Last month at a NewWine leaders’ prayer time, a friend made a comment that has really struck me: ’Everything is just a bit more difficult’. Unlike many of my friends, this particular colleague isn’t going through any significant challenge or trauma in their life, the church he leads is healthily growing. But in that phrase he captured something which resonated with so many other recent conversations.
What struck me is the aching lack of a simple single narrative to explain the reality which so many are going through in this season. The collective sense we have across the NewWine leaders’ network is that life is unusually challenging in this season and it is hard to nail that down to one factor. At least during Covid, whilst socially distanced we were united with a shared narrative of a collective experience. A year on from lock-down restrictions and the factors now seem more complex. In Mark Sayer’s excellent book ‘Non-anxious presence’, he argues that Covid did not cause a dramatic cultural shift, but exposed shifts already in motion. Sayers quotes Harvard economist Dani Rodrick: ‘The pandemic was serving to “intensify and entrench already-existing trends”’.
This lack of simple single narrative to explain why everything is just a bit more difficult, is itself a source of stress for many. Victor Frankl famously taught that we are meaning makers, this is particularly true for church leaders, part of our prophetic role is sharing a narrative to make sense of the season we are in. I don’t believe I have the prophetic insights, nor the data to presume to offer a decisive explanation of this season, I join you in our collective search for meaning. The question to ask is ‘how then should we live, in this time of uncertainty?’
My personal Bible study over the past month has been in Job and Revelation. (I’ve had happier months!) Whilst both include more than their fair share of head scratching, commentary searching and ‘how would I preach on that?’ moments, God’s Word is always a lamp for our path.
Reading Job, I was struck this time around by the layers of narrative. My mind was taken back to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in which the narrator, himself a character, introduces characters who tell stories about characters who tell more stories full of more characters, each with their own perspectives and values. With narrative layers, part of the intrigue is the friction between the layers and the ironies created by characters speaking with limited or misdirected insight. Job and his friends struggle and debate for many chapters of poetry, seeking an understanding of Job’s innocent suffering. The hollow religious formulae of Job’s so called friends, go beyond trite, to become toxic. Job’s own lament is an expression of emotions, not ‘pure theology’. All along, we know there is a heavenly explanation which they are unable to see. The concluding call steers us away from certainty to surrender, as God, with his own form of ironic questioning, reminds us of our humble limitations and call to trust.
I love a wild apocalyptic vision as much as the next charismatic, amongst the wonder, the confusion, and the challenges of Revelation my lasting memory is that there is hope and renewal at the end of all things. Revelation, written to the Church under persecution, keeps the strong call to remain faithful and trust.
This Biblical mandate directs us how to live, when we can’t fully understand the part of the story we’re living in. I want to offer 3 ways to help us live in that place of trust.
Firstly Surrender.
Apologist Rebecca McLaughlin recently tweeted a summary of Job from daughter (when aged 5): “God is God and we are not”. Many people in different contexts are highlighting the priority of discipleship in this season. There are many aspects of living as a disciple of Jesus, but it begins with surrender, to live with Jesus on the throne. That is as counter-cultural now as it has ever been and it is core to trusting him.
Secondly silence.
Job and his friends speak a lot, part of the power of the book is that it wears us down with cycles of debate, words and human wisdom which become more and more empty, the angrier and more self justifying they are. My experience of reading Job each day, was to embrace the discipline of silence at the end of each chapter, it seemed the most appropriate response to an endless flow of human wisdom.
One way to handle living as a time when everything just seems a bit more difficult and makes less sense, is to spend longer in silence. I am finding my attempts to make sense of everything are far less life-giving that time spent in stillness in the Presence of God.
Core to our praxis in NewWine is ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are finding in this season, that following an invitation to the Spirit to move with extended silence is very fruitful. The temptation to rush too quickly to action or making sense is one I believe God is calling us to resist right now.
The comment with which I opened this article was shared at a gathering of local church leaders in the NewWine network. Instead of a talk, we had an extended time of worship, the caricature of NewWine worship for some might be loud and bouncy, we are happy and we often clap, but this was acoustic, simple and contained long periods of rich, deep silence. The sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit with us was tangible and grew as we sat still and surrendered. It is hard to describe that morning in our twitter age, but the summary at the end from those of us there was simply, “we needed that”.
Thirdly seeds.
Whilst we might struggle to make sense of this stage of the story, we find hope through recognising that the present is only part of the bigger story that we are living in. That is a story of eternal hope, redemption and renewal, we look forward to the fullness of the kingdom and final victory of our King. One Biblical metaphor which consistently helps us to hold on in trust, surrender and silence is that of seeds. The miraculous way God has built regeneration into his creation. On my dog walk this morning, beside a meadow of grass seed, I marvelled again at this miracle. Seeds are an eternal sign of hope, Jesus taught us that whilst dormant in the ground, whatever is happening on the surface, God is at work. (Mark 4.26-29) However we understand this season, each time we read God’s word, pray, praise, worship, share testimony of Jesus, we are planting seeds for future renewal.
For three decades NewWine has been a movement of hope, seeing the not yet breaking into the now, seeing consistent growth and new experiences of the Holy Spirit. Over the next couple of weeks we will gather for our summer conference, ‘United’. This is our first summer gathering for 3 years, the financial and other costs getting here have been huge, the challenges almost overwhelming at times. We will gather tired, bruised, some of us confused, others wobbly and with more questions than certainty. But I am confident that as we surrender to God is worship, wait silently for the Holy Spirit and let God’s word plant seeds in our hearts, we will be taking a step towards the renewal of all things.
Seasoned with Grace 