18 April 2024
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Watch Out for AI

I’d have to say that Facebook is becoming less and less useful. Of the first ten items that I’ve quickly scanned over on my feed, only 2-3 are from people I know posting something about things they are doing or which have grabbed their attention. A couple more are adverts in the form of X (a contact) likes Y (a service) – that’s the side effect of someone I know engaging with an advert and inadvertently splashing it wider. There are a couple of posts related to groups I’m in, but not deeply engaged with and the rest are a mixture of adverts and posts that are hard to fathom.

One thing I’ve noticed about the latter category is that a lot of them seem to be AI generated. For example, for several weeks I’ve often seen variations on an impoverished looking child in what appears to be an African village demonstrating some clever contraption or toy that appears to be made out of ‘rubbish’ like plastic bottles. I tended to scroll past them but, as the pictures have kept on coming, I’ve realised that they contain clues that they are AI generated. Has that been the case for all of them? They quickly get lost in the churn but I suspect that is the case and there are other ongoing series of pictures that also seem to share the same origin method.

Not only do these clutter up my feed but they share the characteristic of being fiction trying to dress up as reality and attempting to grab engagement in various ways that could be summed up as exploitative. Furthermore, even though I’ve been scrupulous not to click on them to look at the comments or to find out more, I’m still getting ‘contributions’ from recognisable sets. If it continues to develop then it won’t be long before any useful information is entirely drowned out by generated nonsense. If Facebook doesn’t spot and address this, it might not be so long before I end up as another ex-Facebook user (a trend which probably contributes to the fact there is so little from real people on my feed anymore).

17 April 2024
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Songs to Sing Along

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m due to lead a singalong session for our church’s “Thursday Club” for the over-60’s. If you do the maths, the younger members could have been born as late as 1964, which means they were probably aware of what was “Top of the Pops” from the early 1970s and probably fairly hip to ongoing trends until at least the early 1980s. I think it is a reasonable, although by no means universal, observation that teenage years tend to be when you form a foundation of your musical tastes and familiarity with what is popular – as you grow older, you tend to pursue those tastes and may keep discovering new music but you are less likely to be on top of what is hip.

Anyway, the upshot is that I’ve got a pretty broad range to draw on so I’ve tried to mix what I think a lot of people will know with songs I know well and to include plenty that should be easy for a mixed, older audience to sing along with, including one or two that will probably predate anyone in the room. We’ll see how it goes but hopefully I’ve got enough range that everyone gets at least a few minutes they enjoy!

16 April 2024
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A Farewell Day

Today Jane and I popped down to Oxford for the funeral of a dear friend of ours. In some ways a sad day but very much a celebration of a life well lived by a kind and gentle man. It was lovely to catch up with many familiar faces from St Clement’s church, to see the changes to the church and, of course, to say goodbye to our friend. Bless him, he left us a box of his worship music CDs and we’ll look forward to listening through those over the next few weeks.

15 April 2024
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Cucumbers in

Putting small plants outside at the moment is a bit of a risk – warm weather over the weekend has been followed by windy conditions, a drop in the temperature, cold rain and even some hail today (although, to be fair, also some bright skies with only a few scudding clouds). However, the polytunnel is a protected environment and today I’ve put my cucumber plants in (a variety called ‘Telegraph’, which should produce fairly long, straight salad-ready fruit).

Some of the seedlings I had grown were struggling in their pots, where it is hard to regulate the moisture and keep tabs on the root growth. Now into a proper bed, the roots can stretch out and there is much more capacity for excess moisture to drain away, hopefully with the roots reaching out after it. We’re still a little way off getting the tomatoes in, although I’ve now got seeds germinated and potted up from all varieties. It will probably only be another 2-3 weeks through.

There are still plenty of other seeds, seedlings and small plants to care for and to keep moving on but, at this point, I’m still fairly much on target for what I had planned.

14 April 2024
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Friday’s Rent

Yesterday I got round to bottling my latest batch of homebrew beer. I’ve called this one Friday’s Rent because of the coincidence of a couple of factors. Firstly, I brewed it on Good Friday and, secondly, it is based on Graham Wheeler’s recipe for Timothy Taylor Best Bitter. How does that add up? I thought it was based on Taylor’s Landlord beer so my brain went off on Good Friday being a sign that the price for sin has been paid in full on the cross by Jesus and so the ‘rent’ (what a Landlord might demand) has been dealt with. Obviously that doesn’t work so well with it actually being a different beer (and no consolation that I must have made the mistake before – I was sure I’d brewed Landlord but I’ve only got records of Best) but the brew seems to have turned out okay so I’m not too bothered and I’ll stick with the name! I might check back anyway as it’s possible I’ve written down the wrong name on my spreadsheet.

