Do Be Do Be Do Be Do

I come from a fairly ordinary background, one where I was raised and nurtured within a Christian context. I go under the label of 'Cradle Christian'. This means that I have, frankly, been robbed of that moment where I gave my life to Jesus. It was though, kinda, given before I was born (cf Ps 139). Anyhoo ...

When people stand up and start to talk energetically about 'mission', I notice several things.

1. That person seems always to be a man in his fifties with considerable alopecia, round rimmed spectacles, a broad smiley face with very straight white teeth and a strange taste in clerical shirts. 

2. I start to follow the Reggie Perrin line of imagining a scene unfold before me - but this scene is one where imps  chase butterflies with nets, like dementers on a spring morning. The sound of birdsong is overplayed by a less attractive soundtrack that seems to me to be a litany of "Gotcha Gotcha".

3. Lots of verbs, matched by equal numbers of gesticular actions. 

4. Me glazing over, having passed through a state of mild temper. 

I have a heart for mission. I love Christ, and I love the church. I love the community of Christ, and I love the community of the church. I want people to choose Christ as the way the truth and the life. That is where my heart is. But I have always become annoyed in lectures about mission, and I am trying to understand why. 

The main issue for me, I think, is contained in point 3 above. Mission in the classical evangelical sense seems to be an almost all consuming 'Do' thing. It requires plans, actions, models, pasta, chasing, testimony giving, and a whole array of other pieces of 'doing' (except when it involves sacraments, but that is for another post). Mission seems to be a very busy thing to do, very tiring - if these paradigms of mission are regarded as correct. 

Priests are called to 'Be'. As someone said to me today, priests are mission in the person (or words that effect), or put another way - by just 'being', they represent a viable model of mission in themselves. I do not disregard the other mission models, of course. I of all people have much to learn from them, but when they come across to me, a professional Christian, as ecclesial stalking - then I wonder if tweaks are needed. Think of a candle. A candle, by its very nature, is a creature of 'being'. It can 'do' very little except 'be' itself. Yet it casts it light on all who see it, its warmth and hope to. A candle is not designed or built to set other candles alight around it. 

Of course, a candle cannot meet Christ's mandate to go in the world, but I wonder if the mission movements today overlook passivity and stillness, inertia and 'being' to their peril. When I read about the many millions of people who have attended this course or that and then notice that church attendance figures are largely static, I wonder where the missing link in the chain is. I don't have an answer, but I just wonder if it is not to be found in 'being' (and letting God have a part to play, not just us .... ?)

How to make a monk explode

The esteemed Bish (as in +Alan, as in Blog) visited us Aylesbury folkses last night to talk about St. Benedict. During the course of his presentation (which must have been half-decent because I have remembered this much at least), he posed the thorny question which sits as the lifetime conundrum for all clergy ...

...How do you make a monk explode?

He prefaced his answer by explaining that to make a chameleon explode you would have to plonk it on a tartan carpet. Clearly, a monk would not explode if placed upon a tartan ten-gauge - but rather as a result of the following scenario. Imagine the monastary bell tolling, calling the brethren to prayer. Bro Gardener is in the middle of planting a row of best Savoys, and has but one to plonk in the ground. Does he fulfill his community role or does he abandon the poor cabbage in favour of some Psalm-bashing? The correct answer is 'prefer nothing to Jesus', dump the rabbit food - one pureed monk-type.

Uncharacteristically for me, I went from a given presentation and engaged with it at home, and I opened my hitherto un-opened Rule of St. Benedict. It makes so much sense in so many ways and speaks to me of the considerable tension that I embody - the tension that priesthood makes manifest in the correct balance of 'being' and 'doing'.  

I am conspicuously a 'doing' type of fella, and find 'being' tough. So, in order to make this Farv explode, ask him spend time 'being' in Church when a million emails, half a million sermons, a website and a partridge in a pear tree need attending to, and that require him to ride his Dell like a medieval lady of the night. Pop; splat. The church loses and the emails get ...erm, 'follow-up flagged'!

Seriously, there were a couple of things from the presentation that have left their imprint (two more than the whole of my last year at college [my fault, not college's]) - the first being 'prefer nothing to Jesus', and the second '....he should so regulate everything that the strong may desire to carry more, and the weak are not afraid' (referring to the Abbot). With a comprehensive course on Leadership just around the corner and a considerable management experience behind me, I recieve this wisdom in the spirit of an 'Epiphany moment' - bloody marvellous.

Now all I need to do is igonore the copious 'dry-slaps' that naughty monks are required to recieve upon their hides. St. Benedict was a sod for a 'car-park chat', wasn't he ... !?