your popcorn will be forgotten. It will no longer be “me and the movie” nor even “the movie and me” but “only the movie.” The story will have transported you into a place that seems more real than reality.

This blog is an extract from How to Pray, chapter 8

Such all-consuming experiences and the overwhelming human desire for them—in art, in sex, in nature, in moments of sporting euphoria, in deep conversations late at night with dear friends—are rumours of another world. They whisper that we are made for eternity, wired to worship, happiest whenever we abandon ourselves to something greater and more beautiful than our own little lives.

Like you. Not like you.

People talk a lot about making the gospel culturally relevant as if it is a contemporary irrelevance. As if Jesus has passed his sell-by date. Nothing could be further from the truth.

That’s why churches are now growing again in the UK - ahead of the population - in spite of an insidious anti-faith agenda from today’s cultural elite.

Meanwhile, our call as the people of God is not to cultural relevance but to cultural presence. We are wired as change agents; designed to be outsiders on the inside.

Again and again in the Old Testament the Israelites got this wrong. Syncretistic assimilation in one generation, pietistic exclusivity in the next. Our task is to be undeniably different yet defiantly present in ordinary streets and offices, in recording studios and research labs, from classrooms to the corridors of power. ‘You are the Light of the World!’ Jesus cries, “Now shine!’ Compel the culture’s attention with a better, more beautiful way of life.

Does the political right criticise our championing of the poor, our hospitality towards refugees? Hallelujah!

Does the political left despise our commitment to family and the sanctity of life? Praise the Lord!

“The days are coming, I suspect, when we will be hated for what we stand for but loved for what we do. ”

Are our sexual ethics openly mocked by the media? Is our belief in God pilloried by the academy? Are our brothers and sisters being persecuted by the Powers in China and Iran, slaughtered for their confession of faith in Nigeria and the Middle East? Kyrie Eleison.

Yes, we are with you. Yes, we like you. But no, we are not like you.

The days are coming, I suspect, when we will be hated for what we stand for but loved for what we do. It has always been so. And if we recant at such a time; if we bow down to the State and trade authority for power, if we marry the spirit of this present age we will be widowed in the next (Inge). As old-man Moses once said to God (as he eyed the Promised Land) ‘If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here… What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33)

It’s time to carry God’s presence into an alien land. To celebrate our own strangeness within the culture, to herald the margins and rage against the relentless beige of modern life.

The hope of the world today is still the same, uncool, unchanging gospel of this punk rock messiah who walked amongst us, as one of us and showed us another way to be.

What if Jesus didn't play guitar?

We are searching for bigger words than ‘prayer’ and ‘worship’ ; fumbling in the cloisters of Christian experience for a noun that recognises the depth and diversity of divine encounter beyond the neatly stacked boxes of our habitual vocabulary.

For instance, when we say ‘worship’ we almost always mean music. It’s a sort of code. And when we say ‘let us pray’ we would be very surprised indeed if someone threw back their head and began to sing. But the Psalms, which ebb and flow between adoration, intercession, and grumbling, were spoken as often as they were sung. Jesus taught us to begin our prayers with spoken worship ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,’ and to conclude them with petition ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ He didn’t play guitar.

When you say ‘Let us pray’, Pentecostals raise their hands and their voices while Quakers sit down and fall silent, Jesuits reach for their bibles and many charismatics open their hands to receive from the Holy Spirit. All these responses are good and all of them are partial.

This lazy word ‘prayer’ can confine us to the myopia of our own tradition. Most of us are bored: craving other forms of encounter; looking for a fuller menu that combines the contemplative with the intercessory, militant spiritual warfare with mystical encounters, irreverent lament with ancient liturgy, the Lectio Divina, Examen and the philokali with confession, meditation and tongues. Second generation charismatics are currently devouring liturgy. Many of them think that everything in Latin is true. And all the while the members of ancient denominations are discovering the Holy Spirit, laughing like children at the freedom they are finding from the restrictions of tradition.

The architecture of our lives

In his seminal work, De architectura, (30-15BC), Vitruvius sets out his famous triad of characteristics for great architecture — utilitas, firmitas, venustas (utility, strength and beauty).

I’ve been wondering lately how we might apply these ancient principles of good design to the stuff we build with our lives today - businesses, churches, friendships. Programmes, processes and products. Families, houses and homes. The architecture of our time.

This may sound a little esoteric but it is urgently important because consumer culture - the air that we breathe - values things primarily by their expediency and immediacy, regardless of their long-term sustainability and meaning (single-use plastics, fossil-fuels, single-generation churches, four-year political cycles, genetically modified harvests, the list goes on).

We measure practical objects, processes and even people by their usefulness rather than their depth, meaning and intrinsic beauty. The ends tend to justify both the means and the medium. The arts and the sciences rarely dance. The prophets and apostles seldom share their toys.

What would happen, I wonder - what would it look like - if we started new initiatives, built businesses and even planted churches with all three of Vitruvius’ aims in view? If we refused to settle for short-term quantitative results (the size of your profit, the numbers in your church - important as these things can be), but also required the things we make to be intrinsically beautiful and resiliently durable?

