The best session at New Wine 09 for me this year was led by Dan Browne. No, not the author Dan Brown, but a mid-30s guy who’s been leading humanitarian work in Afghanistan for the last 8 years. He’s deliberately bringing a Christian presence into a land where 99.9% are Muslims — so praying is more obviously necessary than here in the UK.

It’s also a land in conflict, and stuffed with soldiers and militants. So he was intrigued to find that “the Psalms are full of warrior language”. He also found that many great Christians through the centuries have written books on praying the Psalms. The one he particularly recommended is Answering God: the psalms as tools for prayer, by Eugene Petersen. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, there are 5 Psalms listed each day in the daily office.

Here are some of the comments that struck me:

Prayer is a battlefield walkie-talkie

Out of conflict heroes arise

In 2 Sam 23, Eleazer’s sword “became one with” his hand – should be like us and the Bible

War and trouble turn people to pray

Prayer is primarily about relationship
What matters is not whatever we want to pray, but what God wants us to pray. (Bonhoeffer from The Psalms: the Bible’s Prayerbook) So go look at the Psalms.

Jesus quoted Psalm 22, 31 as part of his last words

So often Complaint from the psalmist turns to Praise: it’s OK for us to do the same

Psalm 95 effectively starts with “God get away from me” – God knows how we think and react, and is big enough to deal with it

The nasty Psalms (eg 137?) are best viewed in the life of Jesus.

In Psalm 42, 63 King David feeling God is far off, and searches for Him.

Our prayers have as their final destination praise

Learn to meditate – this is what Psalm 1 is about

Couple ACTS (Adoration-Confession-Thanksgiving-Supplication) to a Psalm

Psalm 5.1 “consider my sighing” – don’t need intelligible words

He also recommended Derek Kidner as the best 2 volume commentary on the Psalms.

(Drawn from Maggi Dawn’s blog)

40 years on from the first manned moon landing Commander ‘Buzz’ Aldrin remembers a little-known event:

It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.

Read more …

Stuart Townend is one of the UK’s leading song and hymn-writers. So I was intrigued to see what he had to say when interviewed by Cross Rhythms. (In the intro CR points out that 14 of the current most used 500 songs and hymns were written or co-written by him.)

Here are the take-away comments for me:

At a time when “stadium rock” seems to be the dominant sound of recorded worship music, I wanted to explore [on his new album] an acoustic sound that would work with any size of congregation; where small and large churches would hear the album and think “we may not be able to recreate all fiddly bits played by the violins and whistles, but we can create the feel of the recordings without having to turn the guitar amps up to 11.”

I like playing and listening to music in the “stadium rock” style (indeed I’d like to get the band I’m in to get a more like this), and I know that a lot of people like it. But I know that many don’t. And one of the major criticisms I have is that often it’s written for (and by) experienced and somewhat talented singers, not the average congregational member, some of whom feel very self-conscious at the idea of singing at all. So I loved reading

95 per cent of the time my focus is on writing songs that congregations can sing. So I’m bearing in mind the dynamics and the limitations of the average congregation, and, yes, I’m thinking “will this work in church?” – although occasionally more performance-type songs do slip on to albums, just to add a little variety… The focus on congregational usage of the songs can make recording albums a bit of a difficult balancing act. You want an album to be interesting and musical enough for people to listen to just for the sheer enjoyment of it. But at the same time these songs were created to be sung in church, so you want the recording to inspire musicians and congregations alike to think, “We could do this at our church.”

What a great aim! No wonder he is so much of his material is used so often. More than once I’ve heard people say “It’s by Stuart Townend, so it must be good.” I certainly can’t remember ever having to ignore one of his songs, because a congregation wouldn’t be able to learn it and sing it easily. And I’m regularly doing that with other new material.

The album (Creation Sings) deliberately has more of a folk feel. His reasoning is interesting …

It’s a style of music I’ve always loved, and it’s great to see how people like Kate Rusby have succeeded in recent years in bringing folk music to a wider audience. But I also think that folk music provides some interesting parallels with the ethos of worship music: it’s not age-restricted, it uses strong melodies, it often plugs into a story-telling tradition, it lends itself to different combinations of instruments (and different abilities of instrumentalists) without being musically dull, and – perhaps most important – at its heart are songs not meant to be sung by performers but by “the people.”

I shall definitely be definitely giving it a very close listen – at least after my upcoming birthday …

Continuing the rather random nature of Greenbelt life, here are 3 other things I or we did.

Firstly, some ethical shopping, picking up a very nice cotton shirt for me from From the Source. Apparently all their items come from Laos using natural dye techniques.

