Virtual Methodist

The practice of advent watchfulness is, in many ways an exercise of prolonged prayer... Training ourselves to be awake to the presence of God in the world around us.  Earlier in the year I offered some reflections based on Eugene Peterson's book "The Contemplative Pastor". Well, in that book he points out the difference between the more commonplace tradition of apophatic prayer and kataphatic prayer.  You may not realise it but most of us, particularly in the Protestant traditions, were taught apophatic prayer from childhood, when we were told "Fold your hands, bow your head, shut your eyes, and we'll talk to God." Apophatic prayer attempts to eliminate all earthly distractions that may distract us from communion with our Creator. By contrast kataphatic prayer encourages us to "reach out our hands, lift up our heads, open our eyes and listen to God, using triggers in creation to point us to the Creator - icons, symbols, scripture, ritual, incense...

Silence...  Have you ever heard the sound of silence. Not the Simon and Garfunkel song, which in many ways is the antithesis of what I am talking about, but the sound of REAL silence. I've done a fair bit of radio work over the years and there is nothing that is dreaded more in that industry than  so-called "dead air." Silence... Nothing disturbing the air molecules around the microphone that can then be converted into electrical signals, which are then disseminated across the world to fill any gaping void in the soundscape around people's lives... Thanks to radio, TV, ipods etc., combined with the unrelenting noise of modern life, technical tinnitus... the rumble of traffic, the muffled roar of aircraft all around, the hum of electricity, the whirr of computer and aircon fans... silence is a rare commodity...  But perhaps in this Lenten season, with its central image of Christ in the midst of the wilderness, and my own period of sabbatical, a u...

It's a beautiful day. Blue skies. No wind. Slight bite of winter still in the air. It is a day when it is easy to praise God as you go for a morning walk in the park. It even makes a journey to work a little less depressing.  But it brought to mind a passage in Eugene Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor." (Yes, I'm back there again.) It is probably my least favourite part of the book, where he does a miniature hagiography of Annie Dillard , the American author who has written much on the spirituality revealed in nature and the problem of pain.  But in this section Peterson, drawing on Dillard's writings, says: 'It is child's play to "appreciate nature" when the sun is shining and the birds are singing. Something far more strenuous is involved when we face and deal with the cruelty and terror that creation also deals out in spades.' Previously he makes reference to the 10% of living creatures that are parasites, which Dillard ...

In my re-reading of Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor" recently I have been struck by his comparison of poet and pastor, which in turn has encouraged me to go back to reading some of my favourite poets. I'm currently reading some of Seamus Heaney's early stuff, drawn from his experiences growing up in rural Ulster. I suppose it registers with me because it is reminiscent of some of the stories my Dad used to tell about growing up around Cookstown, not too far from where Heaney haled from. However, the more I read Heaney, the more I'm depressed at my own juvenile-esque attempts at poetry... That said, I recognise in Heaney another theme that Peterson focuses on in "The Contemplative Pastor", that of the natural world as "The theater (sic) of God's glory." This was a phrase of John Calvin, but, as Peterson points out, Calvin may have recognised the natural world as such a theatre, but he never seems to have sat down to enjoy the show...

Today is Pancake Tuesday, one of my son Ciaran's favourite days in the year, when we make pancakes together for the rest of the family. It is our wee tradition, underpinned by the wider tradition of the church. But I don't think we will be using the Heath Robinson device in this picture. However it did remind me of the passage in "The Contemplative Pastor" where Peterson in his exploration of the "recovery" of the "forgotten heart" of pastoral ministry, that is "the cure of souls", refers to the protestant reformation saying: "The Reformers recovered the biblical doctrine of justification by faith. The gospel proclamation, fresh and personal and direct, through the centuries had become an immense, lumbering Rube Goldberg mechanism; elaborately contrived ecclesiastical gears, pulleys and levers rumbled and creaked importantly but ended up doing something completely trivial." Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson were doing simi...

For years I have argued that there is a fundamental psychological and indeed spiritual difference between leading worship and preaching that often becomes blurred in the one-man-band (and its' usually a man) ministry practised in most western protestant churches... If we use Kierkegaard's parable of worship as theatre, a worship leader should not, as is often be the case, the lead performer in the drama (a point which many would be rock-star contemporary worship leaders could do with learning), but are merely prompters to the main actors, the congregation, performing for an audience of one... God himself. But something different is happening with preaching as historically understood... the orientation of the "drama" changes... the preacher becomes the mouthpiece of God... I'm not being arrogant here... the theory goes that by the power of the Holy Spirit, the reading of scripture and its exposition allows us to hear God's mind... Sometimes that may be cl...

I was sent this book specifically to review after I responded to a post/tweet on facebook/twitter (can’t remember which) at a time when I was seriously thinking about the role of social media in society in general and my life and ministry specifically. It is a relatively short book written in bite-sized blog-like chunks, or, given the subject matter, perhaps that should be byte-sized chunks. Despite its brevity, it packs in a lot of scholarship and reflection, indeed at times it reads like a literary link-dump, citing other larger works that have a more specific focus, but it builds a good case for how all communications technology, including contemporary social media, are not simply neutral tools, but serve to shape individuals’ neurological function and human society in general for good or ill. It is not a luddite rejection of technological development and its often unintended social effects, but rather, is a measured appraisal by someone who uses these tools, but is seeking to ...

