Leaders should be those broken as bread, so others may come and eat

I've been reading Michael Bull's book God's Kitchen since a kind brother bought it for me recently. 

Presentation matters: It's a very well designed paperback book - Bull is a graphic designer as well as a theologian. Words should be delivered with music appropriate to their subject. It's build with short chapters on big themes in the Bible, and in particular themes around food. A most noble subject to write a book about! There are hints along the way about how to make the most of food, about how knowledge is eating, and the place of food in mission.

Disclaimer: To be honest, I'm still trying to get my head round large sections of his thought and ideas and I'm not sure if I ever will.  Bull builds on the maximalist interpretation of Peter Leithart and James Jordan. I find them a little outlandish in places and priceless in others. They love story, and images, and really love what the Bible says and I like that. As with every meal: eat the meat, spit the bones.

Good meat: In any case, in the middle of it all are some brilliant observations about leadership.
A few brief quotes to give you  a taste...

"If we endure faithfully, we bring gravity with us out of the grave. Life is suddenly more rich, more dense and our words more commanding. True gravitas comes in no other way, even in the life of Christ." 

"Great leadership comes from cruciform [people]; from those who have been broken as bread so that others may come and eat." 

"Men go to Bible College and they know it all. Then the Lord brings poverty, a marriage difficulty, a sick child, bereavement, betrayal... and Gandalf the Grey is torn apart. God, why are you smashing up everything you built me for? Because I am frankincense, or garlic at the very least. Like these, and olives and grapes, I was made to be crushed... this is why novices are vulnerable leaders...." 

"The change we long for arrives in trials. As we suffer our moral stink lessens. We become health to others instead of a canker. For the soft-hearted, every trial is an opportunity..." 

These are similar to the thinking I expect to find in Paul Tripp's Dangerous Calling, a book waiting on my bookshelf.

They're also the kinds thoughts I see when Paul writes, as a spiritual father to his son in the faith, Timothy. The young need older and wiser voices who will walk ahead of them. Bull suggest we need less Alpha Males and more of the Omega variety. Paul - aged, bruised, tempered, refined, scarred, imprisoned, mortal, on death row - calls Timothy to wisdom following him in Christ, through the fire of persecution and the ongoing exposure of his heart to the Scriptures... instead of the brash overconfidence of fools who sabotage themselves with their bold moves.

Brokenness and vulnerability alone aren't what's needed. Anyone can confess their sins, though few dare. Rather we need broken people who come empty - like Naomi - saying I've got nothing but Christ was broken for me. So too as Timothy is broken with Christ he'll be able to feed others. And though he wont look impressive an intangible quality will authenticate his persuasive words.

Such people, as they limp, can lead us where we need to be. And can lead us through the messy middle of our journey, where we mostly find ourselves. The gospel is best told by cruciform people.

How can a God of love allow suffering?

Bath Spa University Christian Union hosted an cafe style evening event for their University on the vital subject of suffering. I gave a talk, everyone had a chance to discuss their response, and took questions via text message before hanging around to chat for a while. We attempted to explore the unavoidable issue of pain in our lives, why we desire a better world and what we might do with Jesus in the middle of all of this.

DOWNLOAD mp3: How can a loving God allow suffering - talk (35mins) and q&a - (10mins)

My basic approach was to tell some of my own stories - suffering isn't an abstract thing, it's personal and painful. I wanted to hear some of the responses that people instinctively make to suffering - acknowledging in our response the reality and wrongness of suffering -- and so making profound assertions about what kind of world this is. Among others I sought out the voices of Richard Dawkins, Marcus Brigstocke, Glenn Hoddle and Martin Luther before turning to see Jesus response which is neither heartless or helpless. The final section was adapted from the Uncover Suffering video by A&E consultant Giles Cattermole.

Every day is an opportunity to grow in feeling and knowing the bitter-sweet of life, and I hope that every time I come again at this question I come more humanly. This talk could probably do with a little more brevity... My approach was story based and I was without notes, both of which probably added length compared to a less personal and more scripted approach. That said, I do think questions of the sensitivity and importance of this one are worth taking time to answer.

Try Praying?

This is the view from my bedroom. And, more than once it's been a helpful prompt as I open my curtains.

In a sense it's aimed at me, but really at my friends, my neighbours...

I'm not critiquing the church over the road - they've just got me thinking. For that I thank them.

In our city where a few thousand will be in church meetings each week but the best part of 100,000 wont be... Try Praying leaves me asking these and more questions...

• What is prayer?
• Pray to whom?
• Why pray?
• Pray what?
• And who are you to tell me to pray?

How would you answer those?

