We have been thinking a lot about ‘peace’ in praying for our new church venture in Caen. We want this new international church to be a church of peace, a church themed around the coming of peace.

Two phrases keep coming to my mind in this. The first comes from the Bible, from a letter written by the prophet Jeremiah to some friends of his who were living far away in Babylon: “Pray for the peace of the city to which God has carried you…”. This phrase resonates for us because we are exiles here. Many of those who join us to form this church will also be foreigners in France. What does it mean for us to pray for the peace of this city? Caen identifies itself with peace. Having been so recently torn apart by war, the city has invested everything these past 60 years in becoming a place of peace. The ‘Memorial’ museum is dedicated to the peace of the world. Tens of thousands come every year - French and British; Americans; Canadians; Germans and Poles - to remember how truly dark the darkness of war can be, and to seek the light of peace. What does it mean for God’s people in the city to celebrate peace? To give to the Prince of Peace thanks for such peace as we know and prayers for that deeper and wider peace we so long for.

The second phrase is linked to this: “Peace among the nations; peace among denominations ”. In French “La paix parmi les nations; la paix parmi les confessions”. This is the inspiration of our church - to gather as internationals and proclaim the peace and reconciliation our faith affords.  To discover in our shared humanity the joy of worshipping our common creator. And to seek the unity of the people of God. France has known centuries of division and conflict, including that with the Church. At the height of the reformation 45% of the people of Caen were Protestant. The number now is unimaginably lower, and the reasons are not savoury. Yet now, as the 21st Century delivers decline and discouragement to Catholics and Protestants alike, there are new opportunities for unity and co-operation. As Protestants from a broadly evangelical tradition, but from many different denominations, we want to stand with our Catholic brothers and sisters and pray the blessing of God on every church in the city. Committing together to the ‘new evangelisation’. Working together for the greater goal of renewal, reconciliation and revival across the city.

In all this we are gripped by the picture of Jesus, meeting with his friends in a private room; breathing over each of them to say ‘receive my peace’. We pray for such a moving of God’s breath over the city of Caen in years to come that many - native and foreign; local and tourist; Protestant and Catholic; believer and not - will know that they have received the peace the Son of God offers.

Flash mob in the Copenhagen Metro. Copenhagen Phil playing Peer Gynt. (by CPHPHIL)

Really liked this - not just the idea of music ob the metro, but the choice of music; the timing; the faces of fellow-passengers. There’s a great moment at 0:46 where a young guy takes out his ipod earphones to listen better… great image.

Steve Jobs reminding us that ‘design’ is not what you do after you have made your product - to make it look better. It is what you do to come up with a product in the first place. James Dyson made a similar observation in the 1980’s, when he saw British manufacturers trying to market themselves out of a slump - taking the same old tired products and asking an advertising agency to make them look sexy. It’s not new and better adverts that we need, he claimed, but new and better products. Put the creativity into the product itself, and you will be less stuck for creativity in selling it.

My sense is that this is a journey we have been on as missional leaders and church-planters over the past decade. At the end of the last century, many of us saw that a new generation were no longer interested in the ‘products’ of our mission: our churches, spiritualities and lifestyle proposals. And some of us thought that we could solve the problem through better marketing. Get a new logo. Re-package the product. Find new words with which to make the old ideas seem fresh. Such efforts will always produce a measure of success - but not in any useful or lasting sense. The corner we are now turning is the realisation that it is in the designing of our ‘products’ themselves that creativity is needed: the very shape of the churches, spiritualities and lifestyle proposals we offer. Let the product reflect the deep aesthetics and values of your faith: and let people respond to it not because of the way you have sold it to them, but because of what it is.

Whilst in Quiberon for the weekend I found a book on local history, including this image of the 12th Century stone cross outside the Chapel de Notre Dame de Lotivy in Portivy. The cross pre-dates the existing church by 700 years, and even beats the original priory by 100. I wrote some notes for a forthcoming novel that said:

… this is not the bright, plastic Jesus of the modern church; strong and shining and resisting all decay. The neon Jesus of churches looking to rival Las Vegas. This is a humbler Jesus altogether, a Jesus stuck forever on the strange bed of his cross, open to the elements: the rains of centuries thrown in his face. This is Jesus accepting his imprisonment. Letting them abuse him. Forget him. Curse him, even. But here, still, 1000 years on, outlasting all of them. This is a Jesus older than the revolution; deeper than Hiroshima; more certain than the claims of Nike and Apple. This Jesus, if such a thing were possible, I’d like to know….

Incredible sand sculptures, Quiberon beach, April 30th 2012

Jodi Holzhausen died yesterday, after an epic and courageous three-year battle with cancer. A few moments after I’d spoken with Stephan, I was in the farmhouse alone. The house is empty and a little desolate after last week’s fire, and the terrible smell of burnt wood and plastic still fills it. I was standing in the living room, reflecting for a moment on Jodi’s life with the phrase ‘Jodi died today’ spinning in my head. I looked up and saw on the mantlepiece a card that Caroline had sent from the UK for Bex’s birthday. Beautifully hand-drawn in gentle colours it carried the message of Proverbs 31:25 ‘She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.” 

