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
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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

8 April 2024
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Bench Work

One of the things I’ve been doing today is building a couple more bench tops for the polytunnel. We’re at the exciting time of years where seeds germinate and grow quickly and I need to make maximum use of the space in there. There isn’t going to be anything in the beds along either side that grows particularly tall for a few weeks yet so I can make use of the side supports for bench space… if I have the benches.

The new one stretches across most of the picture and, since I completed that, I’ve now made another of the same design for the other end of that side. That gives me a full row of benching on the left and two out of three sections filled in on the right, which is enough to keep me going for another week or two.

6 April 2024
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The last for now

Today was the sing-around’s last session at The Plough Inn, for the time being at least. Sadly the pub is shutting its doors as the present proprietors move on and the future of the location is unclear. They have had repair issues which they haven’t found the brewery that owns it making any moves to deal with so we don’t know if it will return as a pub or if there will be an attempt to put housing on the site. The sing-around will continue but temporarily homed in the hall at Thorpe Acre Church (all of the remaining other local pubs have unsuitable, open-plan layouts).

I took along my double bass and contributed two 16 bar blues – Way Down in the Hole (which I’ve done several times before) and Needed Time (which might be the first time I’ve led it anywhere).

5 April 2024
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More unexpected visitors

Since my post earlier this week, we’ve spotted the greenfinches a couple more times and the chaffinches have paid a visit most days. No siskins yet but I did see a pair of grey wagtails this morning. Those are the ones named for their grey backs even though you would have thought their bright yellow bellies would make more sense as the feature you would refer to!

I spotted them as the flew down onto the patio area. Unfortunately, by the time I’d realised what I was seeing and that my iPad was within reach, they were moving on so I got one not-very-good photo showing the back of one of them as it briefly perched on the far end of the polytunnel before flying off.

I have seen them in the area before, though rarely, and never in the garden. I don’t expect they will be regular visitors but I’ll keep my eyes open.

4 April 2024
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Machine Readable?

It was about twenty years ago that the world (of web developers) was getting excited about a concept called Web 2.0. That was my world at the time and, as I recall, the two key pillars were user-generated content and behind the scenes mark-up that not only presented things well on the surface but provided extra information about what the page was about. For an example of the latter, you might flag something as a review and include machine-readable (ie. easy to parse) information about what you were reviewing and your overall X out of Y score. In theory, that would allow someone else to search across numerous websites for reviews of a given thing and aggregate the results.

I’m not sure it has come to much. A lot of the web now consists of user-generated content, be it YouTube videos, Facebook posts or contributions to X (formerly known as Twitter). There are lots of gems out there but also a massive amount of twaddle, made worse by the profusion of ads. Some of those are targeted but most seem to work on a scattergun approach – they might get in front of people who will be interested but, by and large, they just leave the experience in tatters.

Meanwhile, that idea of semantic (ie. meaningful) markup also seems to have turned belly up. Instead, the modern trend seems to be to rely on a range of systems under the ‘AI’ heading to scan through plain old text and do clever things to figure out what people meant. Is that a good thing? It is certainly less work for content creators but I’m not sure the machines always pick up the right end of the stick. Worse still, they don’t seem to have any filter to indicate when they switch from carefully gleaned knowledge to drawing on weak sources or just making things up. Woe to the person who tries to get AI to write an essay which will be graded by someone who knows what they are talking about, and woe to all of us when that latter function also gets outsourced to silicon facsimiles.

It might be a bit premature to try and assess the history of the ‘web’ given that it is only about 35 years old (and in relatively widespread access for less than that) but I’m not convinced that we are demonstrating a proper process of learning and not just bolting new ideas on faster than we can cope with.

3 April 2024
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Damp weather, dry (stone) walls

I’ve made it to very few of the “Green Gym” sessions run by the local council’s contractors for caring for outdoor spaces but a gap in the diary meant I could get down for another dry stone walling session at Outwoods this morning.

I managed to remember what I’d learned from the session last August although the available material made it a bit tricky to implement. Ideally you need a decent stock of long, flat and heavy stones to lay from the edges and back across the centre line. That gives the wall strength, along with building flat surfaces where possibly to put higher layers on and finding pieces that give a good face to the wall (to let water run off rather than being jagged).

Still, we managed a reasonable job although only on a fairly short section of quite a long wall.

2 April 2024
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Sound System

The week after Easter tends to be very quiet at church so I took advantage of that to pop into church and do a few bits of tidying up that were well overdue.

In the hall, I undid the screws that held the sound cabinet to the wall, which allowed me to get access round the back and give it all a good clean (sorry spiders but it needed to be done!). I did a bit of rationalisation on the way things are plugged in and removed a ‘feedback destroyer’ that wasn’t properly plugged in. It does sometimes get switched on but it wasn’t set up to actually make any difference to the overall sound so, if it wasn’t doing anything, best to put it aside and leave a bit more room for the things we do use. I did have plans to swap the hi-fi amp for a proper power amp but the latter turns out to have very noisy fans so we are basically running at business as usual but with a lot less dust!

I also took the chance to pull out a couple of items from the sound rack in the main church: a DVD player (only used for audio CDs and a sound recorder). Both of those have had their functions replaced by the digital mixer. If we absolutely needed play an audio CD, we can always run that from the data computer which is plumbed in. Again, that gives more space for the things we do use.

1 April 2024
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All the Finches

Towards the end of February I mentioned how our ‘goldfinch feeder’ took a couple of months before the local goldfinches picked up on it. Since then it has become a regular feeding slot and it isn’t unusual to see both of the perches occupied by these attractive little birds. However, as we said to the neighbour who came round for dinner yesterday, we’ve not seen greenfinches for a couple of years and no chaffinches at all.

What have we spotted this morning? A pair of greenfinches, clearly identifiable, and a pair of chaffinches. We’ve possibly we’ve mistaken the latter for sparrows but their colours are becoming more pronounced. We’re both amazed and delighted by that and Jane has now taken to talking about siskins (also in the finch family)!

31 March 2024
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Sonrise / Sunrise Service

Did you remember the clocks “springing forward” for British Summer Time today? Jane and I certainly did, dragging ourselves out of bed for the annual Easter Day united churches service at the top of Beacon Hill. It started at 6:30am BST, so felt like 5:30am from the day before and, of course, we had to be up early enough to drive to the base of the hill and walk up it!

In some years there has been a glorious view from the top. Less so today, when it started with a thick mist and was heading into fog territory by the time we finished. Nonetheless, it was good to gather and get that start to the day although I’m pretty much ready for bed now.

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