Rebellion

I went to a conference on Friday full of world class speakers on global leadership. There was a guy that really stood out to me called Seth Godin. He spoke about the need to innovate, do be creative, to do something for the first time. Our culture is changing before our eyes, Godin claims we are entering the death of the industrial age. We used to live in an age where the people that owned the means of production controlled the world- the factory owners, the publishers. Today the means of production is the small humble laptop. Until relatively recently, I would have had to get this published for anyone to notice it. But now anyone, anywhere can get their voice heard. Godin claims we are entering the age of the artist, what will get noticed, what will make a difference is those people that are doing things that no one else is doing, not those doing what everyone else is doing.

That is pretty counter cultural, we've become so institutionalized, we're so used to doing what we're told, that it takes a pretty strong will to act against it. The thing is, there is no map anymore. There is no right way of doing things. There is no right way of being unique, of being an artist. It's an open plain field to create the future. I don't know if that excites me or scares me silly.

The  question is, if Godin is right, if we're on the brink of a new revolution- of recreating society, where is the room for the Church? To put it bluntly, the Church needs to adapt or die. Church has reflected the culture for the last two thousand years. Godin describes the Church in recent times of being in the business of "teaching people to fit in so we can ignore them". That has pretty much been the message of society too- buy nike, buy coca cola, be like everybody else. Creativity has been squashed. Everyone has become ordinary.

There is opportunity like no other to stand out. To be heard. To think differently. But it involves risks. It involves thinking outside of the box, being controversial. "Everyone has seen brown cows. If we just make more brown cows, no one will notice it, everyone is making brown cows. We need to make purple cows". As I see it the Church has tried to reinvent itself- it has tried fresh expressions. And sometimes it's paid off, sometimes it's achieved fresh, relevant Church which isn't compromising on the truth. But I still think we're making brown cows- we're taking the model of the "talk, worship song sandwich" and putting it in a pub, putting it around tables, putting it on the beach. Is this the only way to proclaim truth, is this the only way of making purple cows? Surely it can't be.

I was talking to a Church leader at the conference with a dying congregation of 25 eighty year olds, who weren't interested in doing things differently, being radical, being missional. And he was so fustrated about how to make a difference. He also told me about a pancake event he put on when he gave away 400 free pancakes to people in the community. I asked him if any of them came to Church, he told me they hadn't. I wonder, what would it take for his pancake event to be 'Church'. In some ways, it was more Church than his preaching the lectionary and singing 4 hymns to 25 stubborn old ladies- it was missional, it was serving the community. If he kept giving away pancakes every week, and then found some way of sharing truth, whether it was by conversations, by media, or maybe even preaching- he would have himself a thriving Church. But we need to dare to be.

We need to dare to fail with the Church. We need to dare to be challenged. It is pretty obvious that the Church is dying in a lot of places. I think the reason for this is primarily stubbornness. "The world needs to change and not us. We're doing things the 'right' way." The truth is- the Church needs innovators desperately. But no one is going to pick you. Stop waiting to be picked. Step up, pick yourself and dare to do something no one has done. Dare to be radical. There is a new time dawning and it needs new leaders. Are you going to sit back and watch others lead, or are you going to dare to put yourself on the line? 

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Desperately procrastinating from writing what I hope will end up being more regular blog entries, I stumbled across a provocative little gem. After making about the third espresso of the day I sat down to read the BBC news feed for the fourth or fifth time and found an article titled: "Can Religion tell us more than Science". The joys of going to an afternoon Church.

It started promising and interesting. John Gray maintains that the New Atheists have kind of missed the point when showing religion to be an inadequate scientific thesis. Which I agree with. But the main opinion of his text I fundamentally disagree with. The crux of his position is summed up in the last sentence of the piece:
"What we believe doesn't in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live."

Religion, he maintains, is all about behaviour and not particularly about belief at all: "Practice - ritual, meditation, a way of life - is what counts. What practitioners believe is secondary, if it matters at all."

It got me thinking- is that really true? I realise that some of my thoughts on faith might come across a little bit that way. I think that faith is absurd and rationally inexplicable, I don't feel particularly like new atheism has much threat to my faith. But surely what we believe is vital, its central to how we act. Otherwise our actions, our behaviour might be fulfilling and enjoyable on one level but surely they're ridiculously inconsistent. I don't quite understand how we might believe without it moving us to action. It is beyond me.

Consistency is probably one of the things I value most in a person and one of the things that I think might be lacking in a lot of modern Christians. I find it troubling that someone's indifference and agnosticism towards a deity might lead them to attend worship devoted to one every week. But it scares me. This attitude towards faith is only increasing. And honestly I find it totally and utterly at odds to the teachings of Christ. It makes no sense to say "what matters is how we live", inferring that to follow Christ's teachings is somehow valuable in its own right. The idea of following the teachings of Christ without any faith, without any belief is one that I think Christ would have found utterly ludicrous. You only need to pick the New Testament up and read it (which surely is contained in the notion of religious practice) to find that belief matters.

