A reset but not enough?

A Jubilee

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Justice

So many changes – temporary or permanent? It seems to me that the Jewish law of Sabbath(s) culminating in the Jubilee reset of all resets acknowledged that changes were temporary. Otherwise why the repetition? Change instructed by God to the government of the land because a wonderful entrepreneurial gift was often harnessed to serve self-seeking interest and so everything could quickly get out of control. The instruction to bring about a re-set. A re-set of focus every 7 days; a reset of trust in God and a confrontation of ‘drivenness’ every 7 years, and a national radical economic reset in that 50th year.

Israel, instructed by God, as theocracy which no government today is – thankfully!! To be outworked by the government of the land with Israel’s laws continuing as paradigmatic patterns for justice – but thankfully not stronger than that. A Jubilee year twice a century seemed to be enough in that culture to bring things back to a true normality, not to some untrue new normality.

A Jubilee twice a century just would not cut it for the West. A certain gentleman’s personal wealth increased recently in a day by 10bn – can’t remember whether that was $ or £ or €’s. Now that really would make a difference dependent on what currency it was in!! (What does one do with 10bn?) Economic growth in an agrarian culture of a few millennia ago cannot be compared to economic growth of today.

A ‘re-set’ for the ekklesia, a ‘re-boot’ for the oikomene (inhabited world, a very common description used in the political cartoon world of Revelation, from the root word for ‘house’ and one from which we get our word ‘economy’).

A little more negativity: with the increase of the virus so is the use of plastics increasing; plastic gloves available in supermarkets, hand-wash in yet more plastic containers, take out food in… Today I also read (an aside) that every person is using a gadget with a battery that has been produced with children (in slavery) to mine material for it. A ‘re-boot’ – really?

And for us as believers we really have got to kick out of touch the idea that this whole planet is here for us to exploit, with the ‘after all what the heck it is all going to burn up in the end’ attitude. If I had time I would go on a rant about the total un-Hebraic nature of that concept – along with a rant on the ‘rapture’, secret or otherwise. Sadly I realise that the Lord has never been interested in convincing people to believe what I believe… now just imagine a world where we all believed what Martin believed…. or maybe not!

I have very reluctantly (there is normally a screech each day of my ‘frustration tyres’ as I brake and have to change direction) come to understand that God is more interested in what rises than in what is here that resists change. (Saul’s kingdom is over, the key to the future timing-wise is in the hands of David in spite of the continuing decades of Saul as king.)

Change takes place not when Mr B turns over his wealth to help re-balance the globe, but when the widow puts her ‘mite’ into the Temple treasury, or when Judas throws back the money into the Temple. Not one stone can then remain for long one on another. The place that was to be a ‘house of prayer for the nations’ always seems to be the real key. (Private thought to myself at this point – do I think that the ‘temple not built by hands’ will ever get beyond being sold out to self-interested-nationalism?)

Maybe it is a combination of little changes that could just prove to be the leverage mechanism to move more than we ever anticipated. Maybe to simply not eat of the ‘consumerist’ tree but to eat fruit from the others might be enough.

OK… my brake is on, the tyres screeched quite a lot today. But I am saying Mr B you make your choices, I have to make mine too.

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National Health Service

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

We cannot follow all the UK news but last night Andy Knox (a GP and consultant within the NHS alerted us to an almost non-reported bill that the UK government has just turned down the protection regarding selling off the NHS. (Here is one reference I could find:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/mps-nhs-vote-trade-deals-brexit-a4504631.html.)

This is something that maybe could have been predicted but is somewhat ominous. Interestingly in the past three or so weeks I had been somewhat focused on the NHS and wider health issues.

(For Andy Knox’s highly insightful thoughts some of them can be found at:
https://reimagininghealth.com/.)

I wrote an email a short while back to a couple of people who are working in the NHS and reading again thought for what it is worth putting some of the extracts from that here. (I appreciate that it is very UK focused (NHS) and that I am biased toward health care for all and not on the basis of income and therefore privatised. Apologies where what I write does not apply beyond that.)