The vital statistics are that it is a relatively light coloured beer with an ABV of about 4.2% (slightly over target). Now to let it sit and mature for a while.

13 April 2024
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Multiple leeks

Given the difference in spelling, I think jokes that play on the identical sound of leek and leak probably don’t work so well in written form. Regardless, I’m pleased to have got the some of the leeks I started from seed back in February planted out at the allotment:

Those ones are in a cover I finished constructing this morning, which will give them protection if the temperatures drop very low (4° predicted as an overnight minimum one night this coming week) and from any flying insects which might want to lay their grubs in the stems a little bit later in the season. Along with the 13 leeks inside the frame, I’ve got another 7 outside it – potentially extra crop and also a control to see if the cover makes much difference.

I’ve also got another 20 which I brought back home – some might go down the end of the garden and others to a friend. It’s good to clear some space in the polytunnel as I’ve got more plants coming on, crying out for attention, and others wanting to go out there from indoors or to be started from seed.

12 April 2024
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How are QR Codes Created?

QR codes have been around for quite a while and my feeling is that they still haven’t become entirely mainstream. They haven’t died on the vine but I haven’t seem them become ubiquitous to the point where people don’t also feel the need to put plain text links or to where most people can interact with them easily. If I was still at my previous church and involved in youth work, I’d do a quick survey to find out but I wonder if even the ‘born with a smartphone’ generation use them without thinking?

If you do want to get a bit more insight into them, then the Project Nayuki site is a good one to visit – you can not only generate QR codes but see all the steps which go into converting a URL or other piece of text into that combination of light and dark areas that can be converted back by many camera apps and other software. You can either take a screengrab of the inline SVG image created there or use the related page to generate a downloadable image (and access the creator’s software libraries in a range of languages).

11 April 2024
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Fitted Up

I seem to have done a lot of work with 100mm x 22mm boards of various lengths this week. Having bought a few to make more benching in the polytunnel, I settled on some more for repairing an arbour seat belonging to some friends.

One advantage of working with a particular material more than once is you start to get better ideas of how to handle it. In this case, I’d figured out how to use my router to put a nice curve along the edges and so it was a relatively quick job to mill the planks down to do that rounding, safely, reliably and relatively quickly.

I did a dry fitting today and was pleased to find that they fitted well. Measuring and cutting can be a bit nerve wracking, particularly when the situation you are cutting for is too far away from the shed you operate your power tools in to double check in situ. It worked out though and now I just want to wait a week or two to let that boards dry a bit more before painting (I think a bit of dampness with treated wood is common as they are fairly fresh from the factory where they were dunked). However, I’m satisfied that I’ve got the pieces I need, all cut and shaped to fit. It should be a job well done when it is finished.

10 April 2024
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Soul Surviving

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of contact with the Soul Survivor movement. In the early 1990s the wonderfully obscure rock covers band I was in, the P’tang Yang Kipper Band, played for an event at the church I grew up in where youth pastor Mike Pilavachi was speaking. I remember him joking that his surname meant “rice pudding”, based on pilau rice and la vache, the French for cow. I can’t remember if that was 1990 or 1991 but it would have been before Soul Survivor officially started with Mike as the key leader. Look up either Mike or Soul Survivor on the internet today and you are much more likely to find out about the scandal that came to light in 2023 than than long-forgotten church event.

In the intervening 30 years, I’ve helped take groups from a couple of churches to some of the Soul Survivor summer festivals, including the final one in 2019 and taken youth groups to visit the Soul Survivor church in Watford. Mike seemed to relish ham-acting the role of an ogre and was widely regarded as having a limited set of stories (more than one person I’ve met knew exactly what the term “Pilavachi Bingo” meant) but he seemed deeply respected. In those final couple of years of the summer festival, other senior leaders in the movement spoke of how they couldn’t see themselves having a role in continuing it with him having decided to step down. It must have been sometime in 2019 that I last went down to Watford with the youth group from my previous church. We got there early enough to be sat right at the front and, before the service began, Mike came and said hello to our group. I would be lying to say any hackles were raised; it seemed like someone who, despite an international reputation and the curmudeonly character he sometimes played, was humble enough to come and talk to all comers and not try and make you feel that you must bow down in the presence of a star.

