Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,
now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
1 Peter 2:2-3
“Brother, it seems to me that you were too severe on your ignorant hearers.”
This sentiment of Aidan (d. 651AD) spoken on Iona expresses the gospel passion of Fresh Expressions. Recognition of its truth by his colleagues would propel him from Iona off the west coast of present day Scotland to Lindisfarne on the east coast of what is now Northumbria.
FIRST HONEYMOON
While in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, preparing for our visit to “Stuke’s”, on our second day off in a row from my FX pilgrimage, our hosts drove us to “Holy Island” as the locals call it. Lindisfarne is a corner of land jutting out into the North Sea which is cut off from the mainland by the tides twice a day. Monks back then and residents now thereby get regular relief twice a day from pilgrims and tourists: a perfect place to journey in and journey out. What we discovered, almost in passing, was a wholly different type of Fresh Expression, - dispersed communities of fellowship, prayer and mission - most not listed on the official FX site probably because their emergence predates the FX movement (see below).
During our honeymoon long ago, Deborah and I had only seen Lindisfarne from the train on our way north. Back then we enjoyed Edinburgh, passed through Glasgow, even stayed a night at romantic Loch Loman. But once we saw Iona we fell madly with that little island staying an extra four days there. We heard then how Aidan went from Iona to Lindisfarne so we pledged that someday, God willing, we would visit his other eastern "Holy Island" home. As its was, we were headed instead to the L'Abris Community at Gretham, UK.
Twenty seven years later, almost to the day, our wish to return came true.
But an odd thing happened to me when we arrived. A strange longing came over me, beckoning.
“Whom do you seek?”
“Where is Aidan?” I replied. “Or signs of him. Show me where he stayed. Show me his heart.”
The ground resonated with my plea. “Look ever so closely.”
I would have to because whenever and wherever the Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxons in the 12th century onward, they obliterated any signs of their predecessors. The brutes. I grew impatient. Deborah will tell you I broke free from our party and roamed on my own, dashing about, searching for signs of Aidan on the historical placards put up for tourists.
“So what if these are famed 14th century ruins. I don’t really care if that part is from the 12th century – that’s much too recent for me…. Where’s Aidan?”
In the museum, a wax monk pretending to be Aidan mocked my search. I took a picture but wax is not nearly sincere enough.
Set against a half-collapsed Norman wall was the base of a Celtic Cross. 8th or 9th century the sign sighed. Sadly I turned away still looking for something, anything that spoke to my longing…
…till there it was – plain as day. I stopped in my tracks – stunned, staring…
I am not usually an excitable man – more of a cold fish actually – with an occasional romantic moment – but this before my eyes was too much… the sign I had been looking for, hoping for, in the last few minutes living for.
There can you see it? Over that wall. Not down there. No, off in the distance.
Facing west peering through the haze over Northumbria I strained to see.
Do you see that horizon?
THAT is what Aidan saw.
“You seek the man? See there his heart for the people who lived in the empty places where he had to walk – between God in this cell in this holy place and the horizon beyond. That is where the Spirit who gave him life is also calling you.”
[See what I saw: double click my picture of Northumbria taken from Lindisfarne. Notice the sandpiper God sent to represent for us the brooding of the Holy Spirit over the scene.]
AIDAN’S HEART
I bought enough trinkets and pamphlets to remind me of the moment and rejoined our party. What can we learn from Aidan’s heart about ministry to those living in those empty places – without benefit of the good news of God in Christ?
“Brother, it seems to me that you were too severe on your ignorant hearers.”
We might quibble with Aidan’s word “ignorant” with it’s negative connotations. Yet the reality is that people who have been Christians for years simply get used to certain ways of doing church. After a time those inherited ways become invisible to us, like wallpaper. We learn to expect “church” to be a certain shape of building, on Sunday morning, while sitting on hard pews (to keep us awake?), where children are shuffled off so the adults can concentrate, and songs are sung together (when besides at the national anthem or at rock concerts do people do that?). and on it goes.
But “ignorant” stripped of its put-down is simply the condition of being uninformed or uneducated, lacking knowledge or information. This is where increasingly the majority of the population is with regard to Jesus.
The man Aidan was rebuking was another monk, a certain Corman. He had tried to evangelize with the old inherited ways he had learned (perhaps). He found the Anglo-Saxons in response “intractable, obstinate and uncivilised.”
Aidan perceived well that the real problem was not the gospel of Jesus at all but the way it was being presented and packaged. Had Corman been truer to the apostles than to the ways he had tried, he might have made better progress.
“Brother, it seems to me that you were too severe on your ignorant hearers. You should have followed the practice of the Apostles, and begun by giving them the milk of simpler teaching, and gradually nourished them with the word of God until they were capable of greater perfection and able to follow the loftier precepts of Christ.”
