CharisMissional - my new blog

Just to let you know that I’m now blogging at CharisMissional.

After blogger here on blogger for a serveral years now I decided it was time to move to WordPress. In doing that I thought I could perhaps re-launch the blog with a bit of a clearer focus. Some time ago I posted a little post about the word CharisMissional. The more I’ve thought about it the more that seems to be where I’m coming from.

Why CharisMissional?

Don't worry, I'm not trying to start a new movement or anything, it's just my attempt at a witty name for the blog! The word CharisMissional is a blend of the two words – charismatic and missional – that I feel are both important to my Christian faith.  The new blog will be dedicated to helping other Christians learn about the gifts of the Spirit and mission and hopefully to share their own insights and experiences in these areas.

What Will Happen To This Blog?

I hope to keep this blog going. I will post here any thoughts or comments that don’t really fit in my new blog. One of the reasons for the new blog was that I realised a lot of my posts were about Christianity, mission and those sort of areas. I’m not sure yet what will now appear on this blogger blog now. Perhaps reflections of a more personal nature or other topics that I’m interested in. You’ll have to wait and see. Also there is still plenty of stuff on this blog that I’ll revisit and keep on linking to on the new one.

In the meantime please feel free to follow me at CharisMissional.

Community Fun Day 2011

Yes, it’s that time of year again! Last weekend we took part in Ladywood Community Fun Day. In this photo you can see Philipa who ran the Grow Well stall.

This year we didn’t have a Prayer Tent but our church was still very much involved. A couple of years ago our church helped on the day as our worship that weekend. This year we were meeting on the Sunday but still a number of people put in a lot of work to serve the community. Members were stewards for the event, helped put up and take down the stalls and tents and were litterpicking throughout the day. It was noticable how no litter was there at the end of the day.

My friend Harry from Karis Neighbour Scheme did a sterling job of pulling a lot of the day together. I think he was exhausted by the end of the day. Many people from the local community took part.

Nettes and I did some surveys for WorkShop – the local job club that we are running. We were trying to find out what sort of help people would appreciate and also publicising WorkShop at the same time.

For the accounts of the fun day in previous years see:
2010
Community Fun Day
2009
Reflections on the Community Fun Day
Prayer Tent at Community Fun Day

For more of our photos on flickr see:
Dave and Nettes photos

Alan Hirsch explains how Christians can use de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats

Alan Hirsch

One of the leading advocates for missional living, Alan Hirsch, recommends using Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats as a possible tool when brainstorming new direction or ideas for your organisation or church or even when doing a group Bible study. You may recall me blogging about Alan Hirsch and contemporary apostles and what he said about how we can be apostolic. Well, this is really just a footnote to that post.

Hirsch describes Edward de Bono as ‘no theologian but definitely the leading specialist in creative learning processes.’ I have a number of de Bono books and have enjoyed them over the years. One key to understanding where de Bono is coming from is in his book Parallel Thinking. There he maintains that argument and debate are easily abused by being adversarial. He admits that there might be gentler discussions in which a genuine attempt is made to explore a subject but ultimately he sees our common approach to discussions as flawed. In its place he proposes what he calls parallel thinking. In other books de Bono outlines practical ways to do this. One of his most famous methods is the Six Thinking Hats.

In the Forgotten Ways Handbook, Alan Hirsch outlines de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. ‘The six hats’, he says, ‘represent six modes of thinking and directions to think rather than labels for thinking.’

Six Thinking Hats

The six hats can be summarised like this:

White Hat: Think of white paper and so data and information. What information do we need to know about this situation? What would you like to know? What do you need to know?

Red Hat: Think of fire and warmth and so emotions. What are your immediate instinctive feelings about the situation?

Black Hat: Think of the black robes of a judge. What are the dangers and difficulties of the situation? What are the problems?

Yellow Hat: Think of sunshine. Think of the positive and optimistic viewpoint. What are the benefits of the situation?

Green Hat: Think of vegetation and growth. This is where you think creatively about the situation. Suggest changes and modifications.

Blue Hat: Think of the sky. This hat gives us an overview. How would you organise the thinking about the situation? For example, propose a sequence of hats to be applied to the situation for all group members to take in turn.

In a previous book with Michael Frost, The Shaping Of Things To Come, Hirsch described the six hats like this: ‘Participants agree to switch hats for a period of time in order to take a certain approach that they would not normally take to the problem. While wearing a particular hat, each participant is committed to thinking only as that hat allows… You don’t need actual hats, just the imagination to think and speak in different modes.’

