Why it’s surprising that the Jesus movement ever got off the ground

There is something inherently unlikely about the Christian Faith ever getting off the ground in the early years of the first century AD. True, Jesus of Nazareth had created something of a stir in his own native land, stories abounded about his teaching and especially his mighty works, and he had a relatively small (around 100) band of dedicated followers. However, the movement he seemed to be starting, central to which was an understanding of his divine nature, was effectively holed below the waterline by his death. If he really was the Son of God, why didn’t God step in to prevent his death (especially a death which involved him becoming cursed in Jewish eyes), and if he really did have God’s authority why did he not exercise it to save himself?

Nostalgia trip?
Those who want to dismiss the Christian Faith and see it as a kind of nostalgic movement set up some years later by Jesus former friends in an attempt to preserve his teaching and cherish his memory, show a huge naivety and a profound ignorance of how movements actually start (or stop). The likelihood of a group of thoroughly disillusioned and terrified former disciples getting together to perpetuate the memory of a dead hero, who had disappointed them so seriously by his failure to live up to his promises, is so tiny as to be unthinkable. It’s worth recollecting that in the years immediately after Jesus of Nazareth there was at least one other prominent figure who claimed to be Messiah, who had many more followers that Jesus and, in their lifetime, perhaps more influence, but who was entirely forgotten after his death until recent archeological research turned up evidence of his movement. Something more than affectionate nostalgia had to be responsible for the kickstarting of a movement which ultimately swept through the entire known world, which overwhelmed the Roman Empire within three centuries and which today claims around one third of the world’s population as adherents.

Paradigm-shifting event
The explanation offered by the Bible writers (who were caught up in the earliest stages of this movement) and echoed by subsequent Christian history is that 48 hours after his brutal execution and burial, Jesus was seen alive by his closest followers and then, over the course of the next six weeks, repeatedly seen by numbers of people, including showing up on one occasion to a gathering of more than 500 at one time. This cataclysmic event, the defeat of death, and the ushering in of a new age with whole new possibilities, was the trigger for the birth of the Christian movement. It wasn’t organized by committee, nor sponsored by the wealthy or otherwise influential. The thing which gave it traction was the witness of very ordinary people who simply spoke of what they had seen and heard.  It’s worth noting too that the very first witnesses were women, people who in the society of their own time were barred from giving evidence in law courts on the basis that women were well known to be unreliable! If you were making up a story you certainly wouldn’t have written it that way. You probably wouldn’t have written about Resurrection either (in Jewish and Greek stories heroes were not resurrected but assumed into heaven). The category of Resurrection is introduced into human experience by Jesus and his victory over death.

Contemporary experience
Today, those who follow Christ do so in part because of the recorded witness of those first believers, but equally because of the witness of others who have met Jesus, not physically as the first followers did, but in an equally compelling ‘spiritual’ manner. Jesus, having presented himself alive 2000 years ago, still today offers direct personal experience of his risen presence to any who are open to meeting him.

Too good to keep to ourselves
How unthinkable it would have been for the first witnesses to the Resurrection to have kept this news to themselves! They were so overjoyed that they couldn’t keep it in, even if it resulted in inconvenience, suffering and even death for them. We today who have come to discover the truth of the Christian faith should experience that same inner compulsion to make known to others the great news that Jesus is alive and that life can thus be completely different when lived with him. As we celebrate the glorious truth of the resurrection this Easter may we grow in our own confidence in the truthfulness of the Christian Good news, and may it well up within us in such a way that we look for every opportunity to share it with others.

Leading with Vision

One of my greatest heroes in the faith and my greatest inspirations as a leader is Nehemiah. He and I go back a long way.

