Happy Christmas

Big thanks to everyone who's downloaded the album, said nice things and been seriously generous to SAFE.

If you wanted to hear the record and haven't been able to, you still can at http://s177273346.websitehome.co.uk/scatcat/christmas2/

I hope it adds to a fantastic christmas.

Big love, Tim

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet (Pt 2)

If you trust the Bible, you’ve got even more reason to expect this. It doesn’t describe the Christian life as ‘become a Christian, be good til you die, go to heaven’. It describes a journey of growing up ourselves, and of bringing heaven to earth. As well as the ‘new start’ images, there are many of gradual progression. ‘The kingdom is like a mustard seed... the kingdom is like yeast...’

This is really good news because it means all those things I see in the Bible, love, wish I could see in my life, and haven’t... people getting healed from serious illness when I pray for them, hearing God tell me thing about people I couldn’t know so I can help them, teleportation (Acts 8)... are not actually closed to me forever, just something that special people or Africans get to do. They’re just something I haven’t experienced yet.

What this does do is put the responsibility back on us. If I believe that I won’t ever experience more of the Father’s love, I’ll not ask him for it, not make time for him to give me that experience. If I believe he won’t ever heal anyone through me, I won’t pray for people and so he won’t get the chance. If I believe there is no God, I won’t look out for evidence that he’s working, listen to friends who believe otherwise, or take any of the many ways most people who have ever lived have used to check him out (praying, reading ‘holy books’ etc.) And I might miss out on the very thing I long for.

Because of what I think the Bible is saying on this, and the logic of new experiences in general, I’m not going to give up on my dreams. I can even take on new challenges at work and in life with a reason to be confident that they will actually work out.

If you catch that thought, squash it and throw it in the bin. There is always more for us than we have experienced. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet (Pt 1)

The other morning I was spending some time with Jesus and I caught a thought in flight. I peeled open my hand to have a look. This is what I saw: ‘You won’t experience anything this morning that you haven’t experienced before.’

Have you ever had a thought like that? If you consider it, it’s not actually very logical.

Over breakfast today, me and my housemate were wondering what a Baby thinks the first time he sneezes. Probably not ‘my head just exploded’, because it won’t yet have seen many Bruce Willis films to learn about explosions. Without the words to put it this way, what goes through his head is more like, ‘Ah! A thing just happened!’

Now if you’d asked the baby a minute before if he was expecting to sneeze, he probably wouldn’t understand English yet. But the answer would be ‘no’. And new things will continue to happen to that baby throughout his life – some he’s seen happen to other people, others he’s only heard about, others he’s had no preparation for at all. But as he grows up, he will learn experientially that new ‘things will happen’.

So why not let’s apply that logic to spiritual reality and experience? Whatever you believe about spiritual reality, it’s probably a little reductive at best. There are more things that we are yet to experience.

Grace pt3

You might also remember the preacher I made you all listen to on the way up to Scotland last summer – the one Dad said sounded like a Disney voice actor. I wish I’d played almost any other of his talks from that series, because they were quite a milestone for me. He points out something that’s been right under my nose all my life, but missed in my utilitarian religious looking at things. “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him”.

What this means is, it isn’t our good behaviour, our radical lifestyle, our acts of love to people in need, that will best show the world how great Jesus is. Weirdly, it’s our dependence on him. If we do good stuff on our own it makes us look impressive, not him. Because the Father’s primary aim is to bring about a full appreciation of his glory (he actually deserves it so this is not the selfish arrogant thing it would be if we were to attempt the same), he is actually way more pleased by our coming to him with a ‘please help’, than a ‘look what I did for you’; with us spending loads of time enjoying being with him and getting to know him than doing what we do every night - try to take over the world.

Me and you have rightly been brought up to believe in ‘put your money where your mouth is’ Christianity – ‘faith without deeds is dead’. We never forget that when Jesus answered ‘what is the most important commandment?’, he gave two answers, because it is so important to love other people. But I recently realised that I had been forgetting something about Jesus’ answer – ‘love people’ still comes ‘second’ to ‘love God’. What I sense is that we’re supposed to focus on loving God, and we will then find ourselves loving people.

I think I’ve spent most of my Christian life, not trying to earn my ‘ticket to heaven’, but the Father’s smile. And I’m beginning to realise it was all a waste of time, because he was always smiling at me. And I never noticed because I was too busy trying to impress him, or impress myself. I think what I really want to say is, learn to just sit and enjoy his smile. That’s what he most wants you to do. It will give you real quicksilver joy, whatever else is happening in your life. And people will see your joy, instead of your weariness, and think they want that for themselves. Don’t worry about doing good works – you’ll end up doing them without thinking about the fact that they are ‘good’. All you have to do now is enjoy the Father’s love for you.

Big big lumps of fudge,
Tim

Grace pt2

I’m sure you remember Katy’s 21st. The party in Chester, where you mixed with all her friends, and I only caught up with old Southampton-ers in the corner. I had a bit of a revelation (as often happens) when talking to Chris.

I suddenly realised that all the effort I’ve poured in to becoming a radical super Christian like Mark Driscoll has resulted in no positive impact on myself or the world whatsoever. Either I’ve failed to carry out my intentions (x hours of Bible study before breakfast), or I’ve done what I meant to (told my school mates throwing conkers at me, ‘I forgive you’) and it’s just been seen for the put-on religious nonsense it is.

But by contrast, I saw, the wonderful things that happened in my life when I ‘selfishly’ enjoyed God’s love for me, and then joyfully did not what I thought I ought to but what I actually wanted to. The best times of prayer, the most enjoyable routines, the most exciting conversations, tough acts of service that left me more psyched than when I started.

I’ve never had a problem with the idea that we are saved by grace – that our restored relationship with God is entirely achieved by Jesus, and that I contributed nothing to it except the evil from which I had to be forgiven and released. I don’t think you find this difficult either. Maybe I’ve found this easy to swallow because I don’t feel I’m a very bad person – I don’t feel the debt that God had to write off for me was very large. My problem with grace is that I didn’t realise there is more to it than that.

God doesn’t stop treating us with undeserved favour when we become a Christian: “Aha! Now I’ve got you! You’d better work solidly from now until you die, or I might change my mind and not save you from hell.” It’s completely the opposite. “If God did not spare his own son,... how will he not also graciously give us all things?” Being a Christian is receiving grace from start to finish. We’re chosen undeservedly, saved undeservedly, made like Jesus undeservedly, used to restore the world undeservedly, and undeservedly enjoy God’s direct and indirect love throughout the whole process. We weren’t just saved by grace. We get to live by grace.

A few things about grace I've never found the words to tell you (Pt1)

Hi Lyds. I wrote this in Pembrokeshire, intending to just give it to you; instead of asking and trusting the Father to give us the right moment to just talk about it... and then he did, in the car on the way home. I guess that is just a classic example of exactly this! Anyway, I thought you might want it in writing; and to be honest, I also might like to put it in a blog, so let me know if you’re okay with that. You don’t have to say yes.