That observation not only propelled Aidan with twelve other monks from Iona to Lindisfarne into the first Christian missionary outreach into Northumbria, they also express the heart of Fresh Expressions.
Aidan's Seven Principles for Fresh Expressions.
1) “Too severe:” our “inherited” models of doing church sets the bar too high – they are too severe for most non-churched people to venture across.
2) “The practice of the apostles” was far more gentle and flexible: “To the weak I became weak in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” I Corinthians 9:22
3) They need the “milk of simple teaching.” What character that “milk” takes (whole, skim, chocolate) depends on what the people we are trying to reach will tolerate. A mother’s milk is natural food for a baby. What comes most naturally to the people you have a passion to see follow to Jesus?
4) Our nourishment of them must be “gradual”. Many of our notions of church planting are borrowed from the States where remnants of Christendom have survived better than in Canada. There it is a common expectation that a church plant will be self-sustaining within its first five years.
It takes on average four years to go from first exposure to Christ to genuine heart felt faith. it will take some time well beyond that before those same people tithe. If so. we need to reconsider how long a diocese should be subsidizing a fresh work. Grace given the planters would give them more time to nourish the people gradually to maturity
5) It is “the Word of God” that gives life and growth. I would be concerned if some Fresh Expressions set the bar so low that God’s word is silenced lest someone stumble over it. There are numerous creative, inventive, and gentle ways to engage with the text of Scripture. Behold the Lindisfarne gospels and learn! They are among humanity’s greatest artistic and religious treasures. www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/lindisfarne/text.html#
6) We shoot ourselves in the foot, and starve our people if they do not get sound Biblical teaching in some form soon and on to the pursuit…
7) “until they were capable of greater perfection and able to follow the loftier precepts ofb Christ”; that is, until they join us in following Jesus.
Well said, friend Aidan.
The first member of the UK Fresh Expressions Team was way ahead of his time...no, wait...
His counsel was actually perfect for his time...and is so for ours.
THE NEW MONASTICISM
It is no accident that such sage evangelistic practice would come from someone like Aidan who was also a monastic contemplative. The movement from solitude in the cell in these "colonies of heaven" into bold mission to the world is worth noting.
Several of the Fresh Expressions I visited mentioned in passing that they had incorporated into their worship songs and devotions from the Northumbrian Community (NC). The mother house is located just a few miles inland from Lindisfarne but this New Monastic community is mainly dispersed across the UK and around the globe. Since returning to Canada, they have accepted my application to be a "friend" of NC. I have since learned of two other Canadians formally linked to NC, and another who has also been using their Celtic Daily Prayers but without a formal link to NC. All are Anglicans from relatively conservative parishes.
For Celtic Daily Prayers see: www.northumbriacommunity.org/PraytheOffice/
Music downloads can be found at www.northumbriacommunity.org/Downloads/index.htm
but if you'd like to listen now download some of my favourites.
How lovely is thy dwelling place (Psalm 84)
Expressions of faith
May the road rise to meet you
If there is enough interest and God provides musicians willing to take this on, I'd be up for having a session using the Northumbrian Celtic Daily Prayers in a public service with some NC music.
CELLS
Both Cell Churches and the New Monasticism as expressed in the Northumbrian Community speak about cells, albeit the former meaning groups and the latter solitary.
The Rev'd George Lings points this out in his Encounters on the Edge booklet #29 "Matching Monastery and Mission" (p. 10-12). Both Cell Churches and the new monastic "have a concern for discipleship that goes deeper than church attendance, a passion to ask what Jesus would do, the existence of focussed, relationally based groups, a yearning for deeper spiritual life in which the individual takes responsibility but is mutually accountable to others."
"...the renewal of both the church and society will come through the re-emerging of forms of Christian community that are homes of generous hospitality, places of challenging reconciliation and centres of attentiveness to the living God," says Brother Samuel SSF.
Might this sort of thing work out of or in Toronto or any other city?
"The monasterium... provides the still and stable centre, the pool of prayer, psalmody and spirituality from which all can drink and refresh themselves. It sets standards provides models of liturgical excellence and preserves awe and reverence at the heart of worship. Some will want no more than this. Others, at different stages of their faith journey will feel the need to express themselves to God in other less formal and traditional ways.
THIS IS THE KEY BIT, LISTEN UP! :-)
In congregations, cells and house groups connected to the monasterium like spokes of a wheel to a hub, they will be able to engage in more innovative and experimental worship" - and, one should add, could be more adaptable to local needs and cultural currents. (Ian Bradley, "Colonies of Heaven", London: DLT, 2000, pp. 150-151.)