It does not matter to me too much how one defines the demonic – classically as evil spirits or as spiritual non-personal powers (Walter Wink et al.) as the effect seems to be the same! The demonic is focused on dehumanising… hence the spirit of antiChrist denies that Jesus came in the flesh; enmity was declared to be between the seed of woman and the serpent’s seed; to fall short of the glory of God is to fail to be truly human etc. For this reason I see the NHS as a major target. Health care is easy to identify as a ‘good / Jesus-like’ career – not so easy to suggest hedge-fund management in the same category! We have also had a window into a revaluing of work with the term ‘essential workers’ during this lockdown. If healthcare is a ‘godly’ focus then we should not be surprised to realise that there is a strong attack against it fulfilling its mandate. If a dehumanisation process against workers is successful they will then find it harder to humanise those they care for. Hence I see a spiritual strategy that is to demoralise, dehumanise those who care, affect the culture at the core – like planting a poison at the centre. The next step is that once humanity is sidelined from something there is an openness to mammon (I see Jesus and Judas as a key paradigm to understand the interplay of discipleship, money and also religion.)

I see at the moment for many situations a 2 year period for preparation and significant paradigm shifts, from functionality to people centredness. I have been saying for many months that 2022 is when we will hit some major global crises. COVID is a crisis, but it is also a warning to make changes so that we are ready. If institutions can make a shift it will be surprising how many can come out the other side.

If the above is accurate then there is a window of opportunity now for the NHS. There will be some real heat that comes against (and might have my terminology wrong here) – the minister for health and others in places of authority / responsibility. But for those who are a ‘lower’ level there will be in a protected place. Although the 2 years is a window there will really be the possibility of a 5 year process ahead.

I see also that there are pockets of people in place around the nation that are pulling for a new ‘spirit’ in the NHS, so behind the scenes there will be a discovery of a growing set of hubs / clusters, an unofficial network.

The NHS is important also at this time in the context of the UK. It is not simply about defending what has been and how good it was, but it is a trend setter. The UK has to find a new identity – so this is not simply about a restoration of what was but a deep renewal taking place that will give it a new identity, and become something of a sign for the nation. Hence the battle.

I was hoping that Boris’ experience might have been a Damascus road (maybe with a small ‘d’) experience. From where I sit I am not sure it has been that – Paul said he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, and the grace of God was not in vain toward him – maybe Boris has, at this point, not yet yielded. There will, though, be other remarkable events to some key people that will give further shake ups.

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Power and politics

Corrupting Power

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

The well known adage by Lord Acton:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

In writing about the choice of king, the first one being Saul, there are some very interesting aspects about the move to kingship. First Saul was a humble chappie, hiding in the baggage. What if Saul had never been selected as king? Would he simply have been a friendly giant wandering the land? God then instructs Samuel to tell the people what the king will do, not what Saul will do, nor what a bad king will do! Is there the indication that once we give someone an exalted title and with it authority we really are setting them up (Lord Acton quote)?

Christendom…. Here is a great article I have just read:
https://www.redletterchristians.org/christians-dont-understand-how-horrible-christendom-was-as-is/

A quote from it:

Whenever the name of Jesus is invoked to vilify any group or nation, and whenever a pastor spiritualizes hate or weaponizes scripture to oppress others, and whenever biblical rhetoric is used to inflame nationalism and spread partisan fear, we must recognize these forms of spiritual manipulation for what they are: evil. Because throughout history, Christendom has been a favorite tool of dictators, authoritarians, and countless others who selfishly used it to harm others.

The dominant place afforded to institutional Christianity in Europe is over, resulting in either a hankering back with a cry of ‘we are being marginalised’, or a re-appraisal of what was done wrongly in the name of Jesus (without writing off the genuine missionary / humanitarian work). But now…

Is there a fresh offer coming to the fore in certain places not only to give Christians a place at the table, but to sit at the right hand of authority? If ‘Christendom has been a favorite tool of dictators, authoritarians, and countless others who selfishly used it to harm others’ is there a dangerous proposal that will simply empower dictators and autocrats to bring about oppression legitimised by the use of the name of Jesus (not to mention how lies can be first ignored, but left ignored for a length of time, falsehood will become ‘truth’).

With no offer on the table in Europe we are so privileged. No need even to hide in the baggage. Yes, probably some detox still needed as the hankering after power is so strong and insidious. Add to this the COVID-19 forced break, a call to re-positioning and I hear the word H-O-P-E. Ears and heart open I think is the right response.

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Watch this space

Guard the space

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

No not an ad for the most amazing life-changing product that you cannot afford to miss! That product comes later when I reach a level of maturity that… OK maybe a piece of good advise is don’t wait around for that to happen as a lot of life will pass you by in the meantime.

Two spaces that I think we have to watch.

My take on COVID-19

Not going away any time soon. But it is a warning to signal that we are to prepare for what is beyond it. So right through this year and into the early stages of next we will be reading the daily statistics of the virus, then…. SPACE.