I was sitting eating chips with Matt and Josh after a bike ride, watching the sky slip into dark, and your move came into the conversation. And I realised if there was one thing I wanted for you (or anyone) in a church, it’s not that they practice the presence of the Holy Spirit, or believe in the sovereignty of God, or are actively engaging with the poor in their community; it’s this. That they teach and practice grace.

You probably remember the story about CS Lewis and the congress of religions. They were arguing away for days, Christians trying to identify what makes Christianity any different to anything else. So they ask CS Lewis. ‘That’s easy’, he says. ‘It’s grace’.

You know what an irritating do-gooder I am. You know how I patronise you and look down at some of your behaviour. You know how I spend hours on family holidays writing myself ‘to-do’ lists to make myself a better person. It’s a wonder you don’t hate me. It would certainly be no wonder if you were put off my lifestyle; or my God.


But I hope you’ve noticed me going on a journey with this. I hope these days I’m a bit less judging, a bit less driven, a lot easier to be around. My journey has been getting to know the God I’ve spent so long trying to serve. I want to help you see that when Jesus said, ‘Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light’, he wasn’t telling us a massive lie.

Where your money is going

We made this record because we love it. We don’t need money from it. But there are lots of people who do. That’s why we’ve made it, ‘give what you like’.
When you download, you'll have the option of making a donation at www.justgiving.com/christmasisforlife

All monies raised from Christmas is for Life will go to Southampton Action For Employment (SAFE). SAFE started in 1994, reaching out to people in South Hampshire facing need as a result of high unemployment and recession. Sound familiar?

The programme boasts a 75% progression rate into further learning or employment - an incredible achievement when you take into account the fact that SAFE are working with the hardest to reach, most excluded people - most of which suffer from chronic low self esteem, isolation and lack of motivation.

SAFE's work is so worth supporting because they are not just helping out people who are already in trouble, but empowering them to achieve their full potential. So, in years to come, they will no longer need help, but be helping society themselves!

I have been on 2 SAFE courses myself, as a participant and a trainer, and I've not only seen them sparking others into life, but they've been life changing for me. So please give generously - your money really will be buying something for life, not just for Christmas.

SAFE’s Choices course is delivered by local churches as well as voluntary organisations. This started in Southampton but is now spreading more widely in the UK. For more information visit http://www.safe.org.uk/ and do contact them if you’d like to get involved or see this sort of programme running in your local area.

For more of SAFE’s story, read my blog at http://timothyfacts.blogspot.com/2010/10/pt-3-precedents.html


Get the album now: www.myspace.com/thescatcat

Christmas Complete

SCRATCH (Southampton City and Region Action to Combat Hardship) is a Charitable Company which manages various social action projects that currently operate in Southampton. The 'Christmas Complete' project has been running for over 14 years and is the means of providing toys and gifts to children and teenagers who otherwise would receive little or nothing at Christmas. We are able to help children from a couple of months to 17 years old.

“I would like to pass on my thanks to you and the people who donated presents. My son and daughter were delighted with the gifts you delivered. I recently lost my job after an accident at work and my wife works part-time so this was going to be a very lean Christmas for us. We could not afford presents. To receive a boxful of presents from Scratch for our children was a fantastic gesture. My daughter was thrilled with her doll and we read her a story at bedtime from one of the books donated. My son loves his wooden lorry.”

“Yesterday I visited one of those families I had referred. She was absolutely made up with the parcel you delivered containing Christmas gifts for her children and she couldn’t believe the generosity. It was wonderful to see her so happy after what had been an extremely stressful time for her and her family financially.”

“Many, many thanks on behalf of our service users for the wonderful Christmas toys you delivered to our children. You offer such an invaluable service. The parents were absolutely delighted with the toys.”

In December 2009, we were able to provide 7 or 8 gifts to 1718 children from over 690 families. As with all of the other SCRATCH projects, every child who receives toys will have been referred by one of our registered referral agencies.

How to become Father Christmas...

Christmas is for life, not just for Christmas. The new album: www.myspace.com/thescatcat

Traveller from the East

"My name is Tomasz Marszalek and I have been in England for about 2 years after coming over from Poland. I came to find work, hoping to improve the quality of my life.

Unfortunately work dried up and I ended sleeping on the streets in Norwich with my friend Max. We heard about the King’s Church drop in and came along to use the service in May 2008. The volunteers made us feel welcome and I got chatting with them. I was invited to come to the Sunday morning meeting and started attending in August 2008. Very soon both Max and myself helped out in the kitchen during the week to give us something to do, and we were allowed to use the showers and laundry which helped us to stay neat and clean.

I remember thinking during the meetings on Sunday how very different it was from church in Poland and how nice the people were. I was invited to Alpha in November 2008 and I came to know that God is real and Jesus really did exist. I came to understand that church is not about buildings or money but about people and having a relationship with God and Jesus. During Alpha I decided that I would like to give my life to Jesus. I then went to a group who met at people’s houses and got a greater understanding of what it means to be a Christian and things like reading the bible, importance of praying, and lots of other helpful stuff on Christian life.

I have decided to get baptised today because when I was little my mother got me baptised and I didn’t have a choice. Now I am a man: I have a choice, and I choose to be baptised in the name of Jesus. I see this as the first day of the rest of my life. I look forward to growing in my relationship with God and Jesus; it’s so great that now I can talk to them whenever I want. I really like my friends here in church and have never come across a place like this church before.

Thank you for listening to this." (Tomasz Marszalek; Summer 2009)


An alternative ending...

Christmas is for life, not just for Christmas. The new album: www.myspace.com/thescatcat

Shirley Towers

We met at 22.
He said, “I’ll never leave you.”
Oh, he actually said those stupid words to me.
But I was in love;
I opened myself up to all of the punishments the years have laid on me.
I felt like a bride on her wedding march:
my body confetti in his hands.
He begged me and I couldn’t bear the sight.
One more girl self-sacrificed to one more careless man.

It started at nights when I couldn’t read his eyes.
He had so many great ideas that I couldn’t see.
His jokes turned to black at the rate I grew fat.
I made all of the conversation every night at tea.
I thought that the baby would make him change;
he held it and looked so full of love.
We laughed and threw parties with friends again.
So how could he take one bag and never ring me up?

I did everything you asked me to.
I gave everything I had to you.

He waited just long enough for Sam and I to miss him. This double bed is cold.
I used to tread fingers along his side-
am I just impossible to have and to hold?

Tim had to strain to write this song.
It’s not his life – he’s probably got it wrong.
He’s sod-all hope of helping out.
But he’s found a Lord who’s felt all this before.
Jesus is the only one who will help, and can.

I gave everything I had for you.

A sort of twisted epilogue...