Thomas Merton, who abandoned the bright lights of the city for a hidden Trappist monastery, and swapped his successful literary career for prayer - was once asked to diagnose the primary spiritual disease of the Western world and he answered with a single word: ‘efficiency’.

Could it be (I ask myself, staring at my crazy schedule, my coffee-to-go, my insane inbox), that our working environments, our relationships and even our churches are being stifled by the idolatry of mere efficiency? That we are still enslaved by Pharaoh’s pursuit of production? That the mortal craving for more is costing us both our legacy and our lives?

‘For what will it profit a person,’ asks one contemporary of Vitruvius, ‘if they gain the whole world, and lose their own soul?’ Mark 8:36

Where is God when heaven is silent?

Holy Saturday fascinates me. The Bible tells us almost nothing about this mysterious day sandwiched between crucifixion and resurrection when God allowed the whole of creation to live without answers. It’s a day of confusion and silence.

Roman Catholics and many Anglicans strip their altars bare – back to the bones. I guess it’s the one day in the entire year when the Church has nothing to say.

And yet, although we know so little about it, Holy Saturday seems to me to describe the place in which many of us live much of our lives: waiting for God to say something, or do something or make sense of the things we are experiencing. We know that Jesus died for us yesterday. We trust that there may be miracles tomorrow. But what of today – this eternal Sabbath when heaven is silent? Where, we wonder, is God now?

Like Job’s comforters, we often attempt to solve the problem of God’s silence with simplistic explanations of complex situations, lopsided applications of Scripture and platitudes of premature comfort.

We are afraid to simply wait with the mess of problems unresolved until God Himself unmistakably intervenes, as He did on Easter Sunday. We are unwilling to admit, “I don’t have a clue what God is doing or why this is happening.” We may even suspect that it would be un-Chrislike to cry out publicly, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” Why can’t we wait in the mess and pain of Holy Saturday?

Rushing the resurrection

I went to the funeral of a friend named Simon who had died very suddenly of a heart attack, leaving behind a wife and four young children. It was unspeakably sad, especially as I watched his children at the front of the church, pale as milk in their smartest clothes, trying to be so very brave and grown-up and appropriate for us all – trying to make their daddy proud. One of the daughters played a piece on the recorder. Another did a reading, and her voice hardly faltered. Then the pastor stood up and invited a band to lead us in a time of worship.

What happened today on earth?
There is a great silence.
A great silence, and stillness,
A great silence because the King sleeps.

Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday

We all sang songs and, to my surprise, some of the people in the front row started dancing. I know why they were doing it – they wanted to celebrate the fact that Simon will rise again with Christ; that God was in charge.

In a way I loved them for the sheer defiant absurdity of it all. But then I saw something that almost broke my heart. We were singing “Show Us Your Power O Lord” which – according to the service sheet – had been one of Simon’s favourites, when his seven year old daughter turned her head and stared at the coffin. “Show us your power O Lord,” we continued and she just kept staring at the coffin. It was a simple thing but, as I say, it almost broke my heart.

A number of eulogies followed, and everyone said lovely things about Simon. One of the speakers explained how intricately God’s hand could be seen in the timing of Simon’s death. We believed him – we needed to believe him – but it seemed to me that for the four little faces on the front row, the timing could not have been more wrong. Their father had been this inevitable presence in their lives. He had been forever. Theories of death and providence no longer applied. Streets should be empty. The Disney Channel should come off the air. 

In spite of all the singing, dancing and detailed assurances (or perhaps because of them), I drove away later thinking how very fragile our faith must be if we can’t just remain sad, scared, confused and doubting for a while. In our fear of unknowing, we leapfrog Holy Saturday and rush the resurrection. We race disconcerted to make meaning and find beauty where there simply is none. Yet.

From dusk on Good Friday to dawn on Easter Sunday, God allowed the whole of creation to remain in a state of chaos and despair. Martin Luther dared to suggest, “After Good Friday” – and I imagine him whispering the words – “God’s very self lay dead in a grave."

Prayer

The scholar Alan E. Lewis was one of the few people to have written and thought seriously about Holy Saturday. When eventually he began to draw his thoughts together in a book called Between Cross and Resurrection he discovered - half way through the project - that he was dying of incurable cancer. Suddenly the theme had become deeply personal. Here is one of his prayers from that book:

Hear our prayer for a world still living an Easter Saturday existence, oppressed and lonely, guilty of godlessness and convinced of godforsakeness. Be still tomorrow the God you are today, and yesterday already were: God with us in the grave, but pulling thus the sting of death and promising in your final kingdom and even greater victory of abundant grace and life over the magnitude of sin and death. And for your blessed burial, into which we were baptised, may you be glorified for evermore. 

Amen

Alan E Lewis (1944 – 1994)

This article is extracted from God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer which traces Christ’s journey from Maundy Thursday, through Good Friday and Holy Saturday, to Easter Sunday, in search of honest answers to the darkest, most painful questions of our lives.