In a Christ-haunted (to use Flannery O'Connor's term) culture 'try praying' has a broadly Christian meaning, and we might only need to awaken people to do it. But in a post-Christian, Christianity-inoculated culture things are surely very different.

If the banner gets people asking questions like that then all well and good...

But might it just be more very well meant irrelevance?
Christians really want everyone to get to know Jesus.
And Jesus really is for everyone.

But, might our signs and attempts to connect with our city just be talking past people?  Are we talking not listening?  Thinking we're connecting to our city when we're not? Imagining - as optimists like me do - that we're getting somewhere when we're just spinning our wheels in the mud.

I have on-there-own elderly neighbours, a family working night-shifts who moved here from another country, a middle-aged woman whose elderly mother was fatally run down on the road between the try praying sign and our house before Christmas, a single-mum family and several others...  and I really want them to know Jesus, to try praying...

There are many churches in the city with many people in them, but we're very few in reality. My city is a prosperous regional centre with a relatively high number of "larger" churches, and maybe 5% of people going to church meetings on Sundays. And 3% of the population (largely those who wouldn't identify as Christians) turn out at the annual University Christian Union Christmas carol service at the football ground. 

"Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Jeremiah 29:5-7, ESV

For our church, is this our story? For the University Christian Unions I work with - is this our story?
Or do we accidentally, well-meaningly work against ourselves?

Are we missing the mark?

Are we over optimistic about we're doing? 

I have questions.... 

Tim Keller says in Center Church that he had to think long and hard to find answers to thoroughly work out the implications of the good news of Jesus where we find ourselves.  That could look very different to anything we've done before. That could look very different here compared to there.

Harder thinking. And in the end, TRY PRAYING is the message I need to hear each morning as I open the curtains, because some things only break with prayer and some things, most things, are beyond what I can do. If I don't call on the Father in heaven who sent his Son then all I'm left with is just to TRY. And so, like a child, I don't try to win the fight myself but I call my Dad and trust that he can do what's needed.

Jesus wept

"THE EARTH WAS FILLED WITH..."
it's a pregnant phrase that should end with...
I'd like to say: "a spreading goodness" - shouldn't that be true?
But it's concluded instead with violence and evil and wickness from the hearts of humanity.

Sounds like the evening news but it's ancient words from the sixth chapter of the book of Genesis, a book shot through with emotional resonance with the contemporary world.

It's another question to ask whether its historical - and that question is really important. But hear the story.

In a world full of evil what's the God-word?
What are the next three words, or the next six words, or the next eight words...?

"The LORD regretted..."
"...it grieved him to his heart..."
"I am sorry that I have made them..."

Stick that in your theological assumptions pipe and smoke it for a few minutes.

Can such be said of God? 
He says it of himself.

He weeps. And acts with Salvation through Judgement. 
Death and resurrection.
Destroy and rebuild.
Pluck up and replant.
Always the refrain in the Bible.
Death and then life.

In a world full of evil "But Noah" there is one who trusts the LORD.

Noah hear the prophetic preaching of Enoch that judgement will come.  He was raised in the prophetic word of his father than relief must come. He delayed having children, too broken to raise them in such a world, sharing in divine sorrow for the world. Yet he stepped up as judgement was announced and began to raise a family, preaching righteousness as he built a boat in a dry land. And he led his family through judgement to salvation and a renewed world.

The Flood is written in the key of Genesis. Multiplying and filling, male and female, two of each, creatures according to their kinds... And it continues as the rain falls and the world becomes formless again, until the wind (Spirit) blows and leaves a new humanity at the heart of a "new" world waiting to be formed. Beginnings and new beginnings. This world is home and yet there's that nagging sense that it should be a little more beautiful, a little less fractured. It needs to be renewed, re-made, re-created. And so do we.

The LORD shut Noah and his family in an ark. The LORD covered him as judgement came.  Grace, like their naked and ashamed ancestors knew as they too were covered. And when wrath was averted, Noah was able to lift the covering off the ark and emerge as a new head for a new people in a new world... a flood-wrecked world in need of cultivation.

His first move was to offer a burnt offering. To de-create an animal with knife and fire to atone for sin (see Leviticus 1). Brutal and messy, like life. The flood washed away sinners but couldn't wash away sin. There was sin in the ark in the hearts of Noah's family. He knew another had to be destroyed in his place. For life is blood and blood is life, and only blood brings forgiveness for those whose life is forfeit.

This is the genesis of Noah, a new Adam but not the second.
This is the genesis of Jesus who walked the earth.
He who set his face to Jerusalem and walked through 10 long chapters of Luke's gospel before shedding tears over Jerusalem. But much more as Sibbes and Howe put it:

"he who shed tears shed his own blood for them." 