2021 will be a year when there is a relief. Welcomed by the ‘back to normal’ approach as a ‘glad that is behind us now we are back where we were’. But I see it as a space opening up to breathe and get set with resources for the challenge of what is beyond. I do not see God as a destroyer who deliberately pulls things down – sometimes God does that when we stick God’s name on it and insist that it is here forever (see the Temple discourses in Jeremiah and Matthew 24). If God is not an automatic destroyer and also relates to us with a huge capacity to compromise then I see the relief as space to gather the resources for the post-COVID (not suggesting that is the right term) period. 2022 will have somewhere in it ta level of crisis that means 2021 will have been essential to give us what we need, or show that we missed it by thinking the crisis was over.

So watch the space of 2021.

Sidenote on not allowed to sing!

I heard yesterday that churches (UK and I think Spain and probably elsewhere) can meet but not SING. In the light of the dream I had from 2010 for the decade up to 2020 concerning how Christian singing shut back down the façades (https://3generations.eu/posts/2020/04/facades-no-singing-please/) I find this very interesting. If we simply complain about not being able to sing (persecution???? I don’t remember the last time I went to Tescos and only being able to buy meat offered to a variety of gods… we have it easy… or of course we can see it as all foods and goods have been offered to the god of consumerism and we have been duped all those years – take our pick but not persecution, and if it was rejoice as ‘all who seek to live a godly life will suffer persecution’). If we focus on a so-called persecution and fail to lay hold of our responsibility to be agents that should hold open what the Lord has opened to expose we will so miss it. So I see the grace of heaven coming through the legislation. Nice one.

End of sidenote!

The feminisation of the future

I am writing (I think 6 booklets) and at the moment the fourth is on the egalitarian nature of the Pauline Gospel. (One of the first revelations I ever had of the land of Spain was that there was a hidden deposit of the Pauline Gospel in the land, as no other land on the basis of biblical authority can claim to have first century apostolic prayers deposited in the land.) Anyway not suggesting I am uncovering the Pauline Gospel – if I was step aside NT, Douglas, John and a whole bunch of others that I am not on first name terms with! But I am being impacted by the Pauline Gospel, and in particular I have been knocked sideways by the terse letter to the Galatians. Some crazy stuff in there, but the absolute centralising of Jesus so that everything and anything else is blasted out of the picture. In the letter of course it is Jewishness that gets the main treatment but also in the very careful change of language of Gal. 3:28 when it comes to gender difference is so noticeable.

So the space here I suggest we have to watch is that there is coming a feminisation into society. Back in the 90s I wrote a book I was very happy with back then ‘For Such a Time as This‘ where it proposed that there were no barriers to the full participation of women at any level, including female apostles in Scripture and hence today. Happy with it (then) as any book written is a snapshot in time of where the writer was at that time. The book was saying women can and are encouraged to enter the space (and my focus back then was on ‘church space’… but back then majority space was shaped by a masculinity). Now…

There is space opening, which will affect economics, politics, commerce etc., that is feminised – i.e. a different way of operating that (excuse my ignorance) will be much more collaborative than competitive. That space will be entered more easily by women but is open to men as in Christ there is no ‘male and female’.

Maybe in all the above there are connections. If the façades coming up expose a ‘masculinity in Adam’ form of the institutions that have shaped the public square, then the ‘feminisation in Christ’ can follow. As there is neither male and female in Christ of course the language is struggling to gain any real traction. Meanwhile let’s not complain about not singing. Surely we can answer the question of ‘where then do you worship’ by normally before I get out of bed, while making breakfast my heart rises to heaven, and when I come to eat I do find a real thanksgiving rise up and…

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Elite or responsible?

Privileged... and so

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Privilege. Most of us who read this blog are indeed among the privileged, certainly when we take in a global perspective. I appreciate though that we do not consciously live in a global environment but a local one – whether that be a geographic or social context, and so we often have a mixed experience where we are also disadvantaged in some ways. There were many privileged groups in the New Testament times, being a Roman citizen certainly set some apart as elite. It is though the shift of ‘status’ that took place through the Gospel that I am focusing on in this post.

This has come into fresh focus with some of the wider writing I am involved in and also as we have ‘zoomed’ into a situation where the predominant cultural view is that of male dominance, with Paul (and Jesus!) seen as favouring the male.

The great egalitarian text of Paul in one of his earliest pieces of writing is Gal. 3: 28:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Written into the contentious situation where these non-Jewish converts were being subjected to the teaching that any follower of Jesus that was not in compliance to Jewish law was not a ‘full’ member of the community of God’s people.

This bit is strong!!

