Gerard Kelly's Blog, page 13

Companions in Suffering

Compassion is a word that is often spoken but rarely lived… At its root it is about how I feel when I see the sufferings of another. To get to the meaning of true compassion, consider a parallel word - companion. The latin prefix 'com' is a short form of 'common' - it means to share or 'have the same as'. 'Panion' is derived from the everyday word for bread. My companion is ' the one I share bread with'. Similarly, compassion means to share suffering. I have compassion when I share the suffering of another - that is I volunteer to feel what they feel. I surrender my will and allow my (relative) comfort to be coloured by the invasive entry of their (relative) pain. Compassion does not end, of course, in feelings - it flows into action. The bridge between the two is key. When I allow the sufferings of another to affect me as if they were my own, I will tend to act as decisively as I would to relieve my own pain, and if human beings are experts at anything, it is acting to relieve their own pain. When I feel pain as my own, action in response flows freely. Compassion, then, is the gift of treating others as I treat myself; of being as shaken by their loss; their hunger; their redundancy as I would be by my own. It challenges the one who is not in pain take on voluntarily a load that another has been forced to carry. None of us can live constantly and exclusively in this mode - we would be consumed by need and pain. But we can ask for a more compassionate heart; we can make room for compassion; we can ask for the gift of looking less often with indifference. Everything about the news headlines of 2011 suggests that we will be offered plenty of opportunities in the coming months to practise a move from dispassion (this means nothing to me) to compassion (I feel this pain as my own)…

Coal or Diamonds?

How are you equipping others? The question should underlie every other question about roles of leadership. Leaders exist entirely for this purpose. The whole human adventure is, at root, about discovering, developing and deploying the gifts our creator has given us. And helping others on this journey - until they shine with such bright beauty that we all start wearing shades around them - is what leadership is for. When you meet someone knew, do you notice first how inadequate they are, or do you start to tingle almost instantly with how incredible they might be? Do you notice the 98 areas in which a person has failed, or focus on the 2 areas in which they have a thrilling future? If you lead a group of people in an organisation or church, how often do you remind yourself of their potential? Are they a heap of coal; black; dusty; useful only for burning? Do you need a sackful of them to generate any energy at all? Or are they diamonds; each shining with an iridescent light; each valuable beyond imagination. Both are rocks - but the way you treat them is not the same! The great thing about diamonds is that just a few f them can change your life forever. What does it mean, in leadership, to move from dealing with quantities of coal to working with the qualities of diamonds?

Past Imperfect; Future Tense?

In Revelation 21 the Apostle John hears the words declared from heaven 'behold, I am making all things new'. His vision seems to be of future events, yet the voice speaks in the present tense - and is set in the context of prophetic imagery drawn from the past, from the proclamations of Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel. Past, present and future merge in a dramatic declaration of the purposes of God. Not only does John's vision give us insight into what God has done and is doing in the world, it also models how we are to answer the question 'what is God doing right now'? In any given time and setting, John implies, the events we see unfolding before us can be 'read' against two horizons - the horizon of all that God has done and spoken in the past, and the horizon of all He has promised for the future. The purposes of God are like an underground river, flowing invisibly beneath the events of history. Rooted in the world's in-God beginnings and moving towards its promised in-God end, these purposes are always consistent with God's character. The best way to fully understand the present is to have God's perspective on the past and future. From the 'it was very good' of Genesis 1 to the 'all things new' of Revelation 21, visible history is a reflection of God's unseen plans, and can only truly be interpreted by their light.

An Ancient Emergence

The question 'are you part of the emerging church?' has shifted in the past decade from the fringes of the Christian community to the mainstream. A significant number of church plants and projects have been started in Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, a steady flow of books have been written and thousands of believers have self-identified as 'emergent'. The recent publication of Phyllis Tickle's 'The Great Emergence' has raised the conversation to a new level, setting current trends against the background of centuries of church history. But the best answer to the question 'are you part of the emerging church?' has always been 'as opposed to which other?' Emergence is the very nature of the Christian church. The Acts of the Apostles is a story of emergence. Every new Christian community planted adds something to the wider picture and Peter, James, Paul and the other apostles face decades of wrestling with the identity, boundaries and ethos of the church. Apostolic leadership is by definition a dialogue between that which is established and that which is emergent. The very foundation of mission is a God who is eternal, faithful, established and unchanging and yet declares "I am making all things new". The most accurate definition ever offered to me of the 'emerging church' movement came from a 73 year old missions co-ordinator in a very mainstream UK Baptist church. 'Emerging church', she said, 'is where you look at a geographical area, ask what the Holy Spirit is doing there and try to join in'. May the year to come be, for all of us, a season of emergence.

Time to Build a Life-wide Vision

January is a bonus month for diet consultants. The combination of Christmas over-indulgence and 'turn-over-a-new-leaf' resolutions will send millions searching, over the coming days, for weight-loss solutions. And the best of them will offer the same message: weight-loss is not about tracking food intake or increasing exercise or changing attitudes or drinking more water or improving sleep patterns: it is about all of them together. Only a life-wide vision can impact lifestyle sufficiently to bring long-term change. The same is true of faith. Anything short of a life-wide vision will not do justice to the roots of faith. The Bible addresses our lives through the widest possible lens. The plans of God touch every corner of our culture. The only cry that fulfils the death and resurrection of God's son is the cry "all of life redeemed". Nothing that concerns us - physically, emotionally, spiritually; intellectually - does not concern our maker. By the light of faith everything is illuminated. Perhaps the drawback of many of our churches is not that our worship is not deep enough, but that it is not wide enough. It's time for a life-wide vision of what the mission of God can do.

