Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church 19/7/15
Whose
church is it anyway?
1 Samuel 8.4-22 Then all the elders of Israel gathered
together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5
and said to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways;
appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." 6 But the thing displeased Samuel
when they said, "Give us a king to govern us." Samuel prayed to the
LORD, 7 and the LORD said to
Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you;
for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over
them. 8 Just as they have
done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking
me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9 Now then, listen to their voice;
only-- you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who
shall reign over them." 10 ¶
So Samuel reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him
for a king. 11 He said,
"These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take
your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run
before his chariots; 12 and
he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties,
and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements
of war and the equipment of his chariots.
13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and
bakers. 14 He will take the
best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his
courtiers. 15 He will take
one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and
his courtiers. 16 He will
take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and
put them to his work. 17 He
will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry
out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD
will not answer you in that day." 19 ¶
But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, "No!
but we are determined to have a king over us,
20 so that we also may be like other nations, and that our
king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles." 21 When Samuel had heard all the
words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. 22 The LORD said to Samuel,
"Listen to their voice and set a king over them." Samuel then said to
the people of Israel, "Each of you return home."
Matthew 16.13-19 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea
Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man
is?" 14 And they said,
"Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah
or one of the prophets." 15
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" 16 Simon Peter answered, "You
are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." 17 And Jesus answered him,
"Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed
this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the
gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and
whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on
earth will be loosed in heaven."
The question of how to lead the people of God,
and, indeed, who should lead them,
is nothing new.
There
have been arguments over leadership styles, strategies, and strengths
since the time God first called
Israel to be his people.
From
Moses the murderer leading the people from slavery to freedom,
to the unfaithful judges , to the
warrior kings,
to the conquering armies
of Assyria and Babylon,
to the armed insurrectionists of
Maccabean revolt,
to the scribes and the
Pharisees and the puppet monarchs of the first century,
the
Bible is shot through with stories of leadership both good and bad.
Well,
mostly bad, if we’re honest,
but there are some glimpses of glory
along the way.
Although,
when I stop to think about it,
the glory is more often of the blood-and-guts kind,
than it is the glory-hallelujah kind.
But
anyway, ‘leadership and the people of God’, has always been problematic.
And it still is.
I
have a friend, who refers to it as ‘the L-word’,
because he believes that the word
‘leadership’
should never even be
used when speaking of the people of God.
‘We are called to service’, he says,
‘not leadership’.
And
of course, he’s right.
We even call our ministers
‘Minister’,
a word which comes from
the Latin for ‘servant’.
Just
as an aside, this is something our politicians might do well to remember
as they aspire to
ministerial office,
and we become the subjects of their
tender ministrations.
The
culture of ‘leadership’
runs through our contemporary experience
of what it is to be the
people of God,
every bit as much as it did in the
first and tenth centuries BC.
From
Archbishops to archimandrites,
from elders to deacons,
to senior ministers to
home group leaders, to worship leaders;
we
consistently structure our communities of faith
so that we know who’s in charge.
Which
of course, means we also helpfully know who’s to blame
when things don’t go the way we want
them to.
But
we might come back to that…
Many
of you will know that I, like Ruth,
have spent a significant proportion
of my time over the years
engaged in what we try to call ‘the
formation of ministers’.
Interestingly,
it’s very carefully not called
‘ministerial training’,
on the basis that no amount of
training
can ever adequately
prepare someone for the task of ministry,
and in recognition that what is
really needed
is the formation of
appropriate character and spirituality,
rather than the
acquisition of specific skills.
However,
our language continually betrays us.
Whenever
one minister meets another,
one of the first questions they will
ask each other is ‘where did you train?’
Of
course, this is a carefully structured question
to work out whether you have an ally
or an enemy before you:
If
they trained… I’m sorry, if they ‘were formed’ at the same College as you,
then you have a friend for life,
if
they ‘went to’ a different College,
they will be assigned to a position
somewhere on the sliding scale of enmity
that we all carry in our
hearts,
and everyone proceeds with due caution.
Some
might call this an ‘old boys network’,
but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Anyway,
I worked at the Baptist College in Cardiff for eight years,
and was part of the interviews for
prospective students.