We even read of Paul confronting Peter face to face, and the strength of the conflict was very strong. There was a good (missiological) argument that had won Peter over. Those who came from James had a compelling argument: ‘how would they ever reach Jews back in the homeland if the Jewish followers of Jesus were fraternising and eating with Gentiles. For the sake of the Gospel you have to pull back, Peter.’ It does not get stronger than that, and if is or this reason I don’t think it was as simple as Peter was making a backward step but he felt compelled to take a compromising step for the sake of non-offence to the Jews, a step for the Gospel. That makes the conflict even stronger. The missiological argument could not overpower the fundamental Gospel one! (Think we have it hard trying to work out what is a godly redemptive compromise!) Back in the day, to be involved in a slave owning group who professed faith could have been argued for: a compromise for the sake of the Gospel… but eventually that compromise was not a compromise for the Gospel but a compromise of the Gospel. Deciding when that shift takes place takes wisdom and insight, and knowing what has changed in our society with respect to the Gospel likewise is very challenging.

Privilege… Either it feeds the demonic idea of elitism / above someone else; or it pushes us toward the ‘responsibility’ element. I consider that over centuries there was a downward trajectory in the life of Israel from the commissioned responsibility for sake of the nations to the elitism of chosenness. I have also been considering (of late) that maybe if we are of the ‘zionist’ bias (not one I can see in the NT at all) maybe there is also a knock on with regard to how we see the gender issue of male and female. Both seem to come from a way of reading Scripture that I find strange, but one I have to respect as I have no reason to suggest that those who read that way are not acting with integrity. I simply hope the reading is not being fuelled by any form of elitism.

With the household codes (the instructions on ‘husbands’, ‘wives’, ‘masters’, ‘slaves’, etc.) Paul follows the conventions of the day where philosophers and religious writers would lay out how their philosophy / religion would not at any level disturb the status quo of the Roman society. In our culture they are not too radical (understatement!!) but in that culture he carefully redefined them. He moved the dominant one from a position of ruling the roost to a place where they were to be an animated source of life.

There was an anonymous letter written to a person names ‘Diognetus’, mid 2nd Century, that suggested that Christians were to the world what the soul was to the body. They were to be present and animating. (The quote below is fairly long, the specific part I am referring to is in bold… so feel free to skip to that point… and apologies for the male language.)

Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonour, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labour under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives. They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law.
To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen.  The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.

The explanation is somewhat hellenised, indicating how quickly there was a shift from a Jewish psychology to a Greek-oriented one, but nevertheless the description as an animating life-giving source is very clearly put.

In the Gospel the privilege of Jew over Greek was nullified (I count it all ‘dung’ said one very privileged Jew; the NT era Jews were basically given a generation to respond to Jesus etc.); the rich were always being slapped about – we do not read ‘woe to you poor!’ but we often read ‘woe to you rich’; and in the Gospel any male privilege that might be inferred from creation is totally cancelled. The Greek of Gal. 3:28 seems to deliberately use the same construction as we find in Genesis, but reversing it – no ‘male and female’.

No privilege, indeed we might suggest that there is a bias the other way because of the Gospel! And any privilege that society might give, or we find ourselves in is to promote life (the shift in Paul’s household codes), to work toward an egalitarianism with everyone finding true life, and a corresponding emptying out of the privilege. Privilege is to be temporal and can only be in order to move things in the direction of the new creation.

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2020 – 2022

A Two year Window

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

In the past days I have been on a few Zoom calls and some of what I see for the next season has been pulled on. I thought it might be of some value to put it down here, some of which in bits and pieces I have shared before. It needs of course to be weighed and if there is a projection on my part of expectations those will colour what I write. Prayer and revelation is not here to give us what we expect but what we need to enable participate in any forward God movement. Finally any sight has to be supplemented by sight from others.

In the first few days of January it became clear to us that 2020 was not going to be a year that could be planned out. It would be a disrupted year, the important part was that we could not plan as per normal but would have to respond as the disruptions occurred. For many this has been a painful year and I do not write in any way to diminish that experience; we weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. I acknowledge the diversity of experiences but also want to give a focus to push against the hope of those who are simply waiting for things to return to normal. God makes everything beautiful in its time and we have to discover what it is that God is beautifying.

It is fairly self-evident that there is a RESET taking place. The concept of a reboot is vital for many sectors, and the use now of the term ‘essential workers’ has been a redemptive and perceptive phrase. I suspect it will soon disappear from the active vocabulary as a measure of recovery comes. Crisis has value if we change… if not!!

There will be a bouncing back… it is OK to go with it to a measure, but the focus has to remain on the reset. However as the bouncing back is heralded (2021?) we should not get carried away. The reset has to go much deeper that a temporary change (everything online) and then back to a thank God here comes the normal!