Christmas is for life, not just for Christmas. The new album: www.myspace.com/thescatcat

Mother City

This is my personal ‘Driving home for Christmas’. I think everyone has a special relationship with the place they grew up. Because that’s when we form our understanding of the world, the place we grew up is what we think the world is like. It is reality, normality, and we probably read those expectations onto everywhere else. I think of it like the start of Civilisation II, or Command and Conquer, when your one man stands in a patch of light on a king size duvet of darkness. By the end of the game, you may have opened up the whole world, but no other patch is as special as your first city, your first bit of ground. My first city is Southampton.

It’s not a big city and it’s not a small city. You can count our famous sons on one hand:
· Isaac Watts (wrote a brilliant song, when I survey the wondrous cross),
· Harry Hill,
· and Craig David (who I saw playing goal keeper in the newsletter of the dodgy boys school over my road).

A lot of the city was bombed flat in World War Two (we invented and built the Spitfire), so there’s hardly any interesting old buildings; or even tall buildings. The main marks on the skyline are 60s tower blocks, like giant grey arrows marked ‘for Poverty, see here’. I sometimes felt like half the city was a council estate. Most of the yuppies and upper middle families travel in from suburbs all round, over the M27 ring-motorway.

I tried to give some friends a guided tour once. In less than 2 hours we were in John Lewis coffee shop watching them try to screw together IKEA; and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. To me, it’s the sort of place you live, making your own entertainment; not a holiday destination. Our football club have always been a bit rubbish; history and culture are thin on the ground; we’ve got broken families and teenage pregnancy and unemployment, substance addictions and functional substance addictions (‘living for the weekend’), 20000 Poles scraping a living (apparently ‘Polish shop’ isn’t a place to take your shoes), an official roads department policy called ‘managed deterioration’... but ‘the best shopping in the south.’

Hm. As I’ve said, where you grow up defines your view of the world, but I do feel that this is basically what our country is like. So, I may be singing to Southampton, but I’m also singing for your hometown. Even if it’s Pompey.

Just so you know I’m not slagging like a stranger, but like a member of the family: I was in Sydney with my great friend Matt when the massive cruise liner Queen Mary 2 slid into dock beneath the Harbour Bridge. Thousands came to see and snap. ‘What an amazing ship.’ ‘What wonderful place could she have come from?’ I looked up at the white letters on her prow and grinned. SOUTHAMPTON.

You know you're from Southampton when...

Christmas is for life, not just for Christmas. The new album: www.myspace.com/thescatcat

Emmanuel

I love the word ‘Emmanuel’. Not because it’s the name of the beautiful college that turned me down and saved me from living someone else’s life. Not because it’s the name of the Ugandan pastor I lived with for 3 months and ribbed me about everything from my singleness to my facial hair. I love the word ‘Emmanuel’ because, according to the Bible, it’s the name of God. And ‘Emmanuel’ means, ‘God with us’.

Probably like everyone else, I grew up thinking God was a long way away. I actually thought I was on his side; that I was in his good books. I was a spiritual teacher’s pet (And now I know some teachers, I know literally no one likes a teacher’s pet). But even though I badged myself a Christian, chewed on morals and spat out judgement, I was more of a fan of his work than anything else. “Good teachings, God.” “Love that new book, The Sermon on the Mount; ‘love your enemies’, good stuff...” But I’d get all shifty if you asked me if I actually knew the guy.

I think all that changed at the end of school year 9. I’d spent 3 years trying to get in with the cool crowd and screwed up my life in the process. They used to sing in science (to the tune of Wild Thing),
‘Hugsy, what is your street cred,
On a scale of one to ten?
I think you’ll find it’s two.
Hugsy, your life sucks.’

Then they dumped me. I walked alone round Alma road to the station, singing Whitney Houston’s All by Myself.

That’s when it happened. I had the best summer of my life. I went to a Christian sailing camp and discovered I loved the bible. I went to church and discovered people who thought I was worth getting to know. I bought a Delirious CD and sang those songs everywhere I went for months – songs about God.

Something was going on. Instead of getting bored by church songs, I started getting excited. I started jumping and shouting and laughing and smiling and longing for the next event. After one of those nights, I’d go round hugging people, and apologise to my family for things, and I actually felt happy being me.

What happened? I think what happened is that God stopped being ‘out there’ and started being ‘in here’. He showed me he loved me. For that I said, ‘come; take over my bankrupt life and make it work again. Do it better than I ever could.’ I became an employee in my own life; but I’m so glad I did. Our turnover increases every year and our share price has never been so good. Plus we get on really well.

gr

This is the reason Christians celebrate Christmas. Yep, it’s about Jesus being born into poverty and some unusual goings-on with stars and angels and the like. But that’s really only interesting because of what it tells us about God. It tells us that God doesn’t want to be the distant judge we grew up with. He wants to come and do life with us, talk to us and listen to us and help us and laugh with us and cry with us and explain to us why that man’s got a funny leg

and take us on adventures and hold us and tell us how special we are and how much he loves us... He wants to be the Dad we all wish we’d had or could be.

df

And it tells us that he’s not going to give up on us or get bored or start a new family somewhere else – because he became a man like one of us, and died for us as a man, and came back to life as a man, and is waiting for us in paradise and he’s still a man. He’s committed. He’s wonderful. He’s Emmanuel – God with us.

gs

gs

I was born in poverty, with animals and rags.
I grew up a refugee, and couldn’t see my dad.
No one paid me interest: ‘bastard’ was my name.
I sweated for my living until my hour came...

gs

Christmas is for life, not just for christmas. The new record: www.myspace.com/thescatcat

Sufjan, Southampton, Santa & Me

It all started back in 2005. Quite a summer. I got made redundant, left home, worked at a theatre in Birmingham, recorded an album, and started Uni. I’d been pretty low for a while and these were my first steps out of it.

Back then, I listened to music even more obsessively than I do now. I would buy a new CD, listen to it non-stop until I got bored of it, then buy a new one. I measured how good a record was by how long that took. A standard classic album at that pace – Oasis’ Definitely Maybe and Michael Jackson’s Thriller, for example – lasted about a week. Coldplay’s X&Y hung on a gargantuan fortnight.

The night I came home from Brum I went to a party. At one point I noticed some interesting brass hooks coming out the stereo and asked my friend what he was playing. ‘The new Sufjan Stevens record’, he said, with a crazed smile. My life has not been the same since.

I begged a copy of this weirdly named guy’s wierdlier-named record, Greetings from Michigan: the great lake state. It sounded like a Paul Simon record produced by Brian Wilson. Hubba hubba. And I listened to it. Lots. It barely left my CD player until I left for university... 6 weeks later.

What made Michigan so fascinating was not just the crazy wonderful style of it all, but that it was about the place Mr Stevens grew up. And the magic is that it takes you back through your own story. The names and places are different, but the feelings & memories are very much the same.

So even though we were in the middle of recording our first record, Haberdashery, I started dreaming about writing a new set of songs that were meant to be together from the start. About the place I grew up. Southampton.