I first began to study him closely more than twenty years ago when I was about to take on my first senior church leadership post. God called us to move to a declining church which had experienced some seriously morale-sapping issues in its recent past. In the week in which I accepted the job, my Quiet Time readings just happened to be in the book of Nehemiah. I was riveted. He seemed to be dealing with exactly the kind of situation with which I was now being confronted, that of seeing God’s Kingdom reestablished in the midst of ruin and devastation, and amongst a people who could not be more disheartened and disillusioned. Faced as I was with the challenge of partnering with God to see the culture of a local church changed, and people given fresh hope and confidence in God, I pored over the accounts of Nehemiah’s career in order to glean key tips.

It seemed to me then, and experience over the years has born this out, that one of the keys to seeing this remarkable turnaround come about was Nehemiah’s ability to envision the people (Nehemiah 2:17-18). It is this quality which may be one of our greatest assets as Kingdom leaders, and remains today the key to stimulating real transformation in the life of a church or group. All of us are called to lead with vision and all of us would do well to take lessons from the way in which Nehemiah does so. There are three elements to it.

1. Profound Realism
Vision is not pretending that things are other than they are, and it is certainly not putting a good spin on things. People are rarely if ever taken in by a good sales pitch. In his seminal book ‘Good to Great’, Jim Collins highlights the commitment to confronting facts as one of the key elements of successful leadership. Having inspected the broken down walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah states the position baldly to the people. There is no pretence here, no putting a positive slant on a desperate situation. Nehemiah stands fair and square with his countrymen by describing the hopeless situation as one which we are in. Owning the reality of the current situation and standing with people in it is the first requisite for a visionary leader.

2. Sowing seeds of Hope
Visionary leaders are bringers of hope. Nehemiah lifts people out of their inertia by painting a Kingdom picture. He reminds them of their calling, which is to be a sign of God’s presence, rather than a reproach to his name. He taps into something deep but buried in their memory. He fans into flame the fire in their hearts which has almost gone out.

People get excited by God’s great story and by the prospect of somehow being involved in something bigger and greater than the more restricted narrative which has thus far defined them. Which is why we must always make sure that in our preaching and in our personal ministry we are exposing people to the grandeur of God’s great Kingdom purposes and to the broad sweep of God’s story. Churches which are fed a restricted diet will be stunted in their growth. Painting grand Kingdom pictures fires peoples imagination and draws them in, galvanising them into action for God. Reminding people of their true destiny and calling is that which effects great change amongst Nehemiah’s people and turns them from despair to Kingdom activity.

The first thing I did with the leaders of the new church was to take them away for a day in which we explored together God’s blueprint for the Church as described in the Acts of the Apostles. I didn’t teach them so much as getting them to explore Scripture together and then to measure ourselves against God’s preferred design for His church. Some found the exercise difficult and even distasteful. But many came away with a fresh understanding of who we were in Christ, a fresh awareness of our true calling, and a fresh excitement about being the kind of church Jesus had in mind when he sent His Spirit upon us.

3. Telling Holy Spirit stories
Something is stirred in people when we hear stories of what God has been doing. The final element of visionary leadership consists in giving testimony to God’s activity. This is exactly what Nehemiah does when he tells the people of the ways in which God has worked in Nehemiah’s favour, and specifically how God has changed the heart of the King to be favourably disposed towards Nehemiah’s mission.

There is huge power in testimony and we need to make sure that we give plenty of time to telling the stories of what God has been doing around us, and encouraging others to do the same. Testimony builds faith and confidence and reminds us that God is for us.

Vision is the key to bringing and sustaining life in any local church. The moment we neglect to sow it is the moment things are likely to begin to wind down. As Bill Hybels puts it so graphically:

‘When we have vision energy is increased and people are moved into action.  Vision puts the match to the fuel that most people carry around in their hearts and yearn to have ignited.  We leaders must keep striking that match by painting compelling Kingdom pictures.’

Waiting in hope

I am privileged to have enjoyed almost thirty years of marriage to the most exciting woman I have ever met. Marriage for me has been a richly satisfying and joyful experience. The fifteen months of engagement which went before were far less so. Don’t get me wrong, the relationship was fine and I never had a single doubt about the wisdom of getting married. It’s just that I found the experience of waiting for it to happen extremely frustrating. What made it bearable was the knowledge that every day was one day nearer to our wedding day and to spending the rest of our lives together.

