Always Hope

First things first. If you have spent the last 48 hours on Mars, or not on Twitter, watch it now: Kate posted links to this yesterday and I think she was beginning to wonder if anyone was interested. She need not have. Today the internet has gone bonkers over it, in its usual frenzied way and she is the news-worthy vicar of the week, which is a good result in itself, keeping the usual embezzlers and philanderers out of the press, and giving the church a rare good news story on the clergy front. Inevitably, then, the backlash has followed, with various individuals lining up to ping epithets like "irreverent" at her, and explaining how they like a good laugh as much as the next man but apparently not within 10 miles of a church, since this is "not an appropriate moment in the liturgy" and other such important-sounding things. Tomorrow there will be a rash of newspaper columns shouting about it and telling us that this is why the Church of England is doomed. Appa...

The way I'm thinking about church was clarified in an instant this Sunday, in the unlikely setting of an 8.00 am BCP service.  Or perhaps not so unlikely, because unlike some clergy, I find the communion service of 1662 to be a liturgy that powerfully expresses the liberality of the gospel, built as it is around the explosive declaration that "God so loved the world".  God didn't just love the 5 of us who did him a favour by turning up to the service, but the whole world, even the ones who don't seem that bothered about him. This was brought home to me by the Gospel reading (completely different to the one that non-17th century congregations were reading):  Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. And he spake this parable unto them, saying, What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the n...

So today the C of E launches the sign-up for this year's Back to Church Sunday .   I wonder if any readers are among the three million who are "waiting for a friend to invite them"? (For the record, I believe this refers to a survey carried out a couple of years ago when people were asked if they would consider going to church if someone asked them to).  Or perhaps more likely, you are among those considering doing the asking. Back to Church Sunday is a neat idea. There really are people out there who would consider coming to church if asked. Churchgoers get to interact with their unchurched or de-churched friends without having to talk about anything difficult like God, or their own personal faith - it's just a question of making the invitation.  But there are one or two cautions to considered before investing   Back to Church with the "essential" label, and seeing it as the panacea for all the church's ills. The most obvious one is the question of ...

I was struck by this report of Tim Keller's address to last week's Lausanne Congress in Cape Town. Keller, to me, is the most compelling of the US mega-pastors. He is an intelligent leader in a constituency where that is not universal (notice the report's rather daft reference to his "deep thinking"; so do certain evangelicals characterise someone who has an original thought in his head). He also has a deep commitment to social justice, which is a factor in his church's commitment to the urban community. It was on the subject of "the city" that Keller addressed the congress: Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan told attendees of Lausanne III that if Christians want human life to be shaped by Jesus Christ then churches need to go into cities. Cities are where churches can reach the next generation (young adults want to live in the city); reach more unreachable people (people are far more open to the Gospel in th...