The songs have been coming together ever since. 5 songs in 5 years - not exactly prolific. Quality not quantity, that's what I say. They’re basically the supporting walls of my live set (so you’ve probably heard them all before.. but never like this); perhaps the best few songs I’ve ever written.

I was still fiddling with ‘Emmanuel’ between vocal takes in our recording sessions (appropriately, last Christmas). It was an idea I had during recording – to do an intro pondering the central theme of Christmas; God coming to live as an ordinary person. So I ripped off ‘Christmas song’ and went from there.

‘The Mother City’ is a common nickname for Cape Town. I was living there in 2008 and got a birthday card from my parents. Which got me thinking about leaving home and going back. About that indefinably significant relationship you have with the place you grew up. So it's a nice pun.

I wrote ‘Shirley Towers’ right at the start of the story, the week I lost my job, for a single mum I worked with. The idea suddenly made sense when it landed in the record, and I rededicated it to the little estate (full of single mothers) down the road.

‘Traveller from the East’ is my processing of a fact I’d heard years before – that 2 men had starved to death in Southampton. In Southampton? A modern western city? There’s also more than a bit of me leaving home in there. How much more must any of the thousands of refugees and migrant workers in the city feel it?

‘Christmas Complete’ was really the key to the whole thing. It’s still probably the best song I’ve written. Everything came together – cool 9/8-6/8 finger picking pattern; the old lyric-before-tune free verse approach I’d used for my previous best song, and a fascinating image.

I was home from Uni for the summer and happened to end up at the old warehouse of the charity SCRATCH down at the docks. And there I saw, hovering above your daily field of view on one of those massive shipping containers, the Rotary Club Santa’s sleigh that rolled past our house every Christmas since I can remember. To me, that thing is as much part of Christmas as presents and pine trees. Christmas! What more wonderful way to light up the magic in the ordinary? To top it off, on the side of the sleigh was written, ‘for the homeless and the hungry of Southampton’.

That pretty much summarises this record. Christmas, poverty and my hometown. For me, it doesn’t get much more fascinating than that.

Christmas is for life, not just for Christmas

For the next few weeks, I'll be posting a series of pieces I've written specially to accompany the record I'm releasing on December 1st: Christmas is for life, not just for Christmas.

This album has been a long time in the making, but I'm so pleased to finally share it with you. I'm really proud of it. I think you'll love it. And the essays. And the artwork. And the fact that your money will make a new life possible for many of the people who speak through the songs. In the spirit of the title, Happy Christmas!

Outsiders

I had finished the Bible book of Mark, so this morning I turned over to read the introduction to Luke, and read this fantastic piece. I really identified with it. I might read Luke, too.

"Most of us, most of the time, feel left out—misfits. We don’t belong. Others seem to be so confident, so sure of themselves, “insiders” who know the ropes, old hands in a club from which we are excluded.

One of the ways we have of responding to this is to form our own club, or join one that will have us. Here is at least one place where we are “in” and the others “out.” The clubs range from informal to formal in gatherings that are variously political, social, cultural, and economic. But the one thing they have in common is the principle of exclusion. Identity or worth is achieved by excluding all but the chosen. The terrible price we pay for keeping all those other people out so that we can savor the sweetness of being insiders is a reduction of reality, a shrinkage of life.

Nowhere is this price more terrible than when it is paid in the cause of religion. But religion has a long history of doing just that, of reducing the huge mysteries of God to the respectability of club rules, of shrinking the vast human community to a “membership.” But with God there are no outsiders.

Luke is a most vigorous champion of the outsider. An outsider himself, the only Gentile in an all-Jewish cast of New Testament writers, he shows how Jesus includes those who typically were treated as outsiders by the religious establishment of the day: women, common laborers (sheepherders), the racially different (Samaritans), the poor. He will not countenance religion as a club. As Luke tells the story, all of us who have found ourselves on the outside looking in on life with no hope of gaining entrance (and who of us hasn’t felt it?) now find the doors wide open, found and welcomed by God in Jesus." (Eugene Peterson, 'The Message')

Pt 6. An Answer

Looking back to Jesus, I’ve noticed some new things.

Jesus tackled poverty on an informal relational basis. No feeding programmes, but the odd miracle to share lunch. No national revolution, but people empowered to live a full life, even if not a wealthy one. Failures dealt with and people affirmed back to action. Quality time and honour showed. All the things we would think about doing to help a friend going through a tough time. But perhaps not how we think about helping someone who sells the Big Issue? Jesus seems to be trying to defeat poverty one person at a time! It’s not how I’d think of trying to save the world - seems like quite a slow method. Looking at history, it has been! But what was that thing about ‘slow and steady’?

I just realised: Jesus’ teaching wasn’t just an expression of his philosophy and philosophy of ministry, it was something he did to help people; to give them courage, hope and wisdom to navigate life. Jesus perceived deeper needs than people felt themselves, and I don’t just mean spiritual needs. And of course, these areas took time and patience to change. People certainly didn’t ‘get’ his teaching first time.

All Jesus’ ministry fought poverty, not just the toolkit I’ve got fixed on. I didn’t notice a lot of it because he was doing it one person at a time, rather than in a systematic way. But all his life should be our precedent.

Jackie Pullinger’s story chimes in with this. The patient (effectively, parenting) work she did, living in community with her recovering addicts was essential to their long term change. Those that wouldn’t agree to it generally ended up using again. Her story also adds an element – that Jesus’ power continues to be available and relevant to the fight against poverty. And that Jesus may exert it in ways he did not in the Bible, and has not before.

Which brings us to a perhaps reassuringly unclinical answer to my original question. The Bible does offer precedents for helping people escape poverty. There are probably plenty more I still haven’t seen that remain to be discovered by faithful Jesus-followers partnering with him in this work. And the precedents really do recognise all the complexities of poverty, and different appropriate responses.

If we want to join Jesus in bringing his kingdom to our smashed-about world, we should think carefully, work relationally with people, and always be open to his supernatural power. Above all, we must keep in step with him, because that’s how he can lead us in the unexpected and unlike-how-we-would-do-it way we should go.

Pt 5. Back to Jesus

So, what can I learn from these two amazing stories, of Jackie Pullinger and SAFE? They seem to embody those two opposite sides of the debate: “How do we help broken people change?” “With spiritual power!” “No, with careful use of the latest academic methods!” “No, what we need is power!...”

I’m kind of convinced by both positions, and flit back and forth between them, agreeing with whichever I happen to be thinking about at the time. (Both, it occurs to me, can be excuses for laziness or lack of faith) However, in sitting here chasing these ideas around my brain, I have a proposition that might get us somewhere: what Jesus seems to have done in Hong Kong and Southampton may shed more light on what he was doing back in the day.

SAFE’s approach is based on the observation that people experience difficulty in all different areas of life – relational, emotional, spiritual, physical, psychological, economic, socio-cultural, political... and that these all effect each other, but that each area needs different help to be relieved. You tackle relational poverty by spending time with people and including them in community. You tackle psychological poverty by helping people think more realistically and positively (particularly about themselves).