Matthew 22:36-40. "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love God, love people. That is the heart of Christianity. It escapes me how I ought to love something or some being that I don't believe in. It escapes me that my devotion and practice of daily devoting my life to Christ might be an empty gesture. It is actually pretty offensive. It is only from belief that true behaviour can stem. Sartre calls this notion 'bad faith', the idea that we pretend that we are only objects like trees and rocks. He describes a waiter who 'plays the part of a waiter', he is so wrapped up in 'being a waiter', he denies that there is any choice, any belief involved. This notion is at the heart of Sartre's account of morality.

And that strikes me as the heart of the problem of the dying Church of the UK: Apathy and inconsistency Thousands of people acting and living out the 'Christian life' in Bad Faith. Ticking the 'I go to Church' box on their conscience. They are Christians as objects, they live their lives in complete bad faith. But they never let the radical words of Jesus transform them, never let worship escape the box they put it in. They don't allow their minds to be transformed. And most of them don't have a clue what they believe.

I believe that faith can change your life. That Christ can change your life. I believe that. We might see new atheism and passionate unbelievers as a barrier to this. I don't. Dawkins might be quite an angry, influential speaker and commentator on modern religion. But at least he's consistent. At least he acts on what he believes. To be honest, good on him. And I hope that he wakes people out of apathy. Out of the lie that what you believe doesn't matter. Because it does.

Christianity needs to learn to do the same. To wake people up who are sleeping in their Churches. Who are filling pews, who have been 'living' without belief in complete bad faith. Consistency is so important at the heart of modern radical Christian living. We need to be people who are brutally consistent. If we believe that Christ's promises are true, we need to live them in our lives. If we don't, if we are feeling doubtful and far from God, why go through the motions? We need to not to sing "In Christ alone my hope is found" when we don't really believe a word of it. We need to not preach that Jesus has changed our lives if we don't think that he has. We need to learn how to be consistent. Communities of people who believe what we believe and act what we believe. There is a lie that says that putting a brave face on, of acting like everyone else is acting is the right thing to do. It is a lie that belief doesn't matter. And it is dangerous to live in bad faith. This is what Jesus says about it:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

I find that terrifying. That is a stark warning against apathy, bad faith and inconsistency and it is one we need to take a little more seriously than we do.

Downfall

I took my girlfriend to her first ever football game this weekend. It was dire. Sheffield Wednesday vs Notts County- Wednesday lost 1-0 to a penalty. The rest of the game was just lobbing the ball from one end of the field to the other, with barely a chance on goal. I grew up a Wednesday fan, I remember watching them take on Premier league giants like Chelsea at Hillsborough. I remember the late nineties stars- DiCanio, Carbone, Kevin Pressman, Des Walker. It's got pretty bad since then. I remember the relegation from the premier league, then the relegation from the Championship. The nail in coffin was losing 3-2 to Crystal Palace on the last game of last season and sinking back down to League 1. This season we've lost a manager, half of the squad, half of the fans, and are sitting comfortably in 17th place. Brilliant.

I've never seen Hillsborough as empty as it was on Saturday. I was taken aback a bit when the announcer said that the attendance had been nearly 17,000. That's pretty low for Hillsborough. That felt pretty empty. That's a sign of how bad things have got.

Let's not get delusional about the state of the Church. It is exciting when you get 80 people along to an Alpha course. It's brilliant. It's 80 more people that might get a chance to hear that God can transform them. I don't want to belittle that.

But we need to realise how serious this is. My Church is way above average for Church attendance in the UK- about 150 people come along on a Sunday. That might seem a lot. But it's not. 17,000 people are willing to watch an awful game of football. About 1% of that are coming along to my Church. What's going wrong?

People just don't want it. If you asked the majority of the people at Hillsborough on Saturday they would tell you that Church is dull, it's irrelevant, they don't need it. Are they right? Part of me looks at those numbers and is tempted to give up to agree with them. Let's just let this thing die out and stop clinging on to the dying remains of an irrelevant world view that has no place in our culture.

But if we really believe that this is true, that Jesus can transform people and save them, we can't just keep plodding along. We can't give up either. This is desperate. There is no room for complacency and half heartedness in the Church any more. If we really believe this we need to step up, and get on with it. If we don't, we need to stop clinging onto this for the sake of security, attention and something to do on a Sunday. Because there isn't any room for that. The stakes are too high.

We belong in the Premier league- Jesus Christ is Lord of all. At the moment we're playing Sunday league football. There's a long way to go.