Group Discussion and Planning by Anyaka

One good way to organise a time of thinking about something is for everyone in the group to take the same hat for a given period. So for example everyone might think positively about an idea using the yellow had and then everyone think critically using the black hat and so on. In debates only some people tend to see the positives, whereas those on the other side tend to see the negatives and people don’t tend to think much in any of the other ways. Six hats thinking gets everyone working in every direction that is needed.

An important point for Hirsch about the six hats is that ‘the method produces fuller input from more people. In de Bono’s words, “it separates ego from performance.” Everyone is able to contribute to the exploration without denting egos.’

I love this method. I wonder where we can actually use it. Any ideas?

Related post:
The Forgotten Ways: Apostles in the Emerging Missional Church

Praying for Saint Phillip’s

Robert Pickles

Nettes and I had a good time this morning praying in what used to be Saint Phillip’s Sixth Form College. This is a building that has stood empty for some time and is now rented by New College Birmingham. New College works in association with the Birmingham Bible Institute Family that includes Birmingham Christian College. Robert Pickles gave us a guided tour of the building explaining that the plan was to use some of the rooms there for the college, but there was more space than they needed.  He was open to suggestions that may be acceptable uses for the rest of the space, such as opening the canteen as a community café, renovating and using the sports hall and even using rooms for a social enterprise.

Paul & Jackie had invited us there to pray. They work with the homeless and run a Drop In one day a week at the Ledbury Centre. They have been helping decorate Saint Phillips along with some of the guys who go to the Drop In. Paul & Jackie and some others usually pray every other Saturday about the work with the homeless and the Drop In. This time they had decided to come to Saint Phillip's to pray that these premises would be used for God’s Kingdom as New College moves in there and to pray about possiblities for other projects that might be explored.  Paul and Jackie are looking to eventually move the Drop In into larger premises as it is outgrowing our little church building and are hoping to explore the possiblity of using some of the space at Saint Phillip's.

New College, Birmingham

Another idea that has been mooted as a project for the local area is to have local artists and artisans set up a social enterprise running workshops teaching people their skills. It could be that they also have exhibitions and sales. This is the sort of project that might be feasible to be run from a place like Saint Phillip's.

We prayed for some time in the canteen gathered around Robert and Hazel Pickles. It is great when Christians get together at grass roots level to pray like this. But we were also talking about the importance of church leaders getting together. We were saying how we know of local leaders in the area getting together to pray. Robert also mentioned an initiative called 2020 Birmingham where leaders across Birmingham from a number of different groupings are working together with an aim to plant twenty churches in the Birmingham area by the year 2020.

Finally we broke down into two or threes praying in different areas of the centre. I went with Nettes into the small kitchen. Among other things we were praying that the kitchen would serve wholesome food and not be tempted to go the fast food route but to serve healthy, locally sourced produce and for the café to be a fair trade café and possibly even a training enterprise.

This is all very exciting!

Related posts:
Down And Out In Birmingham
More Thoughts On Social Enterprise

is there a place for silence in our worship?

On Sunday in the midst of our sung worship we had a wonderful time of silence. These times don’t occur very often but when they do they are moments to cherish. I don’t mean the silence that occurs when a change over is happening or at the end of the meeting. Nor do I mean a time of quiet meditation while the musicians play. This was a time when we just paused in total silence for several minutes just contemplating God. To my mind it was perhaps what the psalmist was meaning when he wrote ‘Be still and know that I am God’.

I might be wrong but I got the impression that this wasn’t planned. We sung with great fervour for a time and then we stopped and went into this time of contemplation. It was great to be silent not rushing onto the next song or contribution. It wasn’t awkward or embarrassing. Certainly I wasn’t wondering about the next thing we were going to do and why it wasn’t happening. I was just caught up with God and longed for that time to continue.

It doesn’t have to be spontaneous to be great. I believe there can be a place for announcing a time of silence when something has been said that would be good to spend some time meditating on. We could even schedule in such a time beforehand. I love these times too. I just wish they were longer and more often. But I can appreciate the feeling that people will lose concentration or think that the next person wasn’t prepared to do what they needed to soon enough. So I can see why after a short time we can feel the need to move on to the next thing.

Times of silence like this are nothing new. We have had them on occasions before. I remember them becoming very frequent for a time in one church I was in many years ago. I have longed for those times to return.

In his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster mentions the discipline of silence. He sees it as important that we spend time alone with God in silence just listening.

Also it has been appreciated in our homegroup when we have had a time of silent reflection and jotted down our thoughts on something before launching into a discussion.

The Big Silence

Last year, I was inspired by The Big Silence on the BBC where people spent days in a monastic retreat in silence. Some of them actually did appear to experience something deeply spiritual. Not long after my little daughter Callie wanted to spend a day in silence. Even though she only managed a couple of hours she enjoyed the challenge.