Wide Open Space

I have recently finished Ian Morgan Cron's exploration of the life and legacy of Saint Francis 'Chasing Francis'. Part personal journal, part theological essay, the book in essence offers Francis as the ideal spiritual guide for the turbulent waters of a post-evangelical, postmodern faith. It fits comfortably into the space opened up by Robert Webber's 'Ancient-Future Faith', Brian McLaren's 'Generous Orthodoxy' and Andy Freeman's 'Punk Monk', all of which suggest a similar plundering of pre-reformation spiritualities to fund a post-Christendom journey. What sets 'Chasing Francis' apart is Cron's decision to explore Francis through fiction. The meltdown and recovery of the conservative pastor at the story's heart - the frighteningly named Chase Falson - provides a very personal lens through which to explore the Franciscan commitments to spiritual growth, reconciliation and serving the poor. This personal dimension adds power to the narrative: though it's appeal may be limited to those readers familiar with the constraints of evangelical conservatism. For such readers, the sense of Falcon's liberation is tangible. Here is a man walking out of the very small room his faith has confined him to and discovering that beyond its walls there is a beautiful and expansive garden to explore. The boundaries of orthodoxy, it seems, are broader, kinder and more elastic than ever the boundaries of 'right doctrine' have been. The journey from the narrow straights of dogma to the wide open spaces of grace is one many evangelical believers will take in the coming decades, and Cron has blazed a trail well worth noting.

Sprekst Du Globish?

When we took on the leadership of Crossroads international Church in 2005, we joined a community made up of more than 40 nationalities. Amsterdam is officially the world's most ethnically diverse city, having recently overtaken New York. The common language of the church was English, which I thought at first might make my life easy. But I discovered some interesting things about language along the way. The English we shared, it turned out, was not the English of my childhood and education. Rather, it was a new world English: sometimes called Globish. Founded on English but taking in significant North american and Asian influences, Globish is spoken exponentially more widely as a second language than as a first. I found I had as much to learn as anyone to become fluent in this new tongue: especially as a public speaker. Some of the key differences are a simplified vocabulary and grammar; an emphasis on verb and noun at the expense of less essential adjectives and adverbs; an acceptance of imprecision in tenses (errors are more frequent and more readily ignored). Communication is stripped-back to its essence: what happened, where and to whom? 'Why' is a less frequent question and a flower-strewn 'how', perfumed with poetry, is rarely called for. What is particularly interesting is that this Globish may well now be the language most used on planet Earth: the new world's mother tongue. A Latin for the postmodern generation. Perhaps most importantly, Globish cannot draw on the history and idioms of any one culture. All language is ultimately storytelling, and stories require common idioms and shared ideas. We only listen to Red Riding Hood because we too are frightened of the wolf in the woods. But Globish has no acknowledged stock of such idioms. The phrase 'The Queen's English', for example, is meaningless to people who have no queen and don't know what having one might feel like. References to historic events may or may not be understood: references to recent, global news stand a much better chance. And the communicator is forced to look deeper, beyond cultural idiom, to find core and universal human truths. Those who have neither woods nor wolves in their cultural library do, it turns out, have fears. There are common, shared, foundational human experiences that underpin all cultures and unite rather than divide us. There is a central human story. Childbirth and ambition; love and jealousy; sickness, fear and death all belong to this core story. They may find expression in many different forms, but their presence is universal: they are the basis of what it means to be human. So the question I learned to ask myself was not so much 'Do you Speak Globish?' as 'Do You Speak Human'. The more I learned to speak human, the more fully I found myself understood in Globish culture. Which is how I made the most astounding discovery of all: the discovery that changed everything about my expectations of church and mission. I found out that the Bible is written in human. The Gospel was made for a Globish-speaking world.

Dive Into Diversity

The great thing about the people God has made is this: we are all different enough to be interesting, but similar enough to connect. At heart, we are all made of the same stuff. Human experiences unite us, human concerns are common to us. And yet we are each unique. Knowing another person, when knowledge runs deeper than 'hello' on the station platform or 'is this seat taken?' adds to my total understanding of the world. Discovering the lives of others; hearing their perspectives; exploring my own assumptions through the lens of theirs: all these are enriching, empowering experiences. Which is why diversity is so important to God's idea of church. Saint paul, especially, draws attention to the nature of the church as unity-in-diversity. Emphasising classes and categories rather than individuals - male and female; slave and free; Jew and Gentile; Greek and Barbarian - Paul presents the church as an environment in which tribes in tension find the power to co-exist. In this redeemed community historic enemies become fellow-travellers. But this is a salad bowl, not a melting pot. The tribes are not homogenised into a bland mush, like play-dough colours mixed once to often. Rather, they are woven together into a beautiful picture - the image of God rediscovered in the colours of the human family. In this unity identity is retained: it is the unity of the collage, not the crowd. And Paul attributes this picture not only to his virtual notion of the universal church, but also to his actual vision of the local church: real people in real places displaying the wonder of unity-in-diversity. All cultures. All ages. All classes. All types. Genders and generations together. Each individual finding identity and thriving in community: this is Paul's description of the localised ecclesia - a deposit, in each town and city, of God's new and wondrous family. What changes might your local church need to journey from bland monochrome to glorious colour?

Fujimura - 4 Holy Gospels (by Crossway)I have long been a fan...

Fujimura - 4 Holy Gospels (by Crossway)

I have long been a fan of the art of Makoto Fujimura - one of the world's clearest and most dynamic Christian voices into the contemporary art scene. This video introduces his most recent project, to illuminate the four gospels. Beautiful. Brave. Inspiring.

A pdf preview of he project is available here.

This is the second Spoken Worship track from the...

This is the second Spoken Worship track from the 'Restore' CD and DVD, recorded on tour in May2010.