Next up, I listened with Alister and Heather to Rt Hon Douglas Alexander, Minister of State for International Development. Quizzed by Simon Mayo, and a few from-the-floor questions, he didn’t get to cover aid/development much, other than to say it must be about the only ministerial job where lots of foreigners continually say “thank you”.

He was mostly making the case for people to be involved in party politics at local level, arguing that the letterbox stuffing was the necessary local component of national-level politics that can and does land up making a difference in this country and abroad. I wasn’t completely convinced by his arguments.

But I did see the question about Scottish independence (and other nationalist movements) in a new light after one of his comments. He pointed out that core belief of Nationalists must be that they believe they’re better off apart from some greater country. In our time, he continued, surely this sends the wrong signal. WIth a shrinking planet through globalisation and facing planet-wide issues, the imperative must be to work together not try and be separatist. It’s a similar argument that he uses to support Europe – better to work together on things that will affect us all.

And, last, but no means least, we listened to Philip Yancey affirming that with faith you should also expect to find times of doubt. All fairly standard stuff to me, but he is a very able communicator. And here’s a silhouette of him speaking just for the sake of it …

Time for Sunday’s update.

After the damp communion service, I stayed swaying to the beat of the Bombay Baja Indian Brass Band as they played in the Arena. Very funky rhythms, and catchy tunes. No wonder they’ve played all across Europe.

I listened to Aradhna play again, this time lying on the floor in the Centaur with Martha. Some wonderful wonderful music, this time from their 5 piece (which added tabla and female vocals to guitar, sitar and violin who I heard yesterday). Their website says:

Aradhna means worship. The group captures the beauty and dignity of india’s bhajan devotional melodies with music that blends east and west.

This is what Greenbelt excels at: reminding us how narrow our view of Christianity often is, and showing what else is around. There must be millions of Christians (Anglicans even!) in India and around that region who no other than music with some of the same flavour.

On a completely different note, the culinary find of the festival was the distinctly upper crust pieminister: pies served with posh mash, gravy and/or mushy peas. My favourite was the “PM Pie”, which was their name for a steak and kidney pie. Yum yum. So much yum yum that we decided to buy some fresh ones to stick in the freezer at home to enjoy later. We had to promise (according to their website where you can also buy them) to “to love your pie, enjoy him, cherish him and above all cook him properly”.

Greenbelt has started Here’s a very small part of the 500-strong queue for the first session I went to (a panel discussion on “What kind of church is emerging?”). It was an authentic Greenbelt experience: long queues, damp grass to sit on, thankfulness that I’d remembered to bring a mat to sit on, different accents from the panel (German, American, Northern Irish, London, Manchester …), some insights and some disagreements. But they were pleased to have disagreements, because it is there that they find deeper reflection and growth tend to come. Not unlike our Bishops were finding in Lambeth’s indaba groups perhaps?

Later I heard the Indian-inspired music of Aradhna in the CMS tent. Simple, it also struck me as complex and soothing at the same time. I’m going to checking out their CDs …

My evening finished with a Marimba Recital by percussionist Gerard Rundell. He played a mixture of traditional and modern marimba music, as well as throwing in a snare drum piece and one for drum kit. Impressive stuff, even if sometimes the musicality suffered under his speed of sticking.

Ernie Rea was chatting wiht some Muslim experts the other day on ‘Beyond Belief’ (heard via the R4 podcast). They were supposed to be talking about Madrassas, but I wasn’t connecting with it, until they talked to a Pakistani arts festival director, who was a strong Muslim believer as well.

(I can’t quote directly as I don’t have the podcast any more as iTunes has been too efficient.) He said that the Prophet Mohammed said that the struggle (jihad) with others is over; the remaining struggle (jihad) is with ourselves, to make ourselves pure. It was following the Russian invasion of Afghanisation that religious leaders declared the war against the Russians to be a jihad, and it has been applied progressively more since then.

But good to see a point of similarity with Christians – acknowledging that our lack of purity (could say our ’sin’) is the main problem, not other people. I think I detected a difference as well, though. For the Muslim, it is indeed a personal struggle; for the Christian it can be (and should) a struggle but with the aid of God the Holy Spirit, as often we are almost powerless to change our characters.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. [Romans 8.26]

Simon’s got steamed up in his blog about the worship song “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin. I know what he’s getting at, but I mostly disagree. Why?

But first a diversion. I’ve always found a particular type of passage in Revelation has always excited and touched me – for example:

And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell face down before the throne and worshipped God. They said ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and strength belong to our God forever and forever. Amen!’ (Rev 7.11-12)

I learnt a new song at Spring Harvest 2006: “Creation’s King” by Graham Kendrick. (Which was recorded for the ‘One God’ live worship album that year.) I loved it straight away, because it had a catchy tune, and it quoted a variant of this passage.