For those who are seeking to find what God has in this season, as opposed to waiting for this season to end, it is not so much a reboot but a reset. The vision might need to be tweaked but the vision is the vision. A refocus might be required, but it is essentially about resetting. As in many sports there comes a point that the team needs to be reset in order to achieve the desired outcome. Perhaps the format of the team, or new plays need to be introduced. We are now in a period of reset and even when a measure of recovery comes, even if we might be able to go with it to some extent, the important element remains that the reset needs to be completed.

There is a 2 year window to push through this reset, ideally if it can be done in 18 months the better. In 2022 – I do not suspect at the beginning – I see global elements of crises appearing that will bust open the cracks. COVID-19 is serious but is also a sign of what is to come, and is signalling to us now that there is a period of time in which we can get ready for this.

The reset is to check alignments. There are alignments from the past season that will quickly prove to be energy sapping for the next. An important element to avoid in this season is filling all the space. There are also alignments that have become loose that need tightening up. However, we approach it the issue of ALIGNMENTS is key in this reset.

Also get ready to change direction. There will likely be for a number of people the sudden openness of new outlets that they have skirted around the edges of before. They will come with a fresh angle / approach and then open up.

The favour of God is going to be with those who are not giving themselves to protect the structures / institutions but invest in the people. This might well mean embracing what might seem a smaller influence, but invest small and deep and there will both be longer lasting results and also protection into the phase that opens in 2022.

At the same time God is at work not simply with ‘me / us’. We are not at the centre. We can flow with what God is doing, but the future is not being shaped for us as individuals. So I suggest that there are people now who are being loosened up from their former concepts that only got them thus far. The loosening will mean fresh sight to those people and also fresh space for new connections. There are many hubs being shaped at this time… a hidden few here and a hidden few there.

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Coming clean

British Past

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

Back in the day so much prayer was focused on specifics such as the Berlin conference of the late 19th Century that carved up Africa for the Europeans. Alongside 13 European nations the USA was also involved. Alongside specifics a large amount of effort went into ‘rolling up the Roman road’, seeking to undo the effects of empire. We had some incredible encouraging signs and yet… But now so much seems to connect.

We should not expect that all movements that seek to address the issues are going to do it perfectly. If the body of Christ does not execute her task perfectly why do we have higher standards for the world!!

So much of history is covered over. I have found again and again that history stays hidden until uncovered through prayer. Once it is out the lid cannot be put on the box again. For the Brits among us here is a good article to check up on the British and part of our imperial history:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/16/boris-johnson-lying-history-britain-empire

I am definitely not patriotic. I find that to be in direct conflict with my commitment to Jesus. I cannot give any allegiance that conflicts with my allegiance to Christ. There are of course arguments as to what was achieved through empire, the sending of missionaries etc. It has even been suggested that the ‘fullness of times’ when Jesus came was the Roman Empire, one language, roads and so the gospel could spread! The context of those verses point in a radically different direction.

God maximises all possibilities. After all he even used a king in Israel! To find some good that came through something reveals nothing about the ‘thing’ in question.

The uncovering, the reaction is not going to go away. If I can be so bold as to suggest the prayer ensures that. And once we have prayed, we cannot then push it all back in cos what came out was not what we were expecting! Prayer does not unlock what we expect, it unlocks what we need.

We have hit mid-way through this decade a governmental crisis. We have leaders who are comfortable to lie. We have hit the sign of the COVID virus that is the wake up call… behind this comes the economic crisis that will have some back and forths but will come at a new level in 2022, when as yet some unforeseen combination of setbacks will hit.

Our response? Bunker down? Or use this time to allow for some personal readjustment to line up with God’s agenda. Early on in this ‘less than pretty time’ I cottoned on to the Ecclesiastes verses that God makes everything beautiful in its time. God is never inactive, never non-redemptive. There is always activity that he is involved in.

Loads of questions in this time, but I also see it as a major shift.

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Finding Our Way Back From Dualism

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by Gaz KIshere
Posted in Personal Perspectives

I have excluded the word secular from my language for many years now. I have found it to be a wholly unhelpful term, which separates church from society. Remembering that if we have the language of separation it is quite likely that we have the practices of separation too.

I have swapped out the word secular for the work ‘mainstream’ as an attempt to try and normalise it in some way, since regardless of the core meaning of secular, it has come to mean somewhere God is not or perhaps worse somewhere that God has removed himself from and should therefore be considered unsafe.