One
of the questions we would often ask someone, would be,
‘why do you want to become a
minister?’
And
often, the answer we would get back would be,
‘because I feel God is calling me to
lead a church’.
Which,
at one level of course, is a perfectly acceptable response.
After all, why else would you apply
to a Baptist College
to be trained… I’m
sorry, ‘formed’… as a Baptist minister?
Except,
as I’ve already said,
the language of ‘leadership’ may not
be the right way
of describing what it is
we think we’re doing
when look to identify people within
the community of Christ’s body
who are called to
specific roles of service such as ministry.
One
of the things I have to do as a minister
is go to what are, these days,
called ‘ministers-meetings’.
In
the days when ministry was male,
these meetings came to be referred
to as ‘fraternals’,
because they were a
meeting of ‘brothers in ministry’, for mutual support.
I
can remember, in my early years of ministry, back in the last century,
finding it slightly odd that I was
sat in a room of women and men,
which was still being
described in all-male terms.
Thankfully,
in these more enlightened times,
such gendered language never ever happens.
Except
of course it does.
Just last month Ruth, Dawn and I all
received an email
from a very nice and
well intentioned fellow London minister,
which addressed all
three of us as ‘Dear Brothers in Ministry’…
To be fair to him, when it was
gently pointed out
that there were some
sisters in the group as well,
he was most apologetic.
He didn’t mean anything by it, and
he’s very supportive of women in ministry.
But
his unconscious use of ‘brothers’
to address the members of what he
probably still thinks of as the ‘fraternal’
betrays a deep
underlying assumption about ministry,
which is I think shared by many more
people
than would ever admit it
even to themselves.
There
remains, I suggest, in many of our churches and ministers,
a tacit assumption that Christian
ministry is, in effect,
a certain kind of
leadership
which is predicated on distinctively
male patterns of competitive behaviour.
I
think I’m allowed to say this,
because I know it is true, because I
see it in myself,
and I also know what it does to me.
I
went to an all-boys grammar school.
I know all about male
competitiveness,
and testosterone fuelled
rivalry.
I know all about the desire to be
Alpha-male.
I
can play that game with the best of them,
and occasionally I can even win.
I
learned fairly early on in life that I might not be the fastest,
or the strongest, or even the
cleverest,
but I was pretty good at
out-smarting my rivals.
And
when my early-learned default position of combative competitiveness
reasserts itself in my adult life,
I
become the person I don’t want to be,
and the image of God within me is
further distorted.
Now,
of course, I’m not saying that women can’t play these games too.
The alpha-female who has learned to
play with the big boys and win,
is a well known gender
cliché.
But
even here it’s not a level playing field.
The Alpha-male is looked up to,
the Alpha-female is
denigrated.
It
seems that even the women who choose to play the male leadership game
are disadvantaged when they do so.
And
this, I suggest, is because the game is itself the wrong game for us to be
playing.
God
is neither Alpha Male nor Alpha Female,
and when we construct the leadership
of God’s people
based on a model of
seniority and competitive leadership,
we lose sight of the God who is
love,
who calls us to mutual
service.
I still
go to the occasional Mostly Male Macho Ministers’ Meeting, as I call them,
carefully alliterated because some might say
that the kind of
minister drawn to such groups
may have
trained at a certain College
where everything
has three or more alliterative points,
but I couldn’t possibly
comment.
Anyway,
when I go to them, I find myself drawn, again and again,
into a Christian ministers’ version
of the ‘mine’s bigger than yours’
game.
‘Where’s
your church?’ I’m asked, ‘and how big is it?’
Honestly. I’m not kidding.
When
guys get together, even spiritual, prayerful, Godly guys,
it all very quickly boils down to a
question of size.
Is
it any wonder that female ministers usually stop going to this kind of meeting?
Is
it any wonder that our underlying assumptions about ministry
remain predicated on a pattern of
male leadership?
And
at the heart of all this is quite an important theological question,
the answer to which will affect everything
else.
And
the question is this: ‘Whose church is it anyway?’