Engagement is waiting for the arrival of something which has been promised, something guaranteed to happen. The ring my fiancee wore was a token of this. That kind of waiting is of an entirely different order to the rather uncertain waiting for something we hope might happen but secretly doubt ever will. I am waiting for England to win the football world cup again, for an end to corruption, for world peace.

Advent is a season which focuses on the activity of waiting, and waiting specifically for the return of Jesus Christ as Lord and King to bring history to a glorious fulfilment, to restore all things, and to usher in the fulness of God’s just rule. It’s something about which Jesus spoke clearly during his time on earth and something for which his followers have waited in eager anticipation ever since. Two thousand years of waiting is a long time. These days, we might be forgiven for regarding it as belonging to that second category of waiting – an event which would be nice, and which we hope might happen, but which we doubt ever will. The language and imagery which Jesus uses, however, in describing his future return, are reassuring. This interim time, in which we wait for his coming, is described by him in terms which draw on the imagery of engagement and which stimulate positive expectation.

In the culture in which Jesus lived, engagement (or betrothal as it was more commonly known) was a far more serious commitment than it is today, and was quite literally half way to being married. Having committed himself to marrying his fiancee, the prospective groom would return to his parental home and build an extra room for himself and his bride. When the room was complete (and this was determined by the groom’s father giving his approval to the fact) the groom would return for his bride, the marriage would be completed and he would take her to live with him in his parental home. This is the exact imagery which undergirds Jesus final words to his disciples as recorded by John in his eye-witness account of the life of Jesus (John 14:1-6). Jesus speaks of himself as going to his Father’s house, where there are many rooms, to prepare a place for all those who belong to him. When this work is completed, then he will return and take back with him those who are his. Those who follow him today, and who wait for his return, are waiting for one who has been with them, who has committed himself to them (his return is often spoken of in Scripture in terms of a marriage between Jesus and his bride, the Church), and who has undertaken to return at the right time, the time his Father deems suitable.

Understanding this context makes the waiting all the more bearable and heightens the sense of anticipation. Truly we wait in proper hope knowing that each day, to echo the words of the apostle Paul, our salvation is nearer at hand than when we first believed. Moreover, we have a token of what is to come; the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God indwelling the life of the believer, is referred to in Scripture as a downpayment, a foretaste (the word is the word used in the biblical language for an engagement ring) of the life we will one day enjoy fully in God’s presence.

We wait, not for something vague and uncertain, but rather for something promised and guaranteed by the one who, having been with us, has gone away for a short time, in order to make preparations for an eternity with us.

Lost in a Fog

One of the scariest experiences for any mountain walker is to have fog suddenly descend. It’s happened to me on at least a couple of occasions, and it’s very disorientating. Landmarks disappear and even the most familiar surroundings can become completely indistinguishable.

I recall one especially sobering experience when I was caught out in an area I knew reasonably well, and yet managed somehow to end up walking in exactly the opposite direction to that which I intended. The only hope in such a situation, is to take a compass bearing from the path ahead before the fog comes down and then stick rigidly to following that bearing.

I have often thought that the age in which we find ourselves feels somewhat fogbound. Confusion and uncertainty are its hallmarks. Globally and nationally no-one seems to have any clear idea as to how to navigate us through the increasingly serious challenges which come our way, whether financial, social, ecological or moral. More personally, fewer and fewer people seem to have any overriding sense of direction or purpose in life, other than the rather general and undefined ones of being happy and making money. Fixed landmarks with the ability to help us chart our position and plot our course have by and large disappeared or are not noticed. The idea that life itself might have any destination would not get many subscribers today. The best we can do is to impose some constructed meaning upon it.