OTHERS
Other dispersed communities are also emerging,
including the Community of Aidan and Hilda also on Lindisfarne. There is a small Canadian contingent with whom I have been in touch. The founder Ray Simpson, an acknowledged authority on Celtic Spirituality, was in Canada in 2007 presenting in Ottawa their community values.
Of these dispersed ecumenical communities, Contemplative Fire is one of the few listed on the official FX UK site. A priest and team of interested people from Toronto has invited Contemplative Fire's director the Rev'd Phillip Roderick to Toronto in December 2008. Details to come. Rev'd Roderick is also an Anglican priest, Celtic educator and percussionist.
In times past, contact with such fellowships could only be sustained by phone calls, letters, local groups and the occasional pilgrimage. Now with e-mail, Facebook forums, dedicated on-line chat rooms, and published materials for home use, an increasing number of people are seeing their connections to these distant bodies as "their only church".
Another form of "the New Monasticism" is the sort of 24/7/325 prayer rooms described on "Punk Monk" by (Anglican) Andy Freeman and Peter Grieg. [Ventura:Regal. 2007.] Like several US modern missional monastic versions (see: http://www.newmonasticism.org), the "Boiler Rooms" of Punk Monk are simultaneously venues for reflective spirituality and also mission, functioning in some ways like 7th century Lindisfarne - except usually in the urban heart of the city?
I am actively seeking people who might come together to form at least one 24/7 prayer room in Toronto this fall. Though the 24/7 movement emerged about 2000 and peaked two years later, though there was a splash of interest in Canada's largest city, no one I know knows anyone doing 24/7 here. Surely they are there, I just haven't found them.
Could there be a permanent "Boiler Room" in the mind of God for the heart of Toronto ?
The need is soooo great in our city.
SECOND HONEYMOON?
I had been joking on our trip with Deborah that this was a sort of second honeymoon for us. Methinks she thought that should be a more intimate journey than this trip (duh!).
Yet when we had returned to our Newcastle home, our host presented us with a bottle of Lindisfarne Mead. Mead is a wine made with honey, perhaps the oldest of alcoholic beverages. It is said that in Anglo Saxon days no wedding would be complete until the newlyweds had quaffed honey wine in the light of the full moon: thus our word “honeymoon.”
As soon as I got back to Toronto we searched till we found local mead: in Beamsville and Alviston, Onartio.
In the meantime, may the sweet taste of the word of God, like honey from the comb, feed your heart and mind – and give you vision for your fresh expression.
And may God be between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.
ST AIDAN'S PRAYER FOR THE HOLY ISLAND OF LINDISFARNELord, this bare island,
make it a place of peace.
Here be the peace of those who do Thy will.
Here be the peace of brother serving man.
Here be the peace of holy monks obeying.
Here be the peace of praise by dark and day.
Be this Island Thy Holy Island.
I, Lord, Thy servant, Aidan,
make this prayer.
Be it Thy care. Amen.
PEACE WITH GOD IN HIS CELL WAS NOT HIS ONLY GOAL
Legend says that when Satan raised his giant battle-axe against Heaven's gates, God's shaft of lightning struck it from his hand. The flaming axe fell into the North Sea, and was changed into the thousand-acre island of Lindisfarne.
Through the centuries this bit of lore concerning God's victory inspired those who lived on, or visited the island, to keep Satan's power underfoot ...
Lord, show us the things that are binding the work You have called forth on Holy Island.
Help us to loose YOUR work, and let it go in resurrection power.
Meditation for Day 15, Celtic Daily Prayer
Primeval fire fused a cradle of rock. Borne by the rocking tides,
smooth sand folded its hollows;
frail seeds flew on the winds' shoulders;
blessed by soft rain and warmth of sun,
grass and herb bound the shifting dunes.
Lastly, trusted servants came, led by Christ
to build a home for restless souls,
a beacon to shed forth His light.
Lord of rock and tide, of sun and air,
Bringer of light:
may Your blessing rest on this Your house.
Meditation for Day 18, Celtic Daily Prayer
Expressions of faith
Lord, You have always given
bread for the coming day;
and though I am poor,
today I believe.
Lord, You have always given
strength for the coming day;
and though I am weak,
today I believe.
Lord, You have always given
peace for the coming day;
and though of anxious heart,
today I believe.
Lord, You have always kept
me safe in trials;
and now, tried as I am,
today I believe.
Lord, You have always marked
the road for the coming day;
and though it may be hidden,
today I believe.
Lord, You have always lightened
this darkness of mine;
and though the night is here,
today I believe.
Lord, You have always spoken
when time was ripe;
and though you be silent now,
today I believe.