Silent mediation has always existed in Christian traditions. Protestants have tended to lose this emphasis. Evangelicals and Charismatics have journeyed even further away from this. We forget how little time we allow for reflection. But perhaps silence is returning in a new way.

So let us be open to these moments in our worship, both in our own private devotions and with others. Let us not be embarrassed to pause and not say or do anything except to contemplate God and listen to his voice. Yes, I believe there is an important place for silence in our worship. I trust that we will cherish these moments.

See also: Celebration of Discipline

Passing on the Gift of the Holy Spirit

Last Sunday in Sunday School we were praying for some of the children to receive the Holy Spirit. As it was Pentecost we were looking at the story of when the early church were first baptised in the Holy Spirit. After briefly telling them of my own experience I gave the children the opportunity to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

It is now thirty years since I first experienced the Holy Spirit. In a small Pentecostal prayer meeting I began to speak in a language that I had never learnt. I didn’t really understand what I was getting into. To tell the truth I didn’t even believe everything I was told about it at the time. But the result of this experience was one of overflowing joy and a desire that everyone could experience this too.

There wasn’t any mighty rushing wind or fire but I would see my experience as similar to what happened to the early church at Pentecost. Of course not everyone’s encounter with the Holy Spirit should be a carbon copy of mine but I do believe that God wants to fall on all his followers in a special way. The Bible calls this the ‘receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit’. Being a gift it is freely given. As believers all we need to do is ask and keep on asking.

In a way receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit opens wide the door to moving in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And I believe we can express these gifts very naturally as part of our authentic relationships with each other. Gratitude is a natural response to receiving a gift. And gratitude often results in generosity. If we are invited to someone’s house for a meal we may take a bottle of wine and on a later date invite them to ours. We may even copy our host’s role model and start inviting others into our home.

Over the years I have come to realise that exchanging gifts like this is a mark of the Spirit at work. Whatever God gives us we pass on. It is what we as Christians do. The Spirit inspires us to become more like Jesus to other people. We serve each other and we serve the world.

So whenever Christians gather it is an opportunity to exchange gifts. This may mean praying for each other or speaking God’s word to each other. But it actually involves far more. We share our lives together. We share food. We share our possessions and even our money when the need arises. There are many gifts we can bring to each other both inside and outside of our worship gatherings - our time, our energy. We just need to ask God and to think more creatively.

Thirty years ago I received this gift of the Holy Spirit and God enabled me to begin to give to others in a way that I'd never really done before. Last Sunday I had the chance to give these children an opportunity to receive this gift too. My prayer is that as a result God's giving will be multiplied through them.

What is Spiritual Warfare?

I just came across a post from (e)mergent Voyageurs on the topic of spiritual warfare. Interestingly Jamie Arpin-Ricci doesn't see spiritual warfare as praying ‘against the principalities and powers’. Instead he interprets it as referring to resisting human injustice for example in political terms.

He writes this post in the context of being missional and in response to this question:

“How does a ‘missional’ Christian stand against the systems/powers of injustice in the world? What are the weapons of your warfare?”

He takes two main passages from the Bible:

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:10-12, NIV)

And:

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6, NIV)

Jamie sees Ephesians 6 as a mandate to confront people responsible for injustice, suffering, exploitation and marginalising the poor. This is how we stand against the ‘powers’. He sees these ‘powers’ as refering to the unjust systems of our world - presumably with spiritual forces behind them.

He interprets 2 Corinthians 10 like this:

Firstly he sees it as indicating that we should live in the ‘opposite spirit’ to that we wish to overcome. For instance, we should live generously and not support businesses that perpetuate the poverty we wish to overcome.

I would add that too often we stop reading before the end of the story of the Prodigal son and miss the point that Jesus was making. Let us not be mean spirited like the Prodigal's elder brother but instead let us remember to embrace those on the margins who need someone to stand up for them.

Secondly Jamie points out that we should bring the light by researching areas of injustice and publicly speaking out about them. But we do need to take care that we protest appropriately in a Christ-like manner.

Thirdly he concedes that this should involve prayer. This is essential to centre our own spirit as we work against evil. But prayer is only part of the action and we should not downplay the importance of our lifestyle and our protest in spiritual warfare.

I would also add that 2 Corinthians 10 appears to involve challenging evil within the church and not just outside. It may even involve rebuking our friends. And what if they don't agree with our challenge? Yes, there is a place for church discipline but I think it is important to say that when Christians disagree we should do so ‘on our knees with open Bibles’. We need to accept that sometimes we may have to agree to disagree and still stay friends.

Overall I tend to agree that spiritual warfare is more about standing up for what is right than it is about shouting at the devil.

Check out Jamie's original post here and let me know what you think.