“Indescribable” takes this same type of passage, with a slight twist:

Indescribable, uncontainable … all powerful, untamable; awestruck, we fall to your knees as we humbly proclaim … incomparable, unchangeable …

So at least most of the chorus is Biblical, which is a Good Thing. It also has a catchy tune. And I like the poetry of

You placed the stars in the sky, and You know them by name … / Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light / Yet concelas it to bring us the coolness of night?

There’s not enough good poetry around in modern worship songs, but far too many tired rhymes. And this is a great summary of how God treats us:

You see the depths of my heart and You love me the same.

At the same time, I’d prefer to change a couple of the lines. It works better when sung in context that it looks like on the page, but “You are amazing, God” feels slightly vacuous, and I’d prefer “You are amazing, Lord”. Simon might still feel this is crass, but it is a simple statement of worship, which is what it’s all about. The bigger problem is with “Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go …”, which whilst poetically showing the power of God, just makes me think of the tens of people each year who die when hit by a thunderbolt – did God really aim them specifically at them? Unlikely. I’d prefer “Who could tell every lightning bolt where it should go …”.

I’ve listened to a few more talks-on-MP3 from Greenbelt 07 that I missed at the time. Pete Rollins’ Faith with/without God:towards a heretical orthodoxy was a rollercoaster of a ride. He delivered it in a fast, breathless way with sudden diversions and some sudden lurches (“I don’t believe 100% of what I say either”). He said up front that (in effect) as a continental philosopher (whatever that is) it might be a hard ride; and, yes, afterwards I was left feeling a bit thrilled and queasy at the same time. I think his message could be summarised as “God is the ultimate reality” so questioning God’s existence is a waste of time. But I couldn’t be sure how to persuade others of this, or what difference it should make.

Prof Keith Ward has completely different on Is Religion Dangerous?. Fast-paced and more analytical, it is still an excellent listen. He carefully took a hatchet to some of the arguments of the so-called ‘New Atheists’, particularly Richard Dawkins, who he knows from his time as Professor of Divinity at Oxford. I learned a good deal ranging from why Logicians will never be able to “prove God”, to how some particle physicists are bringing God into their thinking, to why almost no wars have been fought for religion, and that atheism is a clear contributory factor behind Stalin’s purges. Highly recommended.

I’ve been listening to Doug Gay’s excellent talk at Greenbelt 2007 Learning to be Church: Unpacking the Emerging Project. Knowing “emerging” is a hyped term, he deliberately kept it analytical. He sees it as not being a organisation, a church, or even a movement. Instead as more of a growing Sensibility particularly amongst low-church evangelicals.

He structured it this way:

1. auditing – the continual task of the church to listen to Spirit, to detect where continual reformation is needed to remain faithful to the gospel. He thinks a side-effect of the Reformation was that in worship we were robbed of our bodies and senses.
2. retrieval – getting over the post-modern desire to be ‘relevant’, deciding to look back into the church traditions – particularly the catholic ones. The Taize and Iona Communities have been ‘portals’ into catholic tradition for low-church protestants, helped by them being independent of the official Catholic church.
3. unbundling – picking apart the theology from the religious practice. For example, for many protestants, lighting a candle in worship meant you were praying for the dead. But the Emerging project questions the inherited packages, and has appropriated some other elements of catholic practices. Like children playing with a dressing-up box. “It’s about recovering the babies that the Reformers threw out with the bathwater.”
4. supplementing – his least developed section. Looking at the political, technological (eg, electronic music), theological (eg, anabaptist, feminist, missional, and priesthood of all believers) and cultural supplements that are being added. This is a part that isn’t just historical.
5. remixing – the low-church protestants bringing these parts together with some confidence but not stopping to ask for permission.

His summary of the Emerging project is “a new wave of bottom-up irreverent ecumenism, not waiting for permission … but seeking to mend their traditions to help them be church in the post-modern culture”.

My main disappointment was that he didn’t explore how Alt.Worship links with the Emerging conversation.
The best phrase of many was when we was asked about Priesthood and Emerging: in his reply he went personal noting “no-one could limbo under my view of priesthood”. Incidentally he was fairly dismissive of Don Carson’s book on the subject (“Becoming conversant with the Emerging Church”) favouring “Emerging Churches” by Brian Bulger and Eddie Gibbs instead.

(His careful delivery and Scottish accent also helped make it a joy to listen to. I normally have the same reaction to John Bell, for the same reasons. What is it about that accent that makes it so much nicer (to me) than the Gloucestershire one I hear around me a lot?)