I wanted to illustrate how dualism works in a real life setting and story rather than theoretically, i guess this is my version of drawing in the sand to explain something.

Before I start that – let me tell you about my day… do you think Jesus drew in the sand at times to be sarcastic? Like, ‘you guys are never going to get this, so here is a picture of a cloud? I only ask this because today in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests i posted a map of Africa on my facebook timeline showing how it has been carved up into all of its colonial areas called ‘The Original Looting’ . One of my racist friends (i have a few as it keeps me on my toes) just put the laughing emoji on the post.

Later i found a you tube clip of the Berlin conference where interested European empires fought out their rights to different land areas and implemented ‘make believe’ but long lasting borders – a gathering which did not include a single African.

So i posted this video and wrote, ‘for the uneducated – here is a video with a child explaining the impact of the Berlin conference and drawing it all on a map with crayons’… which was true ! Ok so maybe that’s not what Jesus did but it felt like a small victory.

So – Back to my attempt to illustrate the life and outcomes limitations of Christianity, having inherited dualism.

For 6 years i worked with an international counter child trafficking ngo based out of the US as their European Operations Director (a title I was asked to invent for my business card). On visiting one of the nations in Asia where we were funding projects and contributing a few initiatives, a lovely co worker with took me to meet a guy who was working in the night clubs there. These were essentially gatherings 40% people selling sex and 60% johns going there to buy against a backdrop of a syncopated beat and lights.

My friend thought we would get on as the guy in the clubs was working where Christians refused to go, and as a result he was given the ‘black spot’ of suspicion and exclusion by them.

He would raise funds for a specific girl to exit prostitution, one at a time and gain livelihood skills as a means of sustainability. In the club we talked to a girl, she was so beautiful and seemed like a lost bird, clearly not her normal source of income. She must have been 15 at the most and as we talked she explained that she was responsible for her mother and her own education. She had come to the city for a week of selling her body to expats in the hope of funding another term at school. When we left the club i went back alone, id taken what I could from my bank account, went back in the club and put it in her hands. She looked confused, I bowed to her with clasped in full Namaste humility, and as best i could expressing ‘go home’. As the stranger in a strange land and as naive as anyone could be, it seemed the best i could do. On top of this, I wasn’t meant to be there in the place God wasnt!

The following night we went to a gathering of Christians from different groups. They were going to go an do outreach (another word for us to review) to the white males who were spending their pensions on trying to resolve loneliness and feed a predator spirit. I should have been suspicious as soon as the word outreach was used.

We walked off the busy main street where all the action was and into a small side building. We sat in a circle, we sang western worship songs with the aid of a tape player and then we broke into confession groups, males and females to talk about our ‘thought life’ and any brushes with porn so we could be cleansed and worthy for the work ahead of us.

I was feeling increasingly angry, there is no other word for it, in fact i would say, i felt offended by much of what was taking place. I am mindful of this because a fellow once told me with a voice of authority that having offence is a sin. However i tend to feel at times, it is simply being tuned in and feeling exactly what the holy spirit is feeling.

The best was yet to come… strap yourselves in.

It was time to put on the full armour of God. I mean like in full Marcel Marceau mime mode, one item at a time, the belt of truth, the breastplace of righteousness etc

Now this is where i need Jesus to explain to me, why, i am having to do all of this seeming nonsense to go back onto the street i had just walked off?

I bit my tongue and tried not to make eye contact with my team mates. i would hate for them to know i needed rescuing. Finally we split into mix gender groups and off into the world, the real one. I was with two of my co workers from the US and a lady from central America full of learned charismatic behaviour oozing everywhere. We were going to go and pray into the darkest areas of the city. My heart hit the floor when we pulled up outside the same nightclub i had been in the night before. We needed to hide in the van and pray as the lord led. After 10 minutes i thought i would explode, seemingly stretched on the torture rack in between two realities, i just couldn’t cope. A therapist would say i was ‘in feeling’ but i would just say i was just thoroughly pissed off.

However the comedy of errors was not over yet. I found myself explaining to my co prayers that i found it very difficult to be praying outside a club at a distance when i had been in the club the precious night, praying over actual people, responding to what I saw, and engaged meaningfully with at least one beautiful human being.

You get me? right readers? The Central American lady didnt. She assumed

that i was full of shame for what i had seen and had been exposed to and began to pray in tongues over me and cast out the heeby jeebies of lust.

I was just about to break religious protocol and cultural taboos by asking her ‘good lady – please stop what you are doing, there is a misunderstanding ‘ (translated in google from gaz actual speak) when suddenly i was saved by an angel, it was definitely an angel in the form of the biggest mother loving flying bug we had ever seen. The intercession turned immediately into screams of panic and wails of travail… and i was saved.