What a perfect description by which to remember our lovely friend Jodi.

In all her medical battles of recent years, she was clothed in the most remarkable strength. Her faith; her love for Stephan and the children and her unique zeal for life just couldn’t be extinguished by the harshness of the treatments she endured. 

She never lost her dignity. Jodi could speak openly about the possibility of dying, even as they stuck needles in her and tried al they could to get her body back in order. In all of it she remained the very picture of dignity.

And she did laugh. Every day and with immeasurable joy. She had an immense confidence in the future. She knew that whatever came, her journey would continue to be a great adventure of love and faith. 

I realised this morning that seeing jodi in her final weeks has redefined for me the meaning of ‘eternal life’. Sometimes when someone is dying we feel it is our job to reassure them. We try to give them courage: to help them know that death is not the end. This was never necessary with Jodie. She knew. She reassured those around her. It was not just her knowledge. It was her spirit. Even as her body took blow after blow, her spirit remained strong. It made me realise that no matter how the cells of our flesh decay, there is life in us that cancer just can’t kill. Eternal life is not just what we’re waiting for - it is not simply a description of the age to come. It is what we live now, when faith and the resurrection power of Christ are at work in us. 

Cancer took Jodi’s body. We will miss her terribly, and we pray for Stephan, Lucy, Lucas, Tobi and Tomi in their loss. But cancer did not take her life. It couldn’t: it isn’t strong enough.

Thank you, Jodi, for showing us what eternal life looks like now.

discoverbethanie:

It stands as one of the greatest tragedies of human history that so many, over the past several centuries, have left the Church because they didn’t find in it a sufficient belief in humanity. Humanism only became the enemy of faith because the Church had so resolutely become the enemy of human endeavour. The Bible, by contrast, presents the most positive view of human potential to be found anywhere in the literature of the religions of the world. We have a special place in the purposes of God because, by God’s design, we are gifted beyond all other creatures.

seaoflove

Anyone for fruit? The organic nature of growth runs through the bible like Brighton through rock. Biblical change is slow change; from the inside out. No short-cuts. No quick-fixes. No alternative to the hard work of sowing; pruning; watering; tending the garden. Get-righteous-quick schemes offering sure-fire solutions are for the most part distractions from the actual business of walking in God’s ways.

Instead of asking ‘what am I achieving’ or ‘how good do I feel’ try asking ‘what is God growing in me?”

(via liveforothers)

We are beautiful; broken; forgiven; invited.

These four words do not only describe what it means to be a Chrisitan - they describe what it means to be human. The Biblical narrative contains an ontological account of the meaning of our lives. It tells us who we are, where we are, what’s gone wrong and how we can fix it. These are not the questions of religion alone, but of all philosophy; of all culture. Every movie you have ever seen; every song you have listened to; every dress you’ve ever bought; every colour you have ever chosen for your bedroom wall, points in some way to the answers you have found to these questions. They are human questions; puzzles we spend our whole lives working on.

- When the media runs a story about the vulnerabilities of our economy these questions are being answered. This is who we are. This is hiw we should liove. This is why we can’t. This is what we must do to put it right.

- When climate change activists lobby governments for political reform, they too are offering answers. This is what it means to be human. This is how we live with our planet. This is where we’ve gone so badly wrong. This is what we must do. This and only this will save us.

- When a high-profile pedophile is jailed and anxious parents gather at the courtroom steps to scream abuse, they are answering these questions. This is less than human behaviour. We don’t want this in our world. We need to fix it.

- When a war criminal sits,  ageing and broken, at the tribunal of the Hague, and the world’s press crowd in to take pictures of the fallen monster, the same questions lie just below the surface. He has committed crimes against humanity; against what it means to be one of us. We won’t accept a world in which such horrors go unpunished.  We want a different future.

 - And when I discover that I cannot love as I want to; that selflessness flits away from me like a fish that refuses my small net; that I do what I don’t want to do; that I am not what I want to be, then I, too, am wrestling with these questions. What does it mean for me to fulfill my humanity? What is is that drives me to seek beauty; that recognises peace as positive and yet so powerfully draws me in another direction?

The story that is told through the 66 books of the Bible presents these questions in a series of puzzles.  In its founding document, known to us as the book of Genesis, the first man, Adam, is given three such puzzles to solve.

Firstly, he is placed in a garden and asked to care for all the living creatures found in it. And yet he knows, deep down, that he is one of them. He is an animal like other animals: driven to eat; seeking shelter; sexually active. And yet he is not. There is a spark in him; of intelligence; of language, that sets him apart. He is asked to name the donkey. The donkey is not asked to name him.  What does this mean, to be so evidently part of the created order, and yet so evidently set apart from it? What is this gift, and what responsibility comes with it?