If
we have ministers who believe that God is calling them to ‘train’ for
‘leadership’
so that they can grow ‘their’ church
to be bigger than the other man’s church,
we
have entirely bought into the culture of kingship
that Samuel warned the ancient
Israelites against.
To
which I want to say, ‘Whose church is it anyway?’
If
we construct our churches as kingdoms and empires,
then we will need strong leadership
and bold growth strategies
to ensure they can hold
their own compared to the neighbouring churches,
and we will echo the voices of the
Israelites
who cried to Samuel, ‘appoint for us a king, to govern us like other nations’.
To
which I want to say, ‘Whose church is it anyway?’
And here’s the thing:
I
simply do not believe that the people of God should be led by a King.
Whether that’s a king of Israel, a holy Roman
emperor,
a
defender of the faith, or a macho male minister.
The spirit of kingship, when it takes root in
the people of God,
tends
us towards competitive imperialism.
It fosters a belief that the church is ‘ours’,
and
that ‘our church’ needs to be led, strongly,
into
the brave new world that God has in store for us.
…preferably one in which ‘our church’
does
at least as well as the one down the road.
The
problem, of course, for me here,
is that everybody still seems to
love a monarchy.
I
might say we need no king but Jesus, the servant king,
and people will still say, ‘show me
my King, so I can follow him to victory’.
There
is something deeply attractive about the idea that someone has been born to
lead,
that they have been called by God
from birth to a particular leadership role.
Whether
it’s a call to lead a church, or a call to lead a nation,
or indeed a call to do both at the
same time,
as the monarchs of our country have
claimed since the time of Henry VIII.
The
spirit of king-ship is deeply embedded in our collective psyche.
And
whilst I’m on the subject of the Royal Family,
last week, on our way home from
holiday,
Liz and I called into
Sandringham,
to take a tour of the
house and grounds.
Now,
I make no secret of my republican sentiments,
but even I found myself fascinated,
against my better judgment,
by the inner workings of the house
of Windsor.
Did
you know that the Queen insists that they dine by candle-light,
and has had the electric lights
removed from the dining room?
We made
our pilgrimage… I mean ‘visit’ to Sandringham,
just a few days after the
christening of Princess Charlotte in the Sandringham church,
and I took a moment when we were in
the church
to read some of the
entries written in the book of prayers.
The
expressions of love, devotion, and loyalty to the royal family,
were somewhere between astonishing
and nauseating,
to my unenlightened
republican eyes.
But
I cannot deny that they were heartfelt and deeply held.
There were page after page of
written prayers
for God to bless this
family above all others,
as they fulfil their
God-given responsibility to lead.
Everybody
seems to love a monarchy! And not just the Brits…
Did you know that the royal family
generates about £500 million every year
in tourism revenue?
We
are, it seems, deeply attracted to the idea
of someone taking leadership
responsibility,
not
because they are necessarily good at it,
but because they have been called to
it by divine providence.
But
of course, just because your father or mother was a great leader,
doesn’t automatically mean you will
be too…
We
can see this very clearly in the book of Samuel.
Just a few pages earlier, in chapter
two,
Eli the priest had
discovered the hard way that the sons of the priest
don’t
necessarily make good priests themselves,
and
so he had taken on the boy Samuel to lead once had died.
And then Samuel’s own
sons were nothing but trouble,
and so the
people asked for a king.
And
in one swift move, the leadership of God’s people
moved from the spiritual to the
political.
From the priestly to the
military.
The
people of God became a kingdom,
a dominion ruled by a king.
Which
brings me back to the church,
and specifically to this church,
here in Bloomsbury,
and how we can discern together the
nature of God’s will for his people.
And,
to answer my question from earlier:
‘whose church is it anyway?’
I
want to say very clearly:
It is not our church. It is God’s church.
This is not my church, it is God’s church.
The
kingdom we are engaged in building together
is not a kingdom of power,
influence, and strength,
but
a kingdom of subversive living,
mutual service, and deep
spirituality.
So,
should I be concerned that our congregation size
isn’t as big as that of the church
down the road?
Well,
if it’s all a competition about size,
then yes.
But
if what we’re about is something else altogether,
then no.