This was probably one of the most internally vomiting experiences of my Christian life, i could not pull the robes of religious constraint off of me quick enough. I really did and do love my co worker who was supporting and initiating these projects but i just had to say ‘dude wtf’.

Is dualism really that hidden, that subtle and that invasive that once we have become part of separated off from life church culture that we can no longer see the absurdity of it in our practices? Dualism more than informs us that the church as a building is a refuge, a petrol station, an anchor point to where God resides most, to save us from the world, where God is less, or even not at all.

Was it wrong for me to be as offended of the dysfunctional Christian practices as I was the sex abuse that was all around me?

Perhaps I felt it more deeply because we were meant to be their hope and here we were struggling to walk out of the door of the created world back into the creation we lived in where God resides as fully as anywhere.

After years of working with young people who still hemorrhage out of the church construct on mass each year, perhaps this is the subtle indoctrination, which leaves them to feel that they have left God in the building. As my dad might say, ‘if I had a penny for every time I have heard that’… I would have, well, quit a lot.

How far reaching, life limiting and dangerous is this dualistic thinking?

This was not an accident, this separate worlds mentality is rooted in Platonic thinking, sown at the inception of the western church as it came to us through Greece, the creation of the sacred and the secular world. If we can eradicate this idea in our thinking and from our being, I feel our ‘practicing the presence of God’ as ever present, instead of near or far, here or there, will enrich us deeply and help us stand fully as his image bearer, wherever we are. I believe that as an outflow of this will also come much deeper questions for us as individuals about the church as a centralised, high dependency human construct.

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Destroying or making history?

The seven last words of the Unarmed

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

If you don’t get time to watch it right through try 16:00 to the end.

A statue that honoured a slave trader being pulled down in Bristol was commented on very astutely in the Guardian that this was not an act of destroying history but of making history. I note that tonight there is a possibility of action targeted on the statue of Cecil Rhodes – an interesting one as Gayle was born in Zimbabwe and we have inevitably focused prayer into the effects of his life into the ‘soul’ of Africa.

Some days I pinch myself. What era are we living through? Is this simply a pause and all goes back to where it was? Or are we really living in one of the of the greatest resets in all of history? There are some incredible momentous epochs, and for believers in the resurrection of Jesus, we should anticipate that. Time moves forward a day at a time, a tick of the clock, and when that happens little seems to change, but the resurrection distorted the time line (Matt. 27: 51-54).

‘All lives matter’ is a retort at this time. Yes but only once ‘black lives matter’.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…’

(I quote from the USA declaration for two reasons, it is easier to find a good quote there and the USA is the child of Europe, if any schisms become visible there be assured they are present in our soil. I am not quoting it as a criticism of ‘there’. My critiques are of here and of ‘me’.) In the era when that was written ‘all men’ were all ‘men’ of the male variety, and of the white European descent. We can look back to criticise, but the gift of looking back is to slowly help give us present (time and place) sight. There are truths that are so self-evident, but are totally obscured to our sight because of where we stand. The gift of the moment is not simply that voices are being heard that have been silenced but we could possibly have our ears unblocked and our sight unveiled.

I have written that many might never come closer to seeing God than to see someone… really see them. To see humanity. That for me primarily is why this could be one of the greatest moments in history. To see Jesus was (is) to see the Father. To ‘see’ and really see humanity… that is the path for many to see Jesus.

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Church of Elsewhere

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by Gaz Kishere
Posted in Personal Perspectives

Much of what I pick up on the soles of my feet is something to be washed off, but at times the dust, the residue of history and kingdom moments I pass through I want to accumulate, I want to bring this with me so that it colours where I go, who I meet and what I do. This is not something you can do with the stuff you need to wash off, it wont be appreciated.

Sometimes we feel a need to visit places, touch the land, meet the people in the hope that pollination takes place. That we become infected with what has infected them and in so doing become transformed, progressed, better enabled to be what we are meant to be, in the service of others.

I had a lovely friend called Zoe who signed up for a discipleship and missions programme where you could make suggestions of where you would want to be for a period of active mission. She wanted to join a dynamic bunch doing education in schools on England’s south coast, instead she woke up to see a cow outside her window in Wales. Amazingly, a place she would stay for more than a decade.

The Jesus followers there were a prayerful prophetically, sensitive bunch called Antioch in Llanelli. At times their prophetic insights were put into video format to be passed around the country like yeast. I liked their symbolism a lot, one of these was the sole of a boot saying ‘dreams with tread on for new terrain.