How do we interpret Jesus’ toolkit (preach, heal, hang out, bash demons) when it clearly ignores many of these areas of life? Let me try out some answers.

“Jesus’ toolkit was tailored to the specific needs of the society he lived in. And it happened to be that those needs could be dealt with instantly. People’s needs in 21st century Britain are more complex, and so we can expect their solutions to be similarly complex.” Um, maybe not. How can we be sure that 1st century needs were any less complex? I tend to think it was like the majority world today. ‘You know, simple poverty’. But depression, alcoholism and debt are as prevalent in Africa today as in the UK. And Jesus didn’t liberate Palestine from Roman occupation or turn over the means of production to poor farmers.

Another. “Jesus’ toolkit wasn’t for the purpose of tackling poverty now, but only saving people eternally. Engagement with needy people was important, but was only for the purpose of saving their soul.” I don’t really buy that, either. The unique (and central) Christian ideas of the Incarnation, the new heavens and the new earth, and the kingdom of God, all emphasise Jesus’ commitment to the current material world. Jesus made nobodies into leaders, sex workers into heroes of the faith. As with Jackie Pullinger’s drug addicts, saving people from poverty was necessarily a partner to saving people from sin.

So what is the answer then?

Pt 4. A third story

Ten years ago, a church felt Jesus leading them to engage with marginalised and oppressed people in their city. They got in touch with other poverty-fighting organisations, did their research, identified a need for a homeless drop-in at the weekend. They started having homeless and other vulnerable people in to their church for Sunday lunch, and have pretty much done so ever since.

Some people have decided to follow Jesus. Some have volunteered in church catering for a while. Some have come on Alpha courses. Some have got accommodation and jobs. Some have exceeded everyone’s wildest dreams and ended up leading things in church. Some have died. Many have disappeared. And many still come along every week, every time they’re let out of prison, every time they waste their benefits on the gear, anytime they can to eat decent food and talk to another human being. The majority of people never seem to change at all. Change doesn’t seem possible.

This church aren’t doing anything badly. Their story just emphasises the extraordinary impact the others have had (along with their share of heartbreaks and setbacks, for damn sure). But because of Jesus, because I’ve seen him achieve change in my life, because these other stories have managed to effect change, I can’t be satisfied with ‘change doesn’t seem possible’. I want to write their story a better ending.

Pt 3. Precedents

So what decent precedents have I got? I guess you’ve got to look at other people who’ve wrestled with this question, worked with similar people and been led by Jesus into enabling real transformation.

In 1995, my Dad and a couple of friends from church ran a course with unemployed people in Southampton. It was helpful for people, and so they ran another one. And another. He left his job and started his own business to help enable the friends to do more courses. The more they worked with people, the more they discovered about the many things that were stopping people getting jobs – apparently it wasn’t just people being lazy. And so the Get That Job course developed from some interview practice, encouragement, and careers advice to include CBT, fun games, group support, life coaching and wisdom from the Bible to set the people free.

15 years on, Southampton university department of psychology concluded a 3-year quantitative study with the finding that SAFE and the Choices course produce ‘a statistically significant result’ in improving mental health. That’s no joke. Pretty much every single course participant saw the symptoms of medically diagnosed depression and anxiety disappear. People who’ve been labelled by doctors as ‘disabled’ – “you’ve got a chemical unbalance in your brain and you’ll always need to take these pills” – are simply not depressed anymore. They’re remaking their life how they once dreamed it might be.

Another one: I’ve nearly finished reading about Jackie Pullinger, who ended up working with Triad heroin addicts in Hong Kong in the 70s. She had a vision not just to help one or two, but clear up a whole area that was outside government control and therefore completely dominated by drugs, prostitution, poverty, and gang violence – the Walled City. Possibly an unrealistic ambition for a naive white girl from Surrey.

But the young gangster addicts she befriended began becoming Christians, getting filled with the Spirit, and experiencing no withdrawal pains when they prayed in tongues. And as they were helped to follow Jesus, living in community away from their old environment, they began to do crazy things like hand themselves in to the police for crimes they’d got away with, do housework, and help set others free like they had been. Gang bosses got set free, and the walled city began to change.

Today, after 30 years of setbacks, heartache, danger, blood sweat and tears, the Walled city is a beautiful garden.

Pt 2. The Question

Now, this whole ‘magic bullet’ thing is a nice illustration/ analogy/ proverb/ thing, but it’s not incredibly rigorous. The abstract question behind that specific situation is actually more significant to me now. I got into working with people in poverty by copying Jesus, but I’m hitting some serious complexity.

A little way into the story, Jesus sent out his friends to do his thing, with quite a simple toolkit: hang out with people, share the good news about me, heal sick people, set people free from demons. Now although these are all still key tools in setting people free from poverty (trust me), I’m still left uncertain how to tackle other major forms of poverty we come up against in the UK: addictions, mental illness, emotional and psychological damage. For most people in poverty in the UK, these (often people suffer from all of them) completely control their life and keep them from any fulfilment or happiness. So tackling them is a serious priority for us.

The problem is, I’ve not found clear precedents in the Bible for how to go about this. With blind people, it’s daunting but obvious: God’s solution is for a Jesus-follower to ‘proclaim sight to the blind’ – heal them, now. Bang. Just like that. But what would Jesus do when he met the depressed abused alcoholic? Without a few examples of how God does it, it’s difficult to avoid just taking tactics from somewhere else.

I’ve slipped into a couple of camps, doing just this. I’ve copied religious crazy people (‘come on, you’re a Christian, why are you still feeling depressed?’), and scientific crazy people (psychologists have just ‘discovered’ that a caregiver having a good relationship with a patient makes them more likely to recover. Kindness helps people. You think?). It’s amazing how good all of us are at ignoring facts which don’t fit our point of view.

Trying to set people free through superstitious magic, and by using clever techniques, are both examples of us trying to make something happen by ourselves. Both are pretty impotent. I find it hard to honestly take credit for the change we are seeing in people at King’s Care. The only way I can understand it (it never fits my plans) is that we’re creating space for Jesus to do stuff.

There are so many people around us just totally stuck in misery, like quicksand, and sinking fast, that we owe it to them to stop fiddling around and call in someone who knows what they’re doing.

Pt 1. The Magic Bullet

I once read that the best writing happens not when the writer is trying to get across something they’re already sure about, but when the writer writes in order to try and figure it out. I think this will be a bit of both. It'll be a few posts though.

Back in January, I went to a work meeting that ended in a great time of praying together. I suddenly felt really strongly for one of the other guys, for his confidence and his ability to relate to people, and prayed for him with a lot of oomph that God would crack stuff in him there & then (surely he meant to do what he provoked me to ask?). After the meeting the guy gave me a lift, and honestly, I felt like ‘nothing has happened. At all.’

I took this up with God as I walked the last bit home. I did that dangerous thing where you start making excuses for him, rather than waiting to listen what his actual answer is.