I wonder if that was the problem though? Probably not when I first met him (when he might have still been working in his former career as an accountant) but sometime in the following decade, he was being treated as a special “holy man” at the centre of a significant move of God. The Let There Be Light video Matt and Beth Redman released earlier this week said as much. Both were significant figures in the early days of Soul Survivor but both have spoken of how the “success” of the movement made it hard or impossible to raise concerns about the person who was seen as a key figure in this “move of God”. Tim Hughes and his brother Pete, also key figures in the movement have shared that they also tried to raise concerns but were brushed aside.

Does that mean it was all a sham? Should I look back through my notebooks and rip out anything I jotted down during Mike’s talks? I don’t think so but woe to us in the church when we judge success based on raw numbers and the level of excitement generated. Woe to us when those who have seniority and responsibility overlook concerns raised by those who seem relatively insignificant and fail to do each other the honour of helping each other walk a path that is both righteous and kind.

I suspect Mike will need to stay away from any involvement with youth ministry and from anything which involves the trappings of fame. I do pray that he can both repent and respond appropriately to harms he has done and, chastened for the areas in which he was careless, find a better way forward. In the eyes of many, he has gone from hero to villain but God sees the person he chose and loved before Mike even began to respond. May the rest of us have eyes for where we need to speak up and where we need to change or repent.

9 April 2024
by wpAdmin
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Speaking on the Road to Emmaus

My next official preaching date at church was due to be 21st April but I got asked to fill in at short notice for today’s service so I wrote up my notes on Sunday evening. The pictures I refer to are Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus (that’s the 1601 version, which now lives in London, but I prefer his 1606 rendering) and a painting of my own. The message is based on a reading from Luke 24:13-35.

[Caravaggio image] Have you seen this painting before? You might well recognise it as Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, painted over 400 years ago in 1601 and now part of the collection of The National Gallery in London. I appreciate why it is so often used in art history lectures. It is a dramatic moment and shows off the artist’s skill with light, shade and perspective. For those with a modern taste for realism, it is a step forward from much of the other work of that period.

Let me confess though that I don’t particularly like it. I appreciate many of the details, like the scallop shell worn by the man on the right which, albeit anachronistically, suggests he might be a pilgrim, but I’m not convinced by the size of his hand in the background. More importantly, I don’t like the way he has shown Jesus – over-fed, beardless and, crucially, with no sign of the scars on his hands. I’ll talk more about those in couple of weeks when I look at the story of Thomas but please indulge me as I swap the picture to one of my own.

Emmaus Windows

This might not be to your taste and is certainly both much more modern and much less skilfully executed. I painted it on a creative afternoon at my previous church, when we were reflecting on and responding to the same passage we are considering today. As I round things up later, I’ll tell you a little more about it, including where I see Jesus in it, but first let us get our feet onto that Emmaus road.

Roads to Travel

I’m not going to cover the same ground as Vanessa, even though I’m standing in for her. You can find her talk through our website or our YouTube channel and that would certainly be worth doing if you want to walk with the passage a bit more. However, I will shamelessly borrow a little, particularly the idea that grabbed me most. That is the concept that Luke’s contributions to the New Testament, both his gospel and the book of Acts, make such frequent use of journeying stories that it has to be deliberate.

I’m not sure if I had come across that before but it only took a little searching to find some detailed articles fleshing out that idea more fully[1][2]. The nativity story has it’s own journey but, in Luke 3, John the Baptist draws on the words of Isaiah to mark out where Jesus begins his ministry: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”[3]. Jesus moves from place to place in his ministry and a significant part of Luke’s gospel, roughly from chapter 9- 19, is taken up with ‘the journey to Jerusalem’ which culminated in the events of Holy Week and Easter.

Even the stories Jesus tell often involve travels. Probably two of the most famous are the “Good Samaritan” in Luke 10 and the “Prodigal Son” in Luke 15. Then, of course, the book of Acts is full of moving around – the faith moving out from Jerusalem both in the power of the Spirit and under the pressure of persecution, Paul meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus and many subsequent missionary journeys in which he is a prominent character but not the only person involved. Also in Acts, Luke several times describes the faith of the early believers not as Christianity but as “The Way”.

I’m sharing this with you as an idea I’m still exploring. I need to read back through Luke and Acts to weigh it up and consider the other gospel accounts. They all talk about Jesus moving from place to place so it may not be fair to think about Luke as being the ‘road movie’ gospel. However, the overall concept seems well-founded and we still use the metaphor when we talk about our faith – I expect some of you remember the tract Journey Into Life by Norman Warren, which was widely used when I was a teenager and is still in print today.