The truth is, though, that life does have meaning, purpose and direction. It has a destination to which it is heading, the last page of its story has already been written, and it is possible, by taking our bearings from that end-point of history, to navigate our way towards it and find true meaning and purpose along the way. Although this is a truth which has become integrated into the landscape of my life for a good number of years, along with Christians through out the world, it’s something which I find myself meditating on especially at this time of the year as we move into the season of Advent. With its focus on the assurances given by Jesus that he will one day return to earth in glory, Advent fixes our minds and hearts on the truth that Jesus, in whom all things find their origin, is also the one who will have the final word on history. He is the goal of history, the one in whom one day all things will be summed up, the one to whom we are all ultimately accountable. His return will mark the restoration of all things and the final establishment of God’s just Kingdom rule over all Creation. Everything, in the meantime, points towards this great destination. If we want to live well in this life then we need to fix our eyes truly on where we and the whole of Creation is heading.

We may be in a fog, but Jesus has entered into that fog and has revealed himself to us. Which means that not only are we privileged to have someone on whom to fix our eyes and to give us bearings, but we are also entrusted with the responsibility of showing the way to others. Those who belong to him are described by him as the light to the world and are called to shine brightly.

I am praying that this Advent season will be a rich time for all God’s people of growing in confidence in our future hope and in steadfastness in living life well now.

What is God up to?

The other evening I was out with a team from our church prayer-walking parts of our community. Some houses, and the people who live in them, I know well – part of the benefit of working in the same community for a good length of time. It wasn’t difficult to pray for many of them in a reasonably informed way. A good deal of the time, my prayer partner and I found ourselves praying the same kind of thing repeatedly. We were crying out to God for the lost, asking him to open the eyes of the spiritually blind, asking that those who were spiritually hungry would be led to those who might direct them to Jesus. We were praying for marriages, for the preservation and restoration of family life, for prosperity for local businesses, for God’s blessing on our community. The kind of things that it’s reasonable to suppose God would be generally in favour of.

But having got all that off our chests, and having prayed the things which seemed urgent to us, I got to reflecting on Jesus’s great statements in John 5:17 – ‘My Father is always working, and I too am working’ – and in John 6:6 where John tells us that, despite testing Philip over where food might be found for 5,000 people, Jesus already knew what he was intending to do to solve the problem. I found myself asking God what was it exactly that he was working at in the streets down which we were walking. What was occupying his attention? What was he intending to do here, and in what great projects was he looking for people to partner with him?
It is a profoundly reassuring truth that God is always at work, advancing the cause of his kingdom, seeking to draw people to himself and to the fullness of life which he has in mind for all whom he has made. It’s especially reassuring when we, and our best efforts, seem to be making little headway for the Kingdom. He is always working.

Sometimes it is a rather challenging truth. All too often we can be so full of our own convictions and objectives (not all of them necessarily misplaced or wrong) that we can actually miss out on what God has primarily in mind and on the things he is concerned to draw us into. I can recall times when I have literally ‘prayed myself out’, come to the end of my own intercessory energies, and have been stilled into listening more intentionally for the promptings of God. I can think of some such times when God has put people, apparently out of the blue, on my mind and moved me to pray for them, and God has dramatically answered such prayers, effecting significant breakthrough in their lives. I am trying to learn the lesson that it is far more economical in terms of effort and time to pay attention to what God is about and to partner with him in it, than simply to work for him but somehow without consulting him greatly.

I wonder what God, who is always working, might have in mind for your community. I wonder what Jesus is intending to do there, if he can only get a few people to partner with him. It’s worth giving a bit of time to find out.

(Originally published as New Wine North & East Regional Director’s Monthly Bulletin)

Why Anointing trumps everything

I am as gutted as most at the General Synod’s unwillingness, a few hours ago, to give the green light to the consecration of women as Bishops. I feel for my sisters in Christ for whom this must feel like a massive rejection of their ministry. It’s yet another thing I find impossible to explain, let alone justify, to a watching world. And, most of all, I am so saddened that the C of E will be denied (for the time being at least) the missional leadership of godly, anointed women ministers at a senior level.