I said, “okay, fair enough God, maybe it’s not like a magic bullet, maybe it doesn’t work just like that.” And then God spoke up.

“Remind me, Tim, how does the ‘magic bullet’ work?”

For those of you unfortunates who didn’t get to study ‘medicine through time’ at GCSE, I offer this explanation. The ‘magic bullet’ is the nickname of penicillin, the drug which forms the basis of all antibiotics. Until penicillin was discovered (less than 100 years ago.. and by accident. I wonder..) there was nothing you could do to actually kill diseases. All you could do was make the conditions as good as possible for the body to fight the disease itself (drink lots of orange juice, get an early night, yadda yadda yadda...)

Here’s God’s point: even the ‘magic bullet’ takes time to work. So why shouldn’t he?

Doves & Serpents

A man is stranded on a desert island, with no tools, food or communications equipment. The situation is bleak. However, the man knows God. So he prays, and feels God say, ‘I’m going to rescue you.’ The man is really pleased. He sits back and waits for God to show up.

Amazingly, an hour doesn’t go by before a gleaming speedboat skims past, notices the man, and pulls up. ‘Come aboard’, cries the woman at the wheel. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ replies the man. ‘God will be along to rescue me in a minute.’ So the speedboat speeds away.

A couple of days later, a coastguard vessel appears. ‘Are you alright there? Come aboard!’ ‘Don’t worry about me,’ the man says again. ‘I’m waiting for God to rescue me.’

The man has been on the island for nearly a week when a helicopter buzzed overhead, and lowers down a rope. ‘Tie yourself on!’ they shout down, over the roar of the rota blades. ‘I’m not coming,’ says the man, quite weak now for lack of food. ‘God has told me he’s going to rescue me.’ So the helicopter flies away.

The man starves to death.

When he comes face to face with Jesus, the man cannot hold his tongue. ‘Jesus, you said you’d come and rescue me. Why didn’t you?’ Jesus looks at the man for a moment, and then says, ‘I sent you two boats and a helicopter – what more rescue do you want?’

I hope you’ve heard that one before. It occurred to me this morning, as I munched my muesli (and questionable milk), that common sense is not exactly trumpeted in my experience of church. I’ve heard a lot more preaches on faith!

Jesus teaches us to ‘be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves’ – to continually grow in faith and wisdom. My observation is that all of us tend to be better at one than the other. I’m much better at the wisdom bit, and probably a majority of you who read this will be the same, because you’ll come from a western culture, which prizes wisdom over faith (English culture is especially bad for this). Therefore it is really important to encourage faith to make up the balance. However, not everyone is a serpent.

This is a live issue for me because several vulnerable people I work with are extremely weak on wisdom, such that it is very difficult to get them to see what seems obvious, ‘common sense’, to me.

So I guess my question today is, ‘how can we effectively communicate the value of wisdom from a Christian point of view?’ We’ve developed lots of inspiring ways of selling faith to people, but wisdom doesn’t seem such an appealing, saleable idea. I’m sure that’s only because we haven’t worked enough at how to communicate it. We need to, to protect our well-meaning but vulnerable brothers and sisters.

Any ideas?

Interesting short films

I was just encouraged by a facebook friend to have a look at a film he's got in the shortlist for a competition. I'm working from home today, so I actually did; and it was really interesting.

I love films, and so short films I can watch in a mini break between tasks have got to be a winner. Have an explore: http://www.ignitefilmfest.com/2010-top-20/

Snowy's film is the first - the one with the blind man and the cardboard. I think I'll check out some more over the next few days.

If you want to check out the inspirations for the films, an easy way is to type the reference into www.biblegateway.com

Enjoy!

The Holy Life

Nothing nags like a memory. An idea that knocks on your heart and runs away, giggling. Let me claw at it a whole and see what I catch...

Something’s come back to me that I didn’t realise I’d lost. There was a moment when I said it out loud, locking my bike by the bridge at Southampton rail station on the way to college; and so the idea wasn’t lost completely. Thank God for that moment.

I said, ‘Lord, I want to know the secret to the holy life. I want to know how to make every moment extraordinary; not just to touch base occasionally, but make every moment sacred to you. To do everything with you.’

Holy is a strange word to us. Which is kind of appropriate, seeing as it means ‘other’. And I realise it sounds like a strange ambition; narcissistic to some. Or dangerous. Unfortunately, it’s what bubbled up out of my heart, and I can’t help it. I can’t change what I long for. Any more than I could change my taste in music if you told me it was rubbish and gave 10 good reasons why. It’s a reaction to the discovery of a wonderful reality – but more of that later.

So the feeling that ambushed me, that reminded me of my 6th form petition, came when my friend Goff said, ‘the love of the world and the love of Jesus are like scales on a balance; when one falls, the other rises.’

It sounds a bit negative, doesn’t it? It makes me think of wierdos on soap boxes, Ugandans screaming at traffic in downtown Kampala. Seriously...

But when I swill it round my mind, something else happens. There’s a bit of ‘wow’. My heart does a bit of a flutter. The word ‘holy’ pops into my head. And I start saying, under my breath, ‘Yes. I want that. Yes. Yes.’

I write in my journal, “we need to understand the world. We need to serve it, not just take what we can get and disappear. But we shouldn’t be enthralled by it. We shouldn’t want it. This will make us feel like Aliens, strangers... but Jesus ruins us for anything else.”

I think this is the heart of the matter. It’s not about the world being good or the world being bad. We should all know it’s both. But Jesus is utterly good. He’s holy. In fact, he’s more than that.
Most of the Bible is written in Hebrew, and in Hebrew you say something is very something by saying it twice: ‘pure gold’ in Hebrew is ‘gold gold’. But one thing in the Bible is too much for this turn of language to communicate, and it has to be said a third time. When Isaiah and John saw God the Father, the angels around when singing ‘Holy holy holy, Lord God almighty...’

What Goff said thrilled me because it promised me there was more – more to know of Jesus, more to love him, more to follow him in everything I do. Because he is so good, I can experience the unexpected and miraculous joy of saying ‘Jesus I am yours’. All the weight of my life falls off me. I don’t have to carry it anymore – I’ve given him control. I don’t have to worry about the future – he even controls that. I don’t have to constipate myself trying to be good – I’m his.

I think this is what it means to be a Christian. It’s weird how much of the time I don’t think like this. It’s really stupid. It’s no fun at all. We’re a funny lot, us Christians – we have the banquet of heaven before us but so often we choose to nibble ryvita. Yeeuch...

Over a year later, I wrote a new song...

When you were only a child
From traffick I called you son

But the more I called you, Israel

The further you'd run

It was me who taught you to walk

I took you by the arms

And when you'd fall only my kiss

Would make you feel calm

And I'll draw you with cords of love

Til you get my point of view

I'll take this burden from your back

And crawl to eat with you

And you will choose to be slaved

Before you let me in

All your plans in towers of smoke

Just so I won't win

And oh how can I give you up

Or treat you as my enemy?

