Bournagain

Let me introduce to you Nicolas, Anaïs, Marianne, and Esther, four young friends from Nantes who will be leaving next week for South Africa where they will spend seven months learning what mission is all about in a context that is completely different to what they’re used to here in France. They will be joining a programme run by OM South Africa which combines Christian training with practical service. We got to know Marianne, Nicolas & Esther well during our time running the youth group at the Saint Sébastien church, particularly during our trip to Spain in 2006 to assist some churches in the Madrid area. Anaïs has also participated in an OM project in Portugal, and all four of them really inspire me. They all completed their high school diplomas last summer, and have all been working long hours ever since to fund their trip. It will be a great experience, but also a sacrifice as they will be living very simply, and have had to put their studies on hold. It has been great to see their single-mindedness and commitment to the cause. If anyone complains to me about the aimlessness of today’s younger generation, I just want to say “look at these guys”! Some would say they’re exceptional, but in fact we often see the same kind of spirit in many of our young friends in the churches here.

So, Nicolas, Anaïs, Marianne, and Esther, have a great time, and we look forward to reading your updates. Follow their progress at name4godfr.blogspot.com.

Came across this excellent new acronym the other day from a blog post that turned up in my feed reader: WBKWWAD, which stands for “we barely know what we are doing”. It expresses so beautifully how we are feeling at the moment about doing mission in Europe. It was in the context of an interesting account of churches starting up in Starbucks shops – church life seems to be springing up in the most unlikely places these days. Apparently it was an American sociologist, Ray Oldenburg, who first coined the term “third place”, to refer to a place where community life happens outside of our “first place”, which is the home, and our “second place”, which is our place of work. He stresses the importance of informal public gathering spaces in the health of a community – something that is sadly lacking in the suburban deserts of large American cities. I haven’t read his books – although we do share one thing in common, both having studied in Minnesota (where the cold does wonders with the brain cells, apparently…) You don’t have to think too hard before you realise that there is more than a little wisdom in this concept, and between the lines some probing questions about the way we usually do church. The churches we have been involved with for 20+ years have been gathering spaces, yes, but neither informal or public.

Although we like quoting that “the church is the only institution that exists for outsiders” (who said that?), the reality is that our church involvement can make it unlikely that we will have regular, natural contact with those outside, because we’re too busy with what’s going on inside. This “third space” concept really intrigues me. We have been working to create a “third space” for a few months now (use the “Email us” tab above for details), and I’m sure there are other existing “third spaces” in our community that we haven’t even discovered yet, where we should be hanging out more. We don’t have Starbucks in France, but one lovely thing is that the cities are not (yet) too suburbanised, and even large urban conglomerations are more like a patchwork of little villages joined together. This is a feature of urban life here that I’m not sure we as the church have really seen the potential of.

How’s your French? Well while you’re working on the translation, I can tell you that our good friend and colleague Marcel came out with this phrase at the end of a prayer time with our team recently. We’d kind of run out of things to pray, but we’re learning not to feel awkward about that, and to enjoy the silence. It’s hard to learn to pray together with others, and even harder to handle silence. But increasingly it seems that it is in these moments that God speaks. We have been trying not to come to prayer with a preconceived list of subjects, and it’s very tempting to slip back into that. It feels “safe” somehow when you have someone to “lead” a meeting – then you only need to sweat when it’s “your turn” to lead. The rest of the time you can just follow along. But this way, we are much more conscious of wanting the Holy Spirit to lead us – which he most often seems to do through the people present, although he may also choose to do so in more direct ways. This is much more scary: what if He doesn’t turn up? What if nothing happens? What if we just end up in awkward silence and the meeting drags? Two thoughts: firstly He is worth the risk; secondly even in empty silence there is value, if nothing else than to give momentary escape from the many and varied things that vie for our attention, to focus on the One who most deserves it.

The exasperating thing about prayer is that the more you learn about it, the more you realise how far you are from doing it well. And paradoxically, without that realisation we will never progress in prayer.

“The sun is always higher than the mountains” was the word that concluded our prayer time, which had started with some discussion about some fairly major challenges facing us. I don’t think it requires any explanation.

Is Bin Laden still with us?