SEEKERS CHURCH ATTICA NY - A Northumbria Community inspired Church Plant
Church of The Resurrection, Toronto Ontario
Sat. Sept. 20, 2008
Letter to the Genesee Vally, NY Presbytery:
Greetings in the Name of the Lord and from across Lake Ontario.
I am writing to congratulate the Presbytery of Genesee Valley on your bold initiative of “Seekers Church”, Attica, N Y. I commend it to you, as I am also doing in the Diocese of Toronto, as a model well-suited for today’s post-modern anti-institutional culture.
Let me explain.
In June of this year, my diocese sent me to the United Kingdom to explore what the Church of England was doing regarding Fresh Expressions of Church (Messy Church, Café Church, Cell Church, etc.). Along the way several leaders mentioned using inspirational prayers and songs from the Northumbria Community (NC). Once back in Canada and after registering as a “friend” of NC, I discovered to my delight that you had planted a church using the same resources.
I could not wait to visit Seekers Church, nor was I disappointed.
The service in Attica had two components. At 6 pm after brief conversation, we sat in silent prayer for 20 minutes, an innovation especially suited to contemplatives. During the fellowship time which followed, asked how and why they had joined Seekers Church, the attendees were glowing in their enthusiasm. Most striking was the fact that more than half of those present had little or no significant involvement in a church before they joined Seekers. Only the most effective UK Fresh Expressions claimed that high a percentage. It is a stunning achievement.
At the 7 pm main worship service, the Rev’d Bill Hockey adapted the framework of evening prayer from “Celtic Daily Prayer” (a pseudo-monastic devotional which gives the widely dispersed members of NC a common prayer life). Bill is an excellent singer songwriter and a good devotional speaker, but leadership of that service was shared by him and several others. A Bible study has also been launched recently allowing another point of entry for seekers.
Why is this model so effective?
A) The simplicity of purpose: primary emphasis is on seeking the presence of God and is framed by the question: “Who is it that you seek?”
B) At the heart of this spirituality is the truth that each of us is broken in some way. The ground is level at the foot of the cross where the fragile and frail gather in awe.
C) Being a Church Without Walls, there is little to distract one in that search.
D) The informal service with two to three dozen gathered around a simple table, lends a non-institutional feel to the experience.
In Toronto, we find an increasing number of young people questioning whether either the old inherited models of church or newer high powered, high production, mega-church models deliver what they promise. Many today are favouring smaller venues that unite in Christ people from a wide variety of religious backgrounds around simpler expressions of faith and a common mission.
The Rev’d Bill Hockey and I pledged our mutual prayer support. If we launch something along the lines of Seekers Church here, we may need his wisdom and expertise. Such international / ecumenical cooperation may in time benefit us all in the matchless enterprise of the gospel.
With thanks and sincerely yours in Christ,
The Rev’d Dr. Duke Vipperman+
Incumbent, Church of the Resurrection
Chair, Bishop’s Church Plant Working Group, Diocese of Toronto
Someone e-mailed noting...
"I just received a report about the decline in Sunday attendance in the
> Church of England. You may help us to verify this when you visit England."
Notice the concern of the article was decline in Sunday attendance.
As Steve Croft points out below many Fresh Expressions (FX) of Church meet midweek: Cell Churches, Messy church, Network-focussed churches, etc. For many of these attendance figures are not kept.
Still FXs are not the whole solution. Someone has estimated that the UK would need not 700 but 10,000 FXs to replace all they have lost in the last few years.
Here's the latest:
Steve Croft, Archbishop's Missioner and leader of the Fresh Expressions
team, said that pessimistic interpretations of churchgoing trends in England had not yet caught up with how people are worshipping in the 21st century.
In an interview yesterday on Premier Radio, Dr Croft backed the stance taken in today's Times by Lynda Barley, head of Research and Statistics for the Church of England, in stressing that the complete picture needed to be
taken into account before a proper analysis could begin.
He told Premier's Drivetime audience: 'Christian Research needs to catch up with how people worship ?they have to include worship figures during weekdays. We haven't really caught up with how people worship yet!'
Stressing that there were genuine signs of growth in both traditional
congregations and fresh expressions of church, Dr. Croft, who tours the
country visiting new congregations alongside existing ones, underlined the Archbishop of Canterbury's frequent insistence that a mixed economy was the way forward.
'The church always has to learn to be innovative in every single
generation, this generation no less than any, even more so in a time of change.'
'We need to go to where people are and speak to them and serve them.'
'I think the future of the Christian church in this country rests, we hope and pray with God, but also with the creativity in doing many different
kinds of things.'
'Many people are looking for the church to be more spiritually deep, not less. That is not just my opinion. It is my experience.'
www.freshexpressions.org.uk/
section.asp?id=3586
I say Amen to that!