All my compassion is aroused

My heart is changed in me

I'll hold back the devastation

My anger burns to do

For I am God and not a man

Holy among you

And when you listen to my roar

You'll tremble home to me

I'll be your God and you my son

Just how you're made to be.

‘I can’t do it’

I recently had a look at Franklin D Roosevelt’s 1st inaugural speech on becoming president of the USA. It’s the one where he said, ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’

This was in 1932, 3 years after the wall street crash sent the global economy into a recession that makes this one look like a tea party. In ‘the great depression’, millions lost everything; with no benefits system, when you lost your job, you lost your house and starved. In Germany, the crisis opened the way for Hitler and the Nazis. In the US, it gave us FDR – the only President to win 4 consecutive elections.

What’s remarkable about Roosevelt – and starkly contrasts with our political leadership today – is that he had a real vision for how to solve the problem. It wasn’t just ‘we’re going to cut back and it will probably all sort itself out.’ He had a plan to handle the complexities of the problem and propel a vast, hopeless nation into the greatest prosperity the world has ever known. And his plan worked.

Now when I look at the mess of our country today, nine gazillion pounds in debt or whatever it is, I don’t have a clue what to do about it. I’ve got a couple of nice ideas for little things that could help, but no solution to a global recession. The best I can come up with is, ‘well its all silly anyway as there’s only a recession on because someone decided there was and everybody believed them. Nothing real has actually changed.’ True, but that doesn’t alter the fact that people are losing their jobs, their businesses and their savings. We don’t need more insightful criticism. We need someone to do something. We need our own FDR.

But as I say that, this thought pops into my head that, you know, obviously that’s not possible. ‘Maybe back in history leaders could solve problems but not now. Now things are much too complex.’ I genuinely cannot imagine a person coming forward and leading us out of this mess. It doesn’t seem possible.

The thing is, I suspect that that’s exactly how everyone felt in 1932. ‘This is horrific, it’s ridiculous, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ ‘This is far too complex for one man to make a difference. Maybe back in history...’ And yet one man did step forward and save the nation. It happened.

Maybe what’s keeping us in this mess is actually a crisis of belief. We don’t believe things can be any better. We don’t believe solutions can be found. And so we don’t go and find a way. It seems to me that we stick the label ‘impossible’ on far too many things; or at least, I do.

“I can’t cook.” “I can’t tell them no.” “I can’t get a job I actually want.” We’re like the child who huffingly fiddles with their shoelaces before throwing them down and declaring, “See – I can’t do it!” We can’t because we don’t really try, and we don’t really try because we don’t think we can. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I see it a lot among people my age, starting out in the working world. They don’t even bother trying to do the work they’d love to because they assume there are no jobs in it, or that they wouldn’t beat the competition. I often feel that myself (I certainly hear it said a lot).

Anything I’ve tried to do, from rehearsing a play to fixing my bike, has had all sorts of circumstances pop up against it. Nothing is easy, and nothing turns out perfectly like you dreamed it might. But you can make stuff happen if you believe and fight for it.

I heard someone say that most people are reactive, and only a few proactive. Now honestly it is harder work to proactively try to change the world for the better, than just take it as it comes. But because everyone else is reactive, if you are proactive, they will make room for you!

Speaking as a natural cynic, cynicism is easy. To believe is hard – not because it is unreasonable, but because it means you have to do something. Our world needs people who believe. Will you be one of them?

There is a man

There is a man who knows my mind
When I do not; and he designed
To taste my weakness, so that he
Could ever help and strengthen me.
With every choice he kept constrained
All his abilities and made
No moan for his afflicted time;
But crossed his life pursuing mine.

For I was sick and didn’t know;
Abused my neighbours, even though
I’d been so much abused myself -
‘Til I could think of nothing else.
And everything I stole from life
I locked away and called ‘my rights’
‘Til he who made this world living slipped
Into it poor to make us rich.

And I was still his enemy
When Jesus screamed in agony,
‘Forgive them’; and so it was done:
Exhausting death, he made us one.
His perfect life is mine; no power
Can ever take it from me now.
And I am longing to begin;
To take my cross and follow him.
To take my cross and follow him.

Better than you think

I had dinner at Chris and Lorna’s again. Something like this was bound to come up. We were chewing the fat, when suddenly Lorna starts singing this:

Love is like a magic penny
Hold it tight and you won’t have any
If you share it then you’ll have so many
They’ll roll all over the floor!

Love is something if you give it away
Give it away
Give it away
Love is something if you give it away
You’ll end up having more...

It’s an old kid’s song from school assemblies. That sort of thing doesn’t get blogged very often, which is enough reason alone to mention here. But here’s how I’m seeing it in my life – I’m going out with Emma.

Until now, I’ve never experienced romance as a positive thing. It’s always been a bottomless well to pour my energies in with no return. I got turned down last year by someone else, went away and spent 2 months trying to become superman so she’d change her mind. I took up jogging, and shouting ‘come on’ to people’s prayers. Thank God, these highly impressive achievements made no impact. But it’s a pretty classic example of my experience: love means working hard and getting nothing back.

I think I also projected this idea onto my relationship with God. Jesus said the most important thing in life is to ‘love God with all you heart, mind, soul and strength.’ Though I wouldn’t have said it, my expectation was that this would look like me working hard at being a good person, being good to others; and getting nothing back.

Now I could have told you then that that’s a load of misery-inducing nonsense, but that did not change the way I felt. Funnily enough, experience and expectation are closely linked – we tend to expect things will turn out the way they have before. So I’m hoping this upswing in my experience will encourage one in your expectation. Because my new experience is changing mine.

Instead of me working hard for Emma and getting nothing back, she not only way out-does me in acts of love, but I get as much joy out of doing things for her. I’m asking the universe, ‘how can this be allowed? Shouldn’t a certain amount of happiness cost an equivalent amount of pain? Isn’t the law of nature that energy only transfers from one state to another, but can never be created? Have I slipped through some kind of cosmic loophole which will be closed as soon as someone finds out?’

Which brings us back to the song. The magic of love is that it multiplies. It waves two fingers at ‘the laws of the universe’ (at least, to the wrong ideas I’ve got playing dictator to my head). This is what loving God is really like. It’s getting, getting, getting, far more and more quickly than I can ever give back.

I recently gave what I thought was a large amount of money to an international life-saving/community enrichment programme (which I saw as giving it to God). This weekend, two different groups of people offered to pay for me to go to two conferences- which together is worth at least £50 more than what I gave away! My generosity has already been outdone.

I could choose to believe my doubts – nothing is provable beyond the shading of a doubt – that all this is coincidence, and God either isn’t there or doesn’t care. It’s very easy to do, seeing as my experience of his love is so bound up with a picture of him I’ve built up through indirect means, like the story above and the stories in the Bible. I know lots of people who seem to experience his love more directly, through their feelings. Emotional literacy has never been my strong point. I could believe my doubts about God, like I could believe that Emma doesn’t really like me, she’s just being nice because she’s a nice person... but doesn’t that seem a bit crazy?