During the sixties there was a rumour flying around that Paul McCartney had died. An amazing number of people believed it, even though he frequently appeared large as life in the media. Another figure who frequently appears on our screen giving videoed speeches is Osama bin Laden, but nobody seems to be sure whether or not he is in fact still breathing. Some surprising things have come to light following the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto, including the fact that in early November she publicly stated not only that Bin Laden was dead, but named his murderer. It was such a throw away comment that it was almost as if she wasn’t aware that some in her audience might have been quite surprised by the news. Her interviewer, David Frost, didn’t even pick up on her extraordinary statement. Take a look at this interview from Al Jazeera.

If you have read this blog before you will have already come across my musings about the uniqueness of the French experience of the separation of church and state. The usual translation of the French word for this, la laïcité, is “secularism”, but this really doesn’t do it justice. After 8 years I thought I was just beginning to get my head around it when I read of Mr. Sarkozy’s recent visit to the Vatican. To my astonishment I learnt that ever since Henri IV back in the 17th century, every French head of state has received the honorary title of Canon of the Basilica of Saint-Jean-de-Latran, one of the churches of Rome under the jurisdiction of the Holy See. In France, the fact that Elizabeth II is still the head of the Church of England, is regularly deplored. So in our post-revolutionary secular republic, what can possibly be the reason for retaining this three hundred-year-old custom? Does the Vatican still consider France “the elder daughter of the Church”?

Mr Sarkozy is quite open about his adherence to Catholicism, and unlike the authors of the failed European constitution, he considers Christianity a determining factor in French national identity. Following the ceremony at the Basilica, the president extolled the virtue of a “positive secularism” that ensures freedom of thought on the one hand, but which upholds the Christian roots of the French nation. The nature of these “Christian roots” is the subject of another discussion (how “Christian” were they really?), but it is worth noting that this is a departure from the relative silence of French presidents with regard to matters of faith. The dyed-in-the-wool secular republicans will be very offended by Sarkozy’s statements; some Christians optimists will see this as heralding a return of Christianity to the public sphere. I don’t see it as anything to get excited about, although it is somewhat refreshing to see a public figure who isn’t so highly strung about the church and state thing. For further details see an article at Worldwide Religious News. Or for some of the shocked reactions of the Left, see this article in the Figaro (in French – have you tried Google Language Tools?)

Happy New Year! Our family New Year’s Eve involved a trip to an outdoor skating rink which the city of Nantes puts on for the festive season, a nice meal which didn’t quite work out (Simon cooking!), some games and a movie. We also talked around the table about our favourite memories from 2007. I am experiencing the usual disorientation of wondering where the year went. I generally approach the new year with a vague sense of a number of decisions that need to be made, new habits that need to be formed, and then when the first of January rolls around I don’t feel ready. Then I remind myself that it’s silly to get hung up about a change of digit in the year, which is, after all, a completely arbritrary way of dividing time. There’s nothing sacred about the calendar. But it is a reminder of the ever-accelerating passage of time, and the fact that we are not getting any younger. I’m getting ready to teach a series on the Jesus’ teaching on the end times in Matthew 24, and have been struck again by the many references to time in the prophetic Scriptures, and the signs that are to help us get ready for the events of the end – whether they come in our lifetime or not. It is a good reminder that time is going in a specific direction – forward! The calendar may be arbitrary, but the passage of time has specific purpose as we head towards the fulfillment of all God had in mind when he created the world: the establishment of a kingdom on earth with Christ as its king.

Two months of silence in the world of blogs is an eternity. This will be an interesting experiment to see if the small number of people who read this blog have completely given it up for lost, or whether I may be able to attract them back again. During these two months I must admit to have pondered on the potential and purpose of a blog, wavered backwards and forwards about the wisdom of divulging certain things over the Internet, and questioned some of the fairly self-centered and even narcissistic elements that one finds in the blogosphere.

But I’ve come back to the fact that I get a lot out of reading other people’s blogs, and I enjoy writing so why not carry on? It’s a good discipline, and who knows, there’s always the chance that from time to time I might contribute something useful to some online discussion. Is this a new year’s resolution? I’ve always been really good at keeping those …for the first week of January. So I’ll commit myself to writing this week, and next we’ll see what next week will bring.

Sometimes people ask us what a “normal” week looks like. It’s always such a difficult question to answer, as a week rarely ends up looking like what we expected or planned.