We
spent some time at our deacons’ meeting this last week,
considering together the question
of what we think the ‘core values’
of Bloomsbury are.
The
deacons are a group of about fifteen people,
some of whom have been part of this
church for many years,
and some of whom have come into
membership more recently.
So
the list of ‘core values’ that they came up with
draws on both the history and
heritage of Bloomsbury,
and also their experience of it as
it is today.
I
wonder, before I tell you some of the things that the deacons’ came up with
if we can do this exercise together
here this morning?
Just
for a moment, try and think of one or two words,
that sum up for you what you think
might be a core value of this church.
Something
about this place that is distinctive or important,
perhaps the thing that keeps you
coming back here…
[pause]
OK
– we don’t have time to go round everyone,
but I wonder if some of you might be
prepared to call out…
… …
…
Thank,
you, that was really interesting.
I’m
sure you’re dying to know what the deacons came up with,
and so I’m going to offer a
description of Bloomsbury
drawing on, and
expanding a little, the words they came up with.
I hope you’ll recognise it as the church you know and
love:
Bloomsbury
is a place of transformation, welcome, and hope.
It
is a place of inclusivity and openness,
where we make every effort to live
in unity,
even though we are a
diverse group of people.
It
is a community of friendship and acceptance,
and we are concerned for all people,
because we believe that everybody is
in the image of God
We
are a church where we are careful to listen to one another
and where we value a variety of
voices and opinions.
We
are a church where faith takes shape in practical action and service,
both as we care for the vulnerable
and homeless,
and as we care for one another.
We
share food together regularly, extending hospitality and openness to all.
We
are a church that is not afraid to speak out and take action
on issues of politics, justice, and
peace.
We
are a church which embraces intelligent, liberal, open theology,
and which values thoughtful
preaching, teaching, and reverent worship.
We
are a church which values sincerity and integrity,
and doubting is welcomed not
condemned.
We
are a church that believes that God is love,
and that God’s people are called to
live in love,
as we practice the presence of God
in our midst.
And,
finally, we are a church that is deeply radical and non-conformist,
taking inspiration from our long
history of nonconformity
to help us live courageously today.
Did
you recognise Bloomsbury?
Are there things that we’ve missed?
Other things you’d want to add?
If
so, please do get in touch with Dawn, Ruth, or I,
as we seek to offer ministry to this
wonderful, diverse church
to which we’ve been called.
My
challenge this morning,
is for each of us to consider where,
in all of this, do we fit.
What
is the part that you have to play
in this church of which you are a
part?
If
you’re not sure, and you don’t know where you fit,
please come and talk to me, or to
Ruth or Dawn.
If
you sense God is calling you to become involved in some way,
perhaps today is the day to begin
exploring that…
At
our AGM church meeting this afternoon,
those of us who are members of the
church
are going to be continuing to think
together
about the nature of our
church,
what
our resources are,
and
how we might best use them.
We’re
going to be electing deacons who will serve us for the next three years,
and we’re going to be praying
together about how God will lead us.
And
in all the discussions we will have about practicalities,
we will need to keep our eyes fixed
on the bigger picture,
of
why God has called this particular church at Bloomsbury into being,
and what we’re called to be here
for.
We’re
not a kingdom seeking to grow its borders,
and we don’t need a king to lead us.
But
we are a community of Christ’s people,
called to live out the alternative
kingdom of God.
I
said at the beginning, that I’d come back to the question
of who to blame when things don’t go
the way we want them to in church life.
Well,
we’re a Baptist church,
which means that our decisions are
taken collectively,
through prayer and discussion.
And
the invitation is for each of us to take our place
in the decision-making processes of
our church.
So
if you’re not yet a member, why not become one?
And if you are a member but don’t
come to church meetings, why not start?
Let’s
take responsibility together before God,
for the life of the church to which
we have been called.
And
in all of this, let’s keep before us the vision
of the church that Jesus gave to
Peter.
The
church that is founded on the proclamation and worship of Jesus,
the messiah and the son of the
living God,
is
a church which can withstand even the gates of Hades itself,
as it embodies life, love, hope,
resurrection, and transformation.
We
are the church of God,
and it is to this that we have been
called.