I think this notion resonated with people, rejected any idea that they had arrived. It suggested that the journey was ongoing and that we needed to prepare for new things.

Perhaps the boots with fresh tread indicated that it was going to be a long walk out, in and through the creation.

I felt I needed to connect with and touch what they were about. I loved it when we got to pray together, I also loved walking down the steps of a local river where hundreds would have queued during the historical revival, to be immersed in the makeshift baptismal. I wanted some of the history to be carried on my feet.

However it was one of the prophetic, poetic videos which would impact me the most and adhere itself to my journey.

The premise was that God had placed Jesus as head of his church, his body, which was the fullness of him in and through the creation. (“And God put all things under [Jesus’] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

It was a visit to that verse which brought out the sense that the body was the mobile, integrated aspect of himself through all things, through the creation and through the life and work spheres. This imagery seemed to be the opposite of the church I knew and the one that dominates the landscape. What I saw all around me, I had for a long time referred to as the church of elsewhere.

Perhaps, I can qualify that statement a little more by saying I had experienced several group settings where I would ask those gathered what they considered to be the spheres of society and each time it would be the same, education, healthcare, business, family and church.

The problem for me here is that it was my firm belief that “church” was never to occupy a sphere of its own, but instead have fully embedded itself in all of the actual spheres of life and society. The challenge or should I say challenging question in the video was ‘what does it mean to be the fullness of him in and through education? (cue teachers voice), healthcare? (cue doctors voice), gypsy sites (cue roma) etc

To be honest, because of our occupation and strong orbit around church as a sphere, as church of elsewhere, this is actually a question that still, 2000 years on, we are unable to fully respond to.

I used to be involved in church networks and pastors networks, which I foolishly felt was a gathering of those charged with reaching and transforming our locality.

After the ritual of the male voice choir worship session at one of these, I was allowed to ask a question:

  • Do we believe that our missiology informs our ecclesiology…
  • That those we wish to reach and serve in ‘the mission’, shapes and informs how we ‘do church’?

Almost everyone nodded, in that ‘but of course’ kind of affirming manner.

I asked ‘Who of us has inherited an established ecclesiology which greatly limits or inhibits our missiology’ … cue less enthusiastic nodding.

It is problematic that we are operating out of something, which even to our own thinking I so foundationally conflicted.

The leader of the pastors network, a much respected man once gave me a sound-bite which I have quoted in a multiplicity of settings, ‘If we do what we always did – we get what we always got’ – which isn’t enough. His softly spoken Scottish accent still survives as a formative voice in my head. As someone who was working hard on the impossible task of bringing our institutions closer together, I am not sure he realizes what a critical role he played in my moving away from said restraints.

Once over a cup of tea and some shortbread, we had a philosophical conversation where I was saying that I don’t have any more energy to invest in changing a seemingly immovable object.

My heart had always been to see the church change, but I had seen little of this. Mostly, the church as a whole was pinning its hopes on the next acceptable book to read , which would help them see the changes the previous book had promised but failed to deliver.

I remember saying that I was guessing he had seen the church go through 40 years of incremental, manageable adjustments, instead of significant change to itself, so that it could finally become an agent of change in society.

I said that if this was the case, I’m not going to be sticking around. His answer I felt was deeply honest ‘ yes, I am afraid that I agree with you, the church is likely to opt for another 40 years of minor adjustments’.

Do we have an inherited system that is capable of the kind of change, which can sees its primary function as supporting the saints to come to fullness in all the spheres of society? Has it managed this so far?

When church occupies its own sphere, a physicality and a geography we visit, it can only truly focus energy on perpetuating its own existence, equipping a small percentage of the saints for works ‘in’ the service instead of serving the majority who are unsupported as they stand in and through the creation (perhaps still waiting for a call to the seemingly sacred roles of pastor, youth worker, community worker, house group leader).

The thing that excites me most about a different paradigm is that, if there is no separated off from life ‘church of elsewhere’, then there is no leadership and no ministry gifts of elsewhere.

Instead, we find those abilities helping people come to fullness in all the glorious diversity of where God has placed them to be lovers, servants and agents of change. Suddenly, I feel hope that we can actually find ourselves engaged in systemic change in the world around us, more than topically treating the suffering those broken systems create.

What makes me nervous, is it takes that misplaced sphere of church to take on a John the Baptist mantle and become willing to decrease so that, what is coming can increase. I don’t mean more manageable, incremental, minor adjustments.

It has to be significant mind-blowing paradigm exploding change.

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