Monday I spoke to a group of visiting Americans about French church history – I think that if I ever had to change jobs I would quite happily be a history teacher.

That evening I joined in with a series of seminars one of the churches here is running on house church/simple church. This church is in the very unique situation of preparing to merge with two other churches, and making home meetings the centre of their activity. One of the really fascinating things is that the ethnic makeup of these three churches is very diverse.

Tuesday morning Dad took school with the children while Mum helped out at La Maison – a drop-in centre for local homeless people. It is a reality check for both of us to know what some of these people go through.

Thursday evening there is a fledgling home meeting happening on the island in Nantes where we heard the great news that one of the group has just got engaged, and got into some good discussions around Genesis 1 & 2.

Friday I have 7 hours of English classes, back to back.

Saturday we had the second installment of the language café in our new venue. After much searching we found a suitable café that opens on Saturday mornings. It’s actually in the centre of town, which may have turned some people off. Nice atmosphere though, and I think we will keep it going to see what develops.

We have been to very few Sunday morning meetings since getting back from NZ, and have been enjoying the strangeness of this (after 20+ years). However, being a special day with a meal and baptisms, we spent the day with all our St. Sébastien church friends on Sunday.

And now it’s Monday again – the beginning of another week, at the end of which we will probably wonder, as usual, where the days have gone.

When you’re a New Zealander living in France, people regularly talk to you about rugby. I received calls before the match “wishing me luck”, a number of people slapped me on the back jokingly “offering their condolences” in advance. This is ironic because overall the feeling here prior to last night’s world cup game was that the French were bound to lose.

This is a case of déja vu for me because exactly the same thing happened in 1999 prior to that historic defeat of the All Blacks by the French that was so totally unexpected. This was the historic defeat that would supposedly “never be repeated”.

I think I’m starting to understand something which may be indicative of a difference between French and New Zealand mentality (prepare yourself for a sweeping generalisation on that notoriously inexact science of cultural psychology…) : the French seem to do best, and are at their most passionate, when there is no real hope other than being defeated honourably. Being told that they will probably fail, which is, by the way, a standard pedagogical technique used by large numbers of French schoolteachers, seems to have the opposite effect of goading them on to success.

On the other hand, New Zealanders seem to do really badly when they have not fully grasped the strength of their opposition. I’ve noticed many commentators have already suggested that the run of matches leading up to the quarter-final where the All Blacks just walked all over the other team was psychologically very poor preparation for facing the French. Nobody in France expected the All Blacks to lose – along with 4 million New Zealanders!

I’m wondering if this is applicable to areas other than sport…

One thing for sure, there will be an interminable post mortem about this in New Zealand; the nation will be in sackcloth and ashes for weeks (it’s already started here at the country’s largest newspaper). Meanwhile, dans la patrie des Bleus, the celebration goes on…

Bravo les bleus! C’était un super match! All Blacks – great job. You didn’t lose by much. Take a break, go fishing – it’s only a little oval ball, after all!

I had one of the more surreal experiences of my life this week. We had set up an English conversation & coffee event at a local community centre. Our first meeting was a great success, and we were just planning the next event when I was called in to meet with the director of the centre.

It transpired that an overly zealous member of what is sometimes affectionately referred to as the “anti-cult cult” had contacted the centre to warn them about me. I was informed that the community centre was awaiting a file of incriminating details confirming that I had infiltrated the community centre in order to brainwash the other members and drag them into my “cult”. This file duly arrived, and I went to a meeting to hear the verdict.

Yes, it was as they feared: I am a dangerous and deceitful man, and I was to be struck off the membership of the community centre without further ado.
“We are a non-confessional organisation sir”, I was reminded by the Catholic director and her yoga-instructor assistant, who rather put her foot in it when she said that as a coordinator of an activity it was impossible not to let one’s beliefs show through, and this would be in violation of the secular principles of the community centre… Whoops. So, in other words, it’s okay for Hinduism to “show through”, but not Christianity ??

I was fascinated to know what juicy bits of information there might be in my file, but they made the rather surprising decision to ferret the file out of my sight the moment I asked for it. So, no specific accusation was made, no serious investigation into whether or not any complaints had been made, just an arbitrary “on your bike”, for no apparent reason other than that I am perceived to be an e***gelical Christian (there’s that terrible “E”-word again!)

You think this is a joke, right?

It really happened.