Evangelism

I went to Church the other day and in the sermon the vicar noted that his computer kept crashing.

I took him to one side after the sermon and brought him the good news of Ubuntu.

I have a feeling it is supposed to be him who preaches at me. Still he needed to know.

Reason

Of course, as well as wanting to clap and cheer my graduating students, the other reason I sit through all those graduations is to enhance chaplaincy visibility at a University level.

It's really all about raising our profile.



Really.

Over

The graduations are finally over. It was brilliant! With a touch of sadness.

Yesterday we gave a degree to Richard Hammond, not THE Richard Hammond just someone who is going to spend the rest of his life saying "No not THE Richard Hammond." I was just thinking about that when Stephen King crossed in front of me to receive his BSc.

A couple of years ago we gave a Degree to John Nettles.

No actually John Nettles. A fact I revealed to one of the lecturers on my way back from a graduation.

"I don't know why we did that." he said "He's rubbish."
"Is he?" I said surprised by the harshness.
"Yeah, he never catches them before they have a chance to commit another murder."

I nodded.

Vice Chancellor I present to you the following Bachelors of...

I am sitting through graduations. For three hours a day. The Vice Chancellor has a new joke. It isn't as good as last years.

The Chancellor has played it safe with the one from this time in 2007,

Coming out of the ceremony for the Occupational Therapists one of the lecturers asked me how many I was doing. I said "3 a day",

"You want to be careful" she cautioned "all that clapping will put quite a strain on your hands."

After that it was on to the Electronics and Computer Science ceremony. On the way in no one spoke. Unless of course they were using a means of communication I do not yet understand.

On the way back to the robing room I was fed up with the silent treatment so I said:

"I think Linux is ready for the desktop."

That started off a nice debate.

I'm not saying that academics are caricatures but sometimes they are.

Chapter 15

Endings.

This year I worked my way through 1 Corinthians. I spoke on it at every service I took and I studied it in spare time. The main reason for this is that 1 Corinthians contains a considerable amount of 'how to advice' for Churches and I was, principally trying to grapple with the question of how much a chaplaincy should, in fact resemble a Church.

In the end it seemed that the answer was 'as much as possible'. The very fact that we didn't worship together on Sunday meant that we actually did more things together the rest of the week and then as a result we got a very special community. For my part I tried to shape that community with insights from 1 Corinthians. It wasn't perfect. For one thing sex kept getting in the way, a bit like for Paul when writing to Corinth. Unlike Paul it was not really immorality that caused difficulties as people constantly falling for one another. Which when it works it brilliant, when it doesn't it becomes quite hard for a community to absorb if it is to keep both participants within it. I suppose that reflected the sort of community we were.

As term ended we we got to the final chapter on 1 Corinthians. The bit about the resurrection. I 'did' this chapter at college.

It seems like the Corinthians believed that since they were now 'spiritual' beings that they did not need to die, they were already in heaven. The also did not feel a great desire to be moral either.

Paul states that the fact that Jesus died and then was raised is of first importance. (note that the belief in Jesus' death and resurrection is of first importance, not any beliefs we might have about gay sex...a fact I have pointed out, quite recently)

Paul wants to them to understand the reality of death, and then resurrection. Both Jesus' and their own. I think Paul wants them to understand that the two go together.

One of my tutors at college felt that no one understood why Christians believe in the resurrection. Most people did because they were told to and they didn't like the former Bishop of Durham and Bishop Spong going round telling people it never happened. Rather than just accepting resurrection we should allow it to inform our theology. We need to accept that we shall ultimately loose everything and God will not protect us from that but rather will reach across that loss and restore us to life. Resurrection is about acceptance of loss. We lay everything down before God and just when we have lost everything in the act of loss we are restored. Just like Abraham who gave up Isaac (Genesis 22) and somehow got him back through that process.

With so many significant people having left chaplaincy this year, it does feel a bit like the community has died. It feels it particularly at this time of year when no one is here anyway, but it feels like we have lost something fairly significant and yes in October we will start afresh but none of that has happened yet. More than that we face considerable uncertainty about the future of the building and the budget which only serves to heighten my sense of loss. There is, this year, a real risk that chaplaincy isn't going to come back in October.

Yet I believe in resurrection, which means that I have to let things go. I have to accept that everything dies and that through that process constantly we miraculously see new life.

Which is why I am not depressed....because today something happened that made me quite excited. I saw a glimpse of the future....

And it looked OK!

Locum

The Vicar up the road is on holiday so I was called in.

I forgot how to write sermons and went to bed last night with it unfinished, Got up early this morning and polished it off.It was hard work. Took me right back to my school days.

Despite the work I got very little reaction. The teenagers looked bored, so did quite a few of the congregation.

Honestly I'd love to be heckled.

Ted Crilly come to life

It's almost like the fathers of Craggy Island just got up and walked out of the television screen.

Today via Facebook I was invited to join the hunt for the next Golden Cleric.

I gladly took up the invitation and now thanks to me you can to

HERE

Fantastic! Now if someone can just find me Bishop Brennen my life will be complete.

A little thought about GAFCON

Those behind the split in the communion want one fact to be clear:

They are not homophobes. They do not hate homosexuals.

This is about the Bible. You either accept it or you do not. If you do not you are not a Christian, so this is not about bigotry this is a fight for survival of the Church.

So, they say, it doesn't matter that what caused the split was the consecration of a gay man in America, it could have been anything. What matters is that the Bible is the authority for Christians.

In 1 Corinthians (in the Bible, in case you don't know) Paul makes it clear that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is a foundation belief within Christianity. If Christ is not raised, he says, you are still in your sin.

In 1998 just weeks before the Lambeth conference the Bishop of Newark the Rt Revd John Spong publicly denied the resurrection, in his 12 theses he called for a new reformation, much as the Jerusalem conference has done now, only his reformation was going to be of a very different kind.

Not only did his want to do away with the resurrection but also the virgin birth and,
also the existence of God. Which, really, is pretty much a first order thing as far as faith is concerned. Finally just for good measure Spong called for the ordination of practising homosexuals.

AND YET...

Bishop Spong attended the Lambeth Conference. There were no calls for the American Church to be kicked out of the communion for making him a Bishop despite the fact that the Spong's rather heterodox views were already a matter of public knowledge at the time he was made a Bishop. The slightly warped theology of American Anglicanism is nothing new, nor is it on this side of the water. The Bishop of Durham denied the resurrection back in the 80s and then went on to be consecrated a Bishop. From Africa there was not a word. From Sydney, nothing! If anything the Church of England house of Bishops if more conservative and more evangelical now than it has ever been. If the Church of England has changed it doctrine it is in the other direction.

All that has changed in the last few years is that we now have an openly gay Bishop.

They have not changed their practice not their belief.

Whatever else this is about, it is about gay sex

Leavers

It has been an amazing few years of my life.

It is now 3 years since I got this job and we are coming up on three years since I started.

When I came here I met loads of students who started at the same time as I did. Now three years later chaplaincy has lost some of it's most significant members. However for the first time we had an official chaplaincy leavers service to mark the departure of some of these people.



I preached a goodbye sermon at what was a very emotional moment. I'm not saying I cried or anything. It was just a moment when I realised chaplaincy was never going to be the same again. It might be better, I don't know, but it will be different.

Afterwards we had the usual chaplaincy Bar-B-Q and party.



It was a fab way to end the year.



Even Jesus had a drink.