Am I surprised? Not entirely. The C of E has shown itself in so many ways to be inherently conservative and essentially nostalgic (it sees its core business as maintaining the past rather than defining the future). Do I see it as a setback for Kingdom growth? Not necessarily.

I am profoundly unconvinced by the notion that the institution has any real capacity to deliver or effect Kingdom growth. Of course I know that the picture is patchy, and I am privileged to work in an area which is superbly served by missional, entrepreneurial leadership at the most senior level ( I oversee the first BMO in England actually to be dreamed up and initiated by a Bishop!). However, every significant renewal movement from Jesus onwards actually began on the margins, was a bottom-up movement, was led by people with anointing rather than positional leadership, and essentially got up the nose of the institution (because it challenged the status quo and redefined the future). I would rather have good institutional leadership than bad, and thus of course I would rather that such leadership be open to women and men. But we can fool ourselves that getting the right people into the right positions at the head of the institution will change everything. I really don’t believe that it will.

So, my appeal to godly women and men who have a calling to lead and a vision for seeing the Kingdom of God advance and grow, is to pursue the anointing of God and his favour and to exercise influence for Him wherever we can. True episcopacy is measured not by position or appointment, but by the extent of our influence. If we are not exercising influence arising out of Holy Spirit anointing, then simply being made a Bishop will change nothing. What the church and, more importantly, the world desperately needs is women and men impassioned by God and sold out for the Kingdom who will kickstart a spiritual revolution at grassroots level which will see our nation changed. Interestingly, the Holy Spirit seems to agree with this and is in the business of calling and anointing women as well as men to each of the fivefold ministries of the New Testament. These will be the true apostolic bishops – and no body, elected or otherwise, will be able to stand in the way of their exercising a ministry from God. Let’s not be deluded by the notion that positional leadership will change very much. Let’s be completely confident in the demonstrable truth that anointing from God trumps everything.

Evil, Despair and the God of Hope

Every now and again an event takes place which is so profoundly shocking that even the hard-bitten secular media describes it as ‘evil’. The cold-blooded murder of two unarmed police officers in Manchester last week, has been such an event. Reaction to it has been not simply one of horror and revulsion at the atrocity it represents, but a recognition that its cause involves the activity of malicious forces beyond our control and comprehension. For a society which likes to think that most things are within its capacity to control, this is a terrifying admission.

Such events affect us in a whole host of ways. All of us will have, I am sure, experienced  a mixture of shock, revulsion, grief and a deep sense of compassion for all those involved in the incidents. Sometimes the impact of these things goes deeper. Even those of us who are involved in the business of Kingdom leadership can find ourselves rocked when such events take place. They confront us with the scale of the task before us and the nature of the forces ranged against us and against the Kingdom whose representatives we are. We may not have experienced shootings like this in our own communities, but many of us can point to incidents and events in which we come face to face in a similar way with pure evil. It’s not surprising that sometimes their impact upon us is one of discouragement and even despair.

Scripture contains a number of narratives in which God’s people express similar emotions, and none more so than some of the prophetic narratives of the Exilic period in Israel’s history. Swamped by a pagan culture, with the Kingdom of Israel dismantled and overrun by hostile forces, God’s people despaired of ever seeing God’s ways established once again on earth. They seemed to be at the mercy of darkness and evil. For those people, and for those of us confronted with darkness in our own day and age, the glorious prophetic words of Isaiah 40-55 have the capacity to rekindle hope even in the most desperate situations. We are preaching through these chapters in our church this autumn, and the verses I preached on just a couple of days before the murders (Isaiah 41:8-20) stand as a bulwark against all that would undermine God’s values and purposes.

The central message of these chapters is the restoration of God’s people in their role as servant of the Lord and light to the nations. This tiny nation is once again called and commissioned by God to exercise influence for him way beyond its size or significance. Despite their previous failure and disobedience, God renews their calling to belong to Him and to be His Kingdom people, brining hope and transformation. Three particular obstacles seem (to Israel) to be standing massively in the way of their being able to fulfil such a calling.