Secondly, he is not asked to fulfil this responsibility alone. He is given a companion: the woman, Eve. Here the puzzle becomes more vexing still, because she is like him in every way, and yet different from him. He is driven to seek union with her by a force more powerful than any he has yet experienced, and yet the union brings its own troubles, because she is ‘other’ to him. This second puzzle, in which the man must acknowledge that he is not alone in bearing the gifts of humanity, is incredibly deep. He is simply not allowed to remain alone in working out what it means to be human - he must do it in relationship; in community. Harder still, the community will not be of clones, but of ‘others’. Their perspective will not always be identical to his. They will challenge him, driving him to overcome difference in order to fulfil his evident purpose and responsibility. Thus is born not only humanity itself, but human society, and thus begins the second puzzle, the puzzle of community.

Thirdly, and underlying all, the man and woman are confronted with the puzzle of God. This is the deepest puzzle of all, and is woven somehow into the very fabric of the other two puzzles. Here, once again, the man and woman find themselves victim of two opposite forces. On the one hand they seek intimacy with God their maker. Deeper than the drive to eat; to seek sexual fulfilment; to find their place in the world, is the drive to know who made them. There is a space at the centre of the garden that is occupied by God himself, and seeking the meaning of this space is a task that arrives in the heart of the man and the woman as certainly as the sun rises on each new day. Everything in the garden points towards this space; every answer raises this one question. And yet the man and woman find within themselves another force. It is a force called fear and, strangely, it drives them to run from the very intimacy they long for. Turning, running, spinning, they find themselves rocked by these two forces. Driven to seek God. Driven to run from him. Wanting intimacy. Fearing intimacy. Seeking approval. Terrified of disapproval. And thus is born the deepest puzzle of all, the puzzle from whose twisting complexities the religions of the world will flow. The puzzle we will spend centuries attending to. The puzzle most of us have still not solved.

The unfolding narrative of the Bible offers a deep and consistent response to these puzzles, and it does it in terms of four stages or categories. It describes us as beautiful, broken, forgiven and invited.

Beautiful, because our story must begin not with our current condition but with God’s intentions for us. The baseline category by which all theology can be understood is creation - God is forst and foremost our maker. He has made a cosmos over which the word ‘good’ is scrawled in letters bigger than the sky. Not only are we part of this good world, but we have a place in it that is unique and mysterious. Finding out ehat that place is, and how we can best live it, is what religion and philosophy are all about.

Broken, because we all know that something is wrong. Just as the aching bewauty of the world catches our breath, so does the nagging sense that all is not as it should be. That which is wrong is both around us and in us, and we sense the deep connection between the two. The devastation of our forests and oceans and the desolation of our own souls are somehow irrevocably linked. The brokeness I see mirrors the brokeness I am.

Forgiven, because this is the difference that Christ makes. Our story takes a turn, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, that delights and surprises us and changes our history forever. The coming of Christ reveals to us the full picture of who God is and changes forever our relation with him. Something happens in the death of Christ that makes it possible for God to forgive us completely - so that he waits, as the Prodigal Father, not with a stick with which to beat us but with arms wide to embrace us. Though our capacity to receive and enjoy this forgiveness is entirely dependant on our response, the forgiveness itself is not. The message of the cross is not ‘you can be forgiven’ it is ‘you are forgiven’. The father waits. The only missing piece of the puzzle is our return.

Invited because when we do return it is not the end of the adventure but the beginning of a whole new chapter. There is a feast; a banquet, prepared for us. We are invited to enjoy now the life that intimacy with God makes possible and to live forever in the Kingdom of Joy that Christ has inaugurated. The invitation is to all of us. It stands open, each of our names engraved on it. It is unconditional; free, waiting only for our RSVP. Thus our story has not only a beginning, but an end. And the end, like the beginning, is creational - rooted in the artfulness and grace with which God makes things. The narrative of the Bible is framed by two such makings - the making of a garden and the making of a city. Both are earthly; material; grounded in sensory experience. Both hold out the possibility of cooperation betwen human and divine agency; of life lived in the reality of intimacy with God.

The journey that began with the maker’s intentions for us ends with those intentions fulfilled. Broken things made beautiful again.

Of all the great pictures taken at Blesstalks by Sam Glazebrook, this has to be my favourite. Makes me wish I’d been there even though I was!

I love these images from Watermark Church in Frieburg, Germany, reflagged from liveforothers. Bless team member Marky B has just helped the church to run their first prayer room. Relaly love the peaceful and creative feel of this.

Marky b’s 24-2 story from Prayer Room @ Watermark Church, Freiburg

barkyme:

We ran our first 24/7 Prayer Weekend last weekend and it was amazing to see the development of the room over the course of the time. I wasn’t really sure how people were going to respond to this idea when I first presented it and the fact that we only had 9 hours out of 48 filled the weekend before was a little disheartening to say the least. I was rescued however by a great idea to use a Doodle-List and we managed to fill 30 hours! It was so encouraging to see people using the room and connecting with God over the weekend, something we will definitely do again at the church :)

liveforothers:

BLESS TALKS photographs are online now.

All images by Samuel Glazebrook - what a hero.

liveforothers:

Read our March Blessmail here .

Packed full of bless news & interviews, creative prayer resources, blessays, seasonal recipes and upcoming events.