Blood and tears that would bring forgiveness, salvation through judgement and in time a truly renewed creation, new to the very heart.

He wept.
The Triune God, full of love, full of tears.
The Man of Sorrows at the centre of A World of Sorrows.
The Man whose people are anguished people. God's happy people who weep.
He covers them - not with the roof of a boat but with himself.

And every tear will be wiped away.
Our tears.
Even, in the end, the LORD's tears.
And goodness will fill everything.
Though His scars will remain.

You can't microwave maturity

I hear Andy Arscott - with decades behind him say that. And it hurts. It hurts to young activist people. (I might be nearly 34 and old in my student context but really I think I'm fairly young.) Young activists aka evangelicals. Yes us. I want it. I want it now. I want things to be black and white. Clear cut. And happening, now.

And it doesn't always work like that.

Yet as Paul writes to his protege Timothy (I'm riffing here on 2 Timothy 2) he doesn't indulge my urgency. He speaks to his spiritual son and calls for him to reflect on things and trust that the LORD will give him understanding.

You can't rush REFLECTION. Look in the mirror quickly, walk away and you forget what you look like.

As GK Beale observes Paul's letter is wisdom literature. It alludes to Proverbs. Father to son, entrusting yourself to the LORD that he may give the grace of understanding. There are images to chew on - with fairly obvious messages about endurance followed by reigning.... but it'll take divine-understanding not just Tim-understanding to know things.

Reflect on the pattern of life which is endurance followed by reigning, dying followed by living, a dark Friday afternoon followed by the brightness of Sunday morning. The Christian life isn't always suffering but when it is don't forget that there is harvest for the farmer after the early mornings. And when the Christian life feels more of a breeze, don't forget that there's hard training and endurance before the champion crosses the finish line.

Some things aren't absolute.
I mean some things really are, but not every thing.

Gamaliel, Paul's teacher, said that you wont stop Christianity if it's from God.
Does that mean anything that flourishes is from God?
Islam and Mormonism are doing well...
No, what's true will last - but discernment isn't that easy.
Very little is that easy.

It takes wisdom.

The waking hours in the middle of the night going round and round an idea. Brick walls that don't come down with the first, second or third hit. The kind of things that live with you for months not just moments.

Things are chewy to work out not always neat and obvious.

Questions don't make everything fall apart.

Jesus grew in wisdom. Chew on that...

Wisdom is chewy.
Wisdom is slow-cooker.

It'll get there in the end if you stick with it.
It'll flourish like a relationship does given time, like your grandparents marriage...  because wisdom is relational.

Stay faithful to wisdom rather than faithless with folly and the result is beautiful and fruitful. Incomparable.

And Paul says: Timothy don't get into every theological fist fight.

Don't quarrel like the quarrellers. Don't get down on Korah's level. Just be kind and patient and gentle as to correctly people, as you teach the gospel word rightly.

Perhaps, says Paul, the LORD will grant people repentance.

Perhaps.

Where's the Pauline confidence? Where's the Paul who proved and persuaded and reasoned people to belief in Jesus with water tight arguments. He's still there! He's still doing it. But not everyone believed him. Not everyone was happy with him. Not every good start ended well. There are fights worth having and fights not worth having. There are moments to draw back and moments to get in there.

How do you know which one you're in? It'll take wisdom.

Example. When people say - they've got it all today, don't forget that they don't. Timothy, respond to over-realised eschatology not by pinning people to the wall but by enduring your path of suffering. You're not there yet. I'm not there yet. Just walking through the wilderness for what feels like forty years. Rest awaits. But, you can't microwave maturity. The energy of youth is great but it needs to be directed by the grey-haired and the balding.... by the scarred and the steady... by the bruised and still believing.

As Paul writes 2 Timothy 2 it feels like sage wisdom, the activist evangelist in reflective mode.

We need that. Life takes time.

Timothy will be somewhere tomorrow and he can be further on and further up in the days after that. "Don't let them look down on you for your youth..." but don't indulge "youthful passions" and don't pick every fight.

The opposite of quarrelling is gentleness. Quiet confidence. Endure suffering and teach the word.  Be inky. Be kind. Be both. And do it again tomorrow. And the day after. Ad infinitum.

Over to you...

Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (James K.A. Smith)

Jason Clarke has been tweeting from Jamie Smith's book which is now on my wishlist.

Stories seep into us - & stay there and haunt us - more than a report on the facts. Smith
— Jason Philip Clarke (@J_P_Clarke) April 23, 2013

James K.A. Smith - Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation from Calvin College on Vimeo.

Photo: Anna Hopkins, used by permission.