1. Opposition
There were lots of people with a very different agenda to that of the Kingdom. Indeed, plenty of other groups had vested interests in Israel not returning to land which they had occupied in the absence of Israel, land which they were not going to give up without a fight. These verses are straightforward about the fact that God’s people will have to contend with those who are angry with them and God, that they will face verbal and even physical assault, that the ride will not always be smooth. Sometimes we are all too well aware of human opposition to the work of God with which we are involved. usually, what lies behind such opposition is not simply with flesh and blood, but spiritual forces which have an interest in the Kingdom being kept at bay. Breakthrough often begins by our starting to recognise the reality and the nature of such opposition.

Opposition has the capacity to dishearten and discourage us, to knock us off course and to keep us from attempting great things for the Kingdom. It can keep us from pushing through with ministry initiatives in our communities and churches because to do so would be costly emotionally and spiritually. We can find ourselves in fear, whether of the reaction of others  or of other less visible things.

God does not promise to spare us from opposition or difficulty. But He does (v10) instruct us not to fear. And the ground of our confidence is simply that He is with us to strengthen us and to act for us. It is God who will overcome opposition, no matter how large it seems. The only thing we are called to do is to fulfil His calling, to go into the places into which he is calling us, to take His hand in trust, and then to see Him win through. The process may be drawn out and painful, but the ultimate triumph of God and His purposes is sure. Israel had to go back to the land in order for this to take place; we too need to press on, despite discouragement and threats.

2. Weakness
One thing Israel knew without any shadow of a doubt was that they were weak in terms of numerical, political and material strength. Long gone were the days when they were the major force in the ancient world. They found it impossible to compute success without a return to the strength and influence of former days.

Our own sense of weakness, often compounded by our experience of failure and disappointment, is that which can so easily hinder us from going forward with God. Or, we pretend that we are actually stronger than we really are, and try and summon up a bit more courage. God is actually very realistic about our weakness, and would prefer it if we were as honest as He is. He is unafraid to remind Israel (v14) that their innate strength is akin to that of a worm (nothing like calling a spade ‘a spade’!). As ever, this is in  order that they might rely on Him. Effectively he is saying, “you are a worm, but I am your all-sufficiency (the true meaning of the word ‘Redeemer’ in v14), and the sooner you stop relying on yourself, or thinking you have to, and the sooner you start relying fully on me, the better.” Weakness is only a problem when we deny it or give in to it. To the weak God promises help which is more than adequate.

3. Context
Perhaps we have no difficulty with what has been written thus far, but what really counts against us is the unpromising nature of the situation in which we find ourselves. “If only you knew what my community/church/area is like…Nothing we have ever tried has worked, people are unresponsive – it’s a spiritual desert.”

This seems to be the final difficulty confronting Israel as they are called to return from babylon to see the Kingdom once again established. It is this which perhaps calls out the most glorious response from God (vv17-20). The most hostile and difficult contexts, He seems to be saying, are precisely those which I delight to transform. Nothing is too difficult for me.

In the same week that the shootings took place, I found myself worshipping with GLO, our relatively new church plant in a neighbouring community of social housing. Two years ago, the social club on the estate was one of the centres for evil at the heart of the community. The base for money-laundering and other forms of organised crime, the HQ of the BNP, it was a desert place. Today, cleaned out and redecorated, it is, amongst other things, a place where the GLO community worship week by week, offering hope and transformation to many from the estate whose previous experience of life was only that of desert. I found myself, in the same week, in conversation with another guest at a friend’s wedding, hearing her story of transformation. The daughter of parents who were both in and out of prison, her life was one of alcohol and drug abuse and of sexual promiscuity. After meeting the Lord sixteen years ago, she now runs a hostel for ex-offenders, helping them find hope, and working with the Lord to see transformation in the very area in which her own hopelessness lay. The God who provides water in the desert.

The stakes are high, and the challenges are significant. But God is greater; and He is with us.