Napier Baptist

I have been doing some preparation for a forthcoming worship team retreat. It'll be a time when we try to expand our understandings of worship together. I came across this piece of advice that the pastor of Fivehead Baptist Church in England (I know, Fivehead is a bizzare name for a church - sounds like some sort of evil beast coming out of the sea in a Sci-fi movie!!) gives to their worship leaders: "Do not pray that God enables us to put ‘all the troubles and hardships of the week to one side’, thus leaving us free to worship Him. To do so is to drive a wedge between our worshipping life and our real life. Our Sunday worship is not an escape from our real life, it is an expression of it, and an opportunity to transform it."

I've also come across this quote from Gerald Manly Hopkins, Poems and Prose quite a bit recently:
"It is not only prayer that gives God glory, but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, white-washing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in His grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should. So then, my brethren, live."

Following the last post, I read a blog post by Frank Rees today that stirred my heart. One was about a Pastor who inspired a generation of leaders within his local church by being willing to sit down with them at his home after a Sunday night sermon, light his pipe and deeply explore God and Christian faith together so that God might deeply explore them. Frank says that no topics were banned and anything could be explored from predestination to masturbation. The other figure was an Old Testament lecturer who inspired a generation of pastors, lecturers and denominational leaders. Go and read it for yourself.

Last week I was asked, as a recent graduate of Carey Baptist College, by Charles Hewlett (Director of Ministry Training at Carey), to write a brief article (250ish words) on how Carey prepared me for pulpit ministry at Napier Baptist. It was for a College publication called The PLer (that gives information about Pastoral Leadership training at Carey) to go out to NZ Baptist Pastors. I was honoured to be asked, and a little daunted, but found I really enjoyed reflecting on the question. Below is my brief entry:

Someone once told me that preachers can tend to fall into two categories: those who have something to say but don’t know how to say it and those who know how to say it but have nothing to say. I can assure this person that Carey College tries very hard to produce preachers that have something to say and know how to say it. Whilst Carey, importantly, places high emphasis on learning the art of preaching, it prepared me in a much deeper way for pulpit ministry. Carey prepared me through Biblical studies, Systematic Theology, Church History and Pastoral studies. In Biblical studies I was not given a bag full of sermons to use in ministry but rather key tools that helped me to deeply exegete the Word so that the Word could deeply exegete me. In Systematic Theology I did not learn all the important answers about God and the Christian faith but rather I learnt how to ask important questions of God and the Christian faith and that through this God could ask important questions of me. In Church History I learnt how God has shaped and transformed the community of Jesus Christ through time so that I might better sense how God is shaping and transforming the community of Jesus Christ today. In Pastoral studies I learnt that preaching is always spoken into the lives of fragile, messy people, just like me, who God intensely loves. Finally, at College we learnt about preaching through the staff modelling excellent preaching to us at Chapel services that we wanted to emulate. Carey prepared me for pulpit ministry through holistic training within the context of the community of disciples that is Carey Baptist College. I thank God for Carey College.

A deeply exegeting and exegeted; deeply questioning and questioned; deeply transforming and transformed; deeply shaping and shaped; deeply vulnerable and honest community that is aware of its humaness as well as God's transforming power and is glued together by the grace and truth of God – a volatile combination and wouldn’t it be awesome to be a part of??!!

This year at Napier Baptist we're attempting to journey a little more through the whole Easter story rather than Easter Sunday being just another Sunday where we sing with more gusto. We are adding in a Last Supper/Passover meal on Maundy Thursday (6pm) and a Tenebrae service on Good Friday (8pm). This year we want to try and journey through the upper room, through the darkness of Good Friday, the abandonment of Christ on the cross and then into good news that God raised Jesus from the dead and vindicated him and his ways and not our ways. Through this journey I want to invite you to recognise yourself within the drama of the Easter story, to see yourself within the Easter story.

William Loader has a brilliant reflection this based on Lk. 23:34 and our need to see ourselves within the story of Easter:
"The war crimes tribunal was assembled. Caiaphas and his cohorts, Pilate and his, were marched in. There were other charges against Pilate. For this session all stood accused of conspiracy to murder an innocent man, Jesus from Nazareth. The judge read the charges. Immediately from the gallery a voice cried out, ‘But he said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." The judge responded: ‘Forgiveness is only possible when people realise what they have done. Until then their guilt remains and failing to appreciate the dimensions of their act they cannot forgive themselves and cannot receive forgiveness from others.’ ‘Crucify them! Crucify them!’ others shouted. The judge replied: ‘Why answer violence with violence? Why mourn love with hate?’ ‘Let us beat them, whip them, punish them,’ cried others. ‘Punishment,’ replied the judge, ‘is an admission of failure, a strategy of despair.’ ‘What, then, are we to do with these who killed the Christ?’ the crowd retorted. The judge stood to his feet, looking left and right, then turning to the accused, he said: ‘Your sentence is to hear the story again and again every year, until you recognise your part in the drama, see yourselves in the scene.’"

The Easter story calls us to recognise our part in the drama, to see ourselves in the scene. We hope that through this year's Easter journey we might have a deeper appreciation of Christ's sacrifice and what is truly good news to all people. That the darkness and terror of Good Friday (the gravitiy of sin and Christ's crucifixion) is organically linked to what makes Easter Sunday and the resurrection such Good News.

Hope to see ya there...