I do this with a lot of things in life. I put so much more energy into doubting good things are true/will come true, than doubting bad things, or into believing good things. It’s almost as if I didn’t want good things to be possible.

Take the issue of partnering with Jesus to heal sick people – all my thinking goes to why it probably won’t happen. I feel reluctant to even talk about it, let alone do it. But I love hearing stories of Jesus healing people, in the Bible and now, with people I know. So why am I so keen so expect so little? Isn’t the saddest cliché in the world, ‘it’s too good to be true?’

A recent psychological survey found that people in Denmark are the happiest in the world; where happiness was measured by satisfaction with one’s life... but this was because they had such low expectations, and were therefore never disappointed!

I don’t want to be a Dane anymore. I want to take the risk of believing too much, not too little. I’m sure I’m going to be disappointed at times, and that might statistically make me less happy; but I’m much more afraid of coming to the end of my mortal life and realising, ‘reality was so much better than I thought it was. And I missed it.’

Be my friend

A guy with the same name as me was at a community consultation meeting somewhere in the North of England. There were a whole bunch of agencies working there, some people had a lot to say, and it was going the way of most such meetings. But then a woman who'd not said anything all evening piped up;

"I know people do a lot to help me. But what I want is for someone to be my friend."

The longer I lead King's Care, the more I feel convinced that our vision is absolutely the most vital thing we could do. We want to be a group of people who reach out to marginalised and oppressed people in Norwich, being friends and sharing Jesus, so that they can take their place in the church family. And the places I see our guests make most (or perhaps, any) progress are where people from the church have actually become friends with them.

So, at a strategic level, I'm really encouraged. We've created some spaces for people to build great friendships, and we're creating more. But as I was praying yesterday, I felt a challenge forming in my head. Are we really - am I really - trying to build friendships with people... or just be nice to them?

To the person on the recieving end, this makes all the difference in the world. Bertrand Russell said, 'A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.'

I felt the difference myself the other weekend. I was in Stockport at a friend's wedding, and needed a lift back to Norwich. There was a lovely couple from church there who had offered me a lift before, although I barely knew them. When I approached them again, their response really impacted me. I'd actually turned them down the first time for some other guys - so now it was clear that I wasn't interested in them, just imposing myself on their kindness (or, to put it another way, begging). If it had been me, I'd have probably said, 'oh, alright then, if you need.' I'd have helped with the practical need but not really been interested in building friendship. Guess what they said to me? 'Please come with us.'

'Please come with us.' Amazing. I was still um-ing and ah-ing about how to get home, but after they said that I just had to go with them. They seemed to genuinely want to get to know me. It felt fantastic.

So our big challenge in working with people in need is to move from ‘ought to’ motivation to ‘want to’. Instead of going and chatting to people on a Sunday afternoon because it will be good for them, could we go because we’d like to get to know them? Instead of just quizzing them about the status of their benefits, could we ‘waste time’ talking about our favourite films? Could we not bother talking to the people we don’t click with, and spend more time with the ones we do? Could we enjoy them as much as we serve them?

Our culture thinks this work is all about self-denial; if you’re not miserable doing it, you’re not doing it properly. That’s why most people in our culture don’t do this sort of work – it’s seen as a religious deal, impressive but incomprehensible. And unfortunately it often is that for me.

But, as we’ve seen, people hate being on the receiving end of our self-denial. Wouldn’t you? Knowing someone was only being nice to you in order to feel better about themselves? No wonder people say ‘I don’t want charity’. It’s horrible. Thank God his way is completely different.

Jesus’ way is this: “for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross.” (Hebrews 12.2) His joy was the fact that his being killed and coming back to life would win many of us back into loving relationship with him. Like a guy who asks a girl out and hears the answer ‘yes’, he is overjoyed; he’s allowed to demonstrate his love. Jesus didn’t allow himself to be killed because he is a really impressive moral sort of person. He did it because he loves us so much that, to him, the sacrifice was totally worth it. Forget what was the right thing to do; he wanted to do it.

And here’s why this challenge to really be people’s friends is for us. We do not, under our own steam, love people like that. We don’t look at that Scottish girl always begging outside the pub on our way home and think, ‘I want to be your friend.’ That’s just totally mental. But if you’re in this relationship with Jesus, you start finding yourself thinking just that sort of thing. It’s only possible with Jesus living inside you, changing your heart. And the Scottish girl knows this. When you throw her a coin she knows you’re just easing your guilt – that’s how she pays for her habit. But when you stop and talk to her because you’re interested in getting to know her, even though she feels there’s nothing interesting about her life at all, she doesn’t see you anymore – she sees something beyond you. She sees Jesus.

I don’t want to waste my time impressing people at the end of their rope with my self-denial. That’s pretty obscene. It’s only worth me doing this if through my engagement with them they see and meet Jesus, the one who really really loves them and wants to make them wonderful rulers of the earth. Let’s see what happens if I really try and make some new friends.

Love languages

I've known the concept of 'the 5 love languages' for ages. I just never bothered to find out what they were; I thought that was something only couples needed to worry about. However, I just went and took the assessment on their website, and had a change of thinking.

her

Typically, I wasn't able to just think about the answers to the questions I was supposed to be thinking about. I took the test for 'singles', and so the questions were all about the sorts of normal interaction with friends/family/people you fancy. I was deciding whether getting gifts from people or words of affirmation makes me feel most loved. I pictured in my head, first, sitting in the living room with the extended family, ripping through THE BOX (a cardboard one, full of things Grandma picks up randomly over the year... and some socks/deoderant for the men). Then I pictured myself a week before going home from Uni, opening a text from Dad which closed with the words, 'we're really proud of you.' Devastating. You know, I still remember it.

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And then I thought, 'oh my goodness, have I just gone 24 years without knowing what makes my parents and sisters feel my love for them?' That's pretty shocking. It's so important to feel loved; it is so good for you; it makes you flourish and grow and live and love others.

At the end of the test, when describing my primary love language ('words of affirmation' - don't all leave encouraging comments now, that will give the game away), the website made an interesting further comment: "Insults can leave you shattered and are not easily forgotten." That's actually a bit of my story. And it only emphasises the importance of not just doing things to demonstrate your love for people, but doing the right things, that ring their bell.

Because if you're like me, a lot of what you communicate to the people you love is kind of the opposite. So if you're communicating negatively in the person's love language, then you could probably be doing everything concievable to demonstrate love for them in other ways, and it will make no difference; they'll still just feel crushed. Because we tend to give out in the language that works best for us- and surprisingly I've learnt, other people are different.

So I guess what I'm saying is, 'go take the test'. And then tell your family, good mates, significant other, to do the same; and find out what their love language is. Hey, it won't solve all your problems, but from a certain point of view, it could actually save you making so much effort - just a couple of the right words and your job is done. Sorry if your husband's love language is 'acts of service'.