A Hard Road

Back to our passage, I don’t think Cleopas and his companion felt much like they were on a journey into life as they headed out of Jerusalem that Sunday afternoon on the road leading to Emmaus. I think Vanessa was a little hard on the pair of them – again, go and listen back to her talk and see if you agree – but they weren’t in a happy place. A couple of weeks before Easter, I got word that Andy, a dear friend of mine, had passed away in much less awful circumstances than the unjust trial, brutal execution and the mystery of where the body of Jesus was and I was deeply moved. I told a few people about it and found myself welling up. Even as I wrote up my sermon notes I found myself stirred and I’ve taken the precaution of having a hanky in my pocket this morning. Pray for me next Tuesday, when Jane and I go down to Oxford for his funeral.

Cleopas and his friend were downcast and I think I have an inkling of how they felt. We know from the Bible that was how their faces looked and we know they had been discussing ‘everything that had happened’. I think they were trying to make sense of it all and not getting very far. I think they would remember something wonderful Jesus had said or done and the floodgates would open. I expect they recalled a few things they regretted that they had done or left undone and feel broken again. And there is that crucial line Vanessa picked out in the middle of their response to this ‘ignorant stranger’: “we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel”.

Note the past perfect tense: we had hoped. Perhaps there is a possibility that they might hope again in the future? They were amazed by what the women had told them about angels saying Jesus was alive and they didn’t dismiss it out of hand. However, I expect they didn’t dare reach out and pick that faint flower, fearing that it too might die in their hands.

A Gentle Rebuke

Have you ever thought Jesus was a bit rude or unkind in how he replied to them? “How foolish are you and slow to believe…” Remember what you know though and what those two disciples are yet to realise. This is Jesus speaking, risen with healing in his wings (as Malachi described him[4]): in the words given to Isaiah, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out”[5]. I think his words are a necessary rebuke but also a gentle one and he didn’t leave them squirming on the hook. Instead, he carries on, “…slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” He wraps them straight up in the comfort of God’s plan over the span of history and the fulfilment that has happened – what a privilege it would have been to be part of that lesson.

If you’ve ever had a stranger join you on a journey, you sometimes find yourself looking for an opportunity to politely ditch them. Not here though. By the time they reached Emmaus they were urging Jesus to stay with him longer. I think Jesus often has that effect on people who love him!

Let me make a point of application here. If you are a friend of Jesus and find yourself upset, disappointed or completely broken, don’t be surprised if he joins you on the road. You might feel like your faith has withered away but he loves you: God chose you long before you loved him – even when you were dead in your transgressions and sins, as Paul reminded the Ephesian believers[6]. You might find his first words to you sound like a rebuke but hold just a moment before you respond in anger. Jesus might need to clean your wound with stinging antiseptic, like a mother tending a toddler with a grazed knee but, like that mother, he longs to sweep you up and hold you and restore you.

I hope you know that – it is the privilege of being a child of God – and I hope you can find ways of bringing your friends and neighbours into discovering that too. I’m pretty sure that Cleopas and friend were part of that early wave of mission, filled with the Spirit at Pentecost and going out in the power of the Spirit as part of the Way. Why else would Luke choose to tell their story rather than that of someone else if it ended “and then they just went back to their old lives”? If you want prayer because you feel broken or prayer because you want to be empowered to reach others then do stay around after the service.

The Picture

Let me just come back for a moment to this picture. It is based on one of the windows inside St Clement’s, Oxford, where I’ll be sitting about this time next Tuesday morning. The window is much less colourful but more architecturally sound than my painting suggests. I was thinking of Cleopas and his friend being deep in their blues, like the pane on the right. Jesus, if you haven’t guessed yet, is the bright yellow pane, coming up alongside them from behind. And the green pane in the middle? If you shine yellow light through blue glass, it will glow with green, a colour we associate with life springing up and which, in this precious season, we see more of every day. I believe that, even as Jesus approached his two dear friends, he saw not just their sorrow and confusion but also the restored hope he was bringing them. May his light shine through you and me too. Amen.

[1] https://www.affinity.org.uk/foundations/issue-67/issue-67-article-4-following-the-way/

[2] https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/2011/08/the-motif-of-way-in-luke-and-acts-part-2

[3] Luke 3:4

[4] Mal 4:2

[5] Isa 42:3

[6] Eph 2:1

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