My life is measured out in words... words typed on a computer keyboard... words spoken from a pulpit or stage or over the airwaves... words arranged in huge blocks of prose or shaped into carefully crafted poetry... words thrown across a room like weapons... and words read from a page or screen. Recently I've been reading some of the wise words of Eugene Peterson in "The Contemplative Pastor" and they have sparked off a veritable torrent of words in my mind on this blog... I've already written, among other things, on the role of parable not only in communicating ideas but stimulating communion. Peterson himself, where he is writing of the creative word of God says: "Not all words create. Some merely communicate. They explain, report, describe, manage, inform, regulate. We live in an age obsessed with communication. Communication is good but a minor good. Knowing about things never has seemed to improve our lives a great deal. The pastoral task with words in...

Another wee excerpt from Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor": "People would rather talk to the pastor than to God and so it happens that without anyone actually intending it, prayer is pushed to the sidelines.  And so pastors, instead of practicing prayer, which brings people into the presence of God, enter into the practice of messiah: we will do the work of God for God, fix people up, tell them what to do, conspire in finding the shortcuts by which the long journey to the Cross can be bypassed since we all have such crowded schedules right now. People love us when we this. It is flattering to be put in the place of God. It feels wonderful to be treated in this godlike way. And it is work that we are generally quite good at." There is so much packed into a few lines here... but it essentially comes down to how we as pastors model things for those who have been entrusted to our care. Do we model  The Primacy of Prayer, or The Minister as Mini-Messi...

In his book " The Contemplative Pastor " (I'm only 20% of my way through this so there's plenty more to come on this strand) Peterson says: “Jesus’ favorite speech form, the parable, was subversive. Parables sound absolutely ordinary: casual stories about soil and seeds, meals and coins and sheep, bandits and victims, farmers and merchants. And they are wholly secular: of his forty or so parables recorded in the Gospels, only one has its setting in church, and only a couple mention the name God. As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once that they weren’t about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty. They relaxed their defenses. They walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination. And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts. An abyss opened up at their very feet. He was talking about God; they had been invaded!... Parables subversively slip past o...

A title like that should draw a little bit of interest (although I must say that the site has been taking more than normal hits recently - so thank you to those who have been forwarding my ramblings to others - I am deeply indebted to you)... However it is influenced by some comments which Peterson makes in "The Contemplative Pastor" where he begins by saying that 'The one piece of mail certain to go unread into my wastebasket is the letter addressed to the "busy pastor." Not that the phrase doesn't describe me at times, but I refuse to give my attention to someone who encourages what is worst in me.' As a busy pastor just about ALL unsolicited mail goes straight to recycling unless it has something that will REALLY capture my attention... If you are reading this then my title has worked for you in your busy life... I regularly come down with what a friend describes as harassed priest syndrome, where you arrive late at one meeting only to have to l...

"If I, even for a moment, accept my culture's definition of me, I am rendered harmless." When Peterson makes this statement in "The Contemplative Pastor" he is specifically referring to pastors... but is it not true of everyone? In response to my post last week offering an operating manual for ministers, one friend (and wife of a Methodist minister) suggested that it was not just ministers who needed such an operating manual, but teachers, doctors, lawyers and other professions who are frequently faced with unrealistic expectations... My response was that not only was that true, but applied to those outside of the traditional professions too. I'm actually very wary of special pleading on the part of ministers especially when it comes to their long working hours and busy schedules (more on that with my next post based on this book), given that we live in a world where so many people are subject to tremendous pressure and unrealistic expectations. We as mi...

Time and again over the past couple of years I've come back to the issue of compassion, be it because of a perceived lack of compassion within the church particularly in this wee part of the world, or because I find it hard to practice any sort of self-compassion (the latter perhaps conditioned by the former). Well yesterday, in my re-reading of Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor" I came across his "definition" of a pastor as: "a person who was passionate for God and compassionate with people." Snappy. It has a "mission" statement/soundbite character to it, uncharacteristic of the usually forensically careful Peterson. But I'm trying to work out the implications of it. Passion usually refers to some powerful emotion... Whilst it may be focussed on a person, or thing, often it can become intensely selfish - the person or thing may be the object of the passion but ultimately it is all about satisfying the emotional needs...

Partly as a personal response to some of the issues raised in my (surprisingly popular) post last week prompted by some of the points of annoyance I encounter in my calling as a pastor/preacher, I thought I would return to Eugene Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor" as part of my daily devotions for a wee while... And a few lines in I found a whole collection of thoughts piling up which required more mature reflection... so in the absence of any ability on my part to do such a thing, I thought I'd blog on a few of them... beginning, as we should with the discipline of prayer... Peterson says: "Prayer is a subversive activity. It involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime..." In other words, prayer is not just an act of personal piety or a corporate ritual, but is a profoundly revolutionary political activity. To continue my thoughts in yesterday's post , not only is prayer